MODERATORS:
If this is in the wrong category, please move or delete this thread. Many thanks.
In January 2012 I contacted NAFPS moderator educatedIndian about these videotapes. He referred me to Arizona State University, and after 5 months, nothing more than emails have been exchanged.
I contacted the Museum of The American Indian in NYC, no response.
So, I am making this offer to anyone who is interested. First taker, these are yours.
All I ask is that you pay shipping costs. Less than $20. I am unemployed, broke, and have no desire to pay that expense. Just my reality, that's all.
That follows is my original email to ASU. The same offer is made here to anyone who is in a position to do something with these videotapes, even if nothing more than preserving them.
Anyone interested, please contact me through this forum, and provide a phone number.
[For clarity, and full disclosure, I am non-Indian. 34 years ago, I was a pretendian, but grew out of that a long time ago. I do not claim to speak for, or be involved with, Indian culture or traditions. It is what it is. Live and learn.]
Many thanks and Many Blessings.
--clearwater
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Back in 1978 I was 18 years old and an aspiring young documentary filmmaker residing in the upstate South Carolina area. At that time I became involved American Indian affairs in general (I am non-Indian). To make a long story short, myself and an associate heard of the Longest Walk for Survival which was happening at the time. Through contact with a local Native American Church (note, the saem NAC that I participated in a thread about here, which I consider fraudulent) which made calls on our behalf, we were granted access to travel to Washington, DC and videotape as much as we could. We were given inner access to videotape prayers, do personal in-depth interviews with the hard cores and organizers, etc.
After we returned, my associate filmmaker, on her own, drove back to NY City and videotaped more raw footage when they arrived there, crossing the Golden Gate Bridge, and so forth.
In all, we taped perhaps 20-30 hours or more of raw video. I had thought until recently that all of that material had been lost or destroyed, lost to history. For what it's worth, I was recently going through some of my things a few months ago, I came across two 3/4" format videotapes -- apparently safety dupes or some selected video of the Longest Walk tapes -- that are now about 34 years old. Each tape is, I think, 60 minutes, for about 2 hours total, as far as I know. I believe this 2 hour sampler is all that remains of those raw tapes.
I do not know what is on these tapes, but both were labeled, with a Sharpie in my handwriting, as being Long Walk videos. This would be all unedited, raw footage. I do not remember all the names of who we interviewed. I do remember Milo Yellowhair, Leonard Crow Dog, and a few others whose names escape me. I think these two tapes I have would be raw unedited highlights, a sampler of sorts. There would also be some great visuals of the Walkers set against the various monuments
and shrines throughout D.C.
I do not know if this would be of any interest to perhaps and NA historian or researcher. I would like to offer these 2 tapes free, for use by any NA who is a filmmaker, researcher, or historian, and who would have the sensitivity of the subject matter, and the resources to properly clean, and transfer to digital -- AND MAKE AVAILABLE -- these tapes.
That is one of the keys here: the resources to properly clean, and transfer to digital, whatever is on these tapes. 3/4" technology is decades old so even finding equipment to pull the video from may prove a challenge. It seems that a well-rounded archive facility would maintain that old equipment. Another consideration is the age of the tapes themselves, as the iron oxide on the tape will be in bad shape at this age. One-pass through and they're probably over with. So if this is to be done, it should be done by someone or some business that has expertise with this type of preservation to avoid destroying the tapes on the first pass.
Unrelated to these tapes, but related to Indian affairs, are other videotapes that I either produced or was involved with, still left over. I had thought all of this was long gone. One edited tape documents an Indian Art Show I helped organize in the early 1980s, called "We Are The Seventh Generation," which was curated by Simon
Brascoupé and Richard Hill, both of the Six Nations Confederacy. (Entirely unrelated to the Longest Walk, but still another slice of American Indian arts and history).
These are what they are. In my mind, this is a small piece of Native American history that may be worth preserving, if nothing else. Perhaps they could be useful for research or archive purposes.
If you feel this offer may be something of interest to you, I am prepared to ship these to you at your convenience. I do have a few very modest conditions that you will need to agree to: 1) That the ability to properly retrieve what is on these tapes, be the foremost concern; 2) that you pay shipping, I don't wish to go out of pocket,
I'm a little broke, and that seems fair. Probably a UPS of FedEx call tag would do the trick.
[In my original email, I also wanted to be given credit should these tapes be used in a future documentary. I have dropped that condition. I don't care about credit.]
Another desire, but not a condition, is if you are actually able to restore some video off these tapes, that I be given a dvd copy of same in raw form. If nothing more, than to spark memories that may or may not be useful. That's it. [This too is optional. Not a condition.]
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