What started as a look at the worldwide appropriation, exploitation and debasement of Native American culture, turned into a study of its rich influence on fashion, sports, politics and environmentalism.
Or as Cree filmmaker Neil Diamond cheekily asks in 2024 Canadian documentary Red Fever, "Why do they love us so much?!"
Created with co-director Catherine Bainbridge, Red Fever follows Diamond across America and to Europe. He was inspired to look deeper at Native American cultural influence after seeing everything from wooden Indian figures above the door of a nightclub in Seoul, to fictional Apache chiefs etched in stone as pathfinders for the location of action films created in former communist Yugoslavia.
Red Fever follows his previous 2009 film with Bainbridge, Reel Injun, exploring the portrayal of Native Americans on screen, and is packed full of dodgy portrayals of Native Americans in culture worldwide.
Diamond's newest film came out of his research for Red Fever. So Surreal: Behind the Masks, directed with Joanne Robertson, explores the taking by collectors of Yup'ik and Kwakwaka'wakw nation ceremonial masks and their appropriation by the European surrealist artists.
Red Fever and So Surreal both play as part of Māoriland Film Festival in Ōtaki on the Kāpiti Coast, March 26-30.
Neil Diamond is from Waskaganish on the coast of James Bay in Northern Quebec. As well as the creator of numerous films, he is an award winning photographer and co-founder of Cree news magazine The Nation.
He joined Mark Amery on RNZ's Culture 101.
