There’s a line in “The Doctrine” — a feature-length documentary about confronting the history of Indigenous genocide and exploitation that had its U.S. premiere at the Twin Cities Film Fest on Friday — that likens awareness of native issues to a fish trying to “see” water; it’s so difficult because it’s in everything, even what we breathe.
How did director Gwendolen Cates go about visualizing the un-visualizeable, then? She told me: by connecting, following, listening and especially traveling, all to tell what is ultimately an undeniably insightful and overdue story of one Indigenous youth group’s journey to challenge historical pain.
“Native people who have seen the film feel it’s very powerful; they absolutely relate to it,” Cates said. “You know, so many people don’t know about the Doctrine of Discovery. That’s really why I made the film, which has been a very collaborative experience.”
The titular Doctrine of Discovery refers to multiple 15th-century official papal decrees, called bulls, that gave Europeans legal and moral right to claim any land not inhabited by Christians, dehumanizing Indigenous people in the process and paving the way for the theft of their land worldwide. As the film details, even beyond its logistical framework, the Doctrine’s existence propelled a way of thinking that has continued to cost Indigenous lives in the centuries that followed, even today.
The filmmaking itself is unglamorous but feels unashamedly truthful. When asked how large her crew was in the post-screening Q&A, Cates raised her hand; she was the sole cameraperson, even when filming across multiple continents.
The result is an unprecedented feeling of journeying hand-in-hand with the group, which was made up of Indigenous youth from within Minnesota public schools, as they met with a representative from the Vatican in Rome — making them the first Indigenous youth group to do so — and uncovered the legacy of the Doctrine for themselves in real time.
This faithfulness in representation extends beyond Rome and the youth group’s origins in the Twin Cities. Cates said that she was called “very organically” to document the Papal Bulls’ legacy in other countries like New Zealand and Guatemala.
“It seemed worthwhile to not only focus on (colonies of) Spain and the British, the English,” Cates said. “And also the fact that Indigenous people are everywhere — absolutely everywhere.”
This is part of what Cates said made it her most challenging film to edit together. The film’s scope is often enormous and disparate, making it hard to get a hold of in the first half. Once it narrows onto the visit to Rome, though, it finds an especially effective spokesperson in Twin Cities local Nina Berglund, one of the youth who also attended the screening Friday.
There is an intense honesty in the way Cates frames Berglund’s reaction to revelations about the Doctrine’s connection to her heritage. Among the most effective moments is one scene where she begins to tear up in spite of herself upon seeing what most might view as a simple, touristy recreation of the ships that brought colonizers to the New World.
The film also includes the Vatican’s 2023 response, which acknowledged the Doctrine’s harmful effects but took care to deny its connection to Catholic teachings and claimed that its words had been manipulated into political policy by European empires at the time. The Vatican also stopped short of rescinding the actual papal bulls on which the Doctrine was based, according to the Canadian Museum of Human Rights.
“The Doctrine” is not a satisfying film, either cinematically or narratively, but the discomfort it mixes from its run-and-gun filmmaking and courageous story of a movement in a seemingly neverending fight is effective in grounding these high-concept issues in the lives of people who exist, in this case, just minutes away from us.
The Doctrine’s influence is plain to see in the St. Thomas community’s struggles to ensure that the university’s own culpability in Native American displacement is addressed and, as the leader of the Indigenous youth group, Mitch Walking Elk, pointed out after the screening, in the current U.S. government’s actions, as well.
These subtleties are innocuous yet necessary once we learn to see them, and it’s all the more powerful to be able to communally experience a film like “The Doctrine” in a theater as it carefully, empathetically, shows us how.
‘Clear Sky’ presents an unashamed portrait of generational healing
I was originally hesitant to pair reviews of “The Doctrine” and “Clear Sky” in one article, as grouping them solely off of their shared subject matter of Indigenous stories could be seen as reductive — not only of each filmmaker’s story but also of the very dignity of the issues they cover, which undoubtedly deserve to stand alone.
But after seeing “The Doctrine” less than a week after a screening of “Clear Sky,” another feature-length documentary, I was thoroughly convinced of the films’ shared DNA as two imperfect yet thoroughly-realized portraits of Indigenous trauma that act in concert with one another.
“Clear Sky” is undeniably the more cinematic of the two, using bright, impressively-shot cinematography to tell a story of healing that is pointed — one could even say heavy-handed — in its depiction of titular subject Shawn Clearsky Davies’ journey to overcome addiction and mend his broken upbringing.
While it features no direct interviews, you would be hard-pressed to find a moment throughout that is not a blunt reflection of that character’s inner thoughts on their emotions and the broader issues of generational trauma and Indigenous reclamation.
Still, once the film invests you into Davies’ perspective, his journey — to get clean, to reconnect with those around him and to tie himself to his Native roots — transforms into something altogether more meaningful: a “how-to” for the soul that acts as inspiration for anyone trying to move past their flaws and demons.
It does this in a literal sense during running scenes where Davies attains peace within nature and within himself. Each bouncing, sweeping motion in these scenes seems to jostle the core of us as viewers and utilizes the beautiful fluidity of motion only achievable on-screen.
“The Doctrine” successfully invests viewers in the frustration and courage of an entire culture locked in a war with its tortured past; “Clear Sky” reminds us that complexity and hopelessness can be counteracted with a commitment to oneself and a foundation in community and culture.
Together, they are an important reminder for anyone, including non-Indigenous audience members like myself, of the multifaceted nature of Indigenous heritage in the U.S. and around the globe. Cinema, while just one medium with which to express these intricacies, allows us to learn from and empathize with these communities. We dignify these stories with our attention, and they, in turn, give us all the more reason to listen.
Kevin Lynch can be reached at lync1832@stthomas.edu.
