The Screening of Indigenous Films - Gather

In Gather, forager Twila Cassadore hunts pack rats.
Photo By Renan Ozturk

In my effort to keep my google account at less that 98% capacity, I deleted my trash.

That is the place where I had the email from Rebecca that invited me to watch the film Gather, on Thursday and then another film of the same kind next Thursday. 

So now I am in a place of no information and no pictures, but I do want to say something that just springs out of my head about the film. 

For me, Twila Cassadore, a master forager of the San Carlos Apache, was the absolute star.  In the film she demonstrates her work to introduce ancient medicinal and food practices to the youth in her community.   

I have to do a spoiler here.  She takes a stick and goes into the desert and shows people how to surprise pack rats out of the ground, how to crush their heads with the heel of her foot, and how to cook them and eat them.

Twila Cassadore leads gloscho hunts
on the San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation.
Zee Peralta

Seeing that pack rat splayed, boiling, watching her pick it out of the pot with its long tail, and then cutting it up and letting people eat its flesh as she said their ancestors did long ago?  

OK.  

That is documentary film making at its best.  

She tried not to put any words into people's minds about the taste -- letting them decide for themselves that the word "chicken" might apply.

Further, how to know when the pack rat is cooked?  The tail falls off.

Here is the review of the film from The New York Times on this documentary.

And a lovely article in The Phoenix New Times for people who want to know more about Twila Cassadore's search to identify 200 ancient foods on her reserve.

And for those of us who like to listen to Master Story Teller, Rebecca Johnson, does this story bring overtones of the Secwepemc "Story of the Pack Rat".    

That little thieving devil!

Arta