Plot

In the early 1900s, Ishi, the last of the Yahi Indian tribe, is discovered nearly 20 years after the Yahi tribe was thought to be wiped out. The curators of a museum agree to look after him, hoping to learn more about him, his tribe, and their beliefs, and to teach him to survive in the modern world.—Brian W Martz <B.Martz@Genie.com>

Ishi, the Last Yahi is a dramatic documentary film about Ishi, who came to be known as the "last wild Indian in North America." His sudden appearance in 1911 stunned the country. His tribe was considered extinct, destroyed in bloody massacres during the 1860s and 70s.

1911 was a pivotal moment in American history, and the lowest point for Native Americans. The west had been won, and the country now spread from sea to sea. Contact with white men's diseases and violence had reduced their numbers from over ten million to less than three hundred thousand. Geronimo had surrendered twenty five years before. In California, there were only fifty thousand Indians alive. Most were living on reservations or had been assimilated into the general population.

Yet here was one survivor, the last of his tribe, who refused to surrender. He had been hiding for forty years. When Ishi appeared, newspaper headlines across the country proclaimed the discovery of the Wild Man, the last Stone Age Man in North America.

For Alfred Kroeber, an ambitious young anthropologist at UC Berkeley, this was great news. He had been searching for years to find unacculturated Indians so that he could document true aboriginal life in America. He arranged for Ishi to come to the Museum of Anthropology in San Francisco, where he lived for the rest of his life.

Ishi only lived four more years, but during his brief stay he transformed the people around him. His dignity and sense of self, his tireless dedication to telling his stories and showing his way of life, and his lack of bitterness towards the people who had destroyed his own, amazed and impressed everyone who met him. Because of Ishi's courage and generosity, and Kroeber's meticulous notes and recordings, we have a glimpse of life in this country before the white man. Ishi embodied the entire history of Native Americans: their life before contact, the tragedy of their destruction, their refusal to disappear, their determination to carry their culture into the Twentieth Century.

Alfred Kroeber's wife, Theodora, brought Ishi's story to the modern public in 1961 in her vivid book, Ishi in Two Worlds: The Story of the Last Wild Indian in North America. Its enormous popularity led to two more books by Mrs. Kroeber: Ishi, the Last Yahi: A Documentary History, and the children's book, Ishi, Last of his Tribe. These books have been in print for three decades and have been translated into sixteen languages. In 1992 the UC Press will issue a new worldwide edition of Ishi in Two Worlds to coincide with the quincentennial of Columbus' arrival in the New World.

The film, Ishi, the Last Yahi, is a brand new telling of Ishi's story based on original research by Jed Riffe and on the book Ishi, the Last Yahi: A Documentary History. The Kroebers believed that Indian cultures were destined to vanish and that Ishi's story, as the last of his tribe, reflected the true plight of the Indian. But Native Americans have not disappeared.

The population of American Indians has risen from its lowest point in 1911 to over two million. The film looks at Ishi's experience as an extreme example of the adaptability and determined, stubborn survival of Indian cultures in this country. New translations of Ishi's songs and stories reveal the philosophy that made his adaptability possible. The film suggests that Ishi's values, common to many Native American cultures, have a great deal to offer us today.

Narrated by Academy-award winning actress Linda Hunt, the hour long, l6mm color film Ishi, the Last Yahi offers a unique window to aboriginal life in America. For the first time a broad national audience will hear Ishi speaking in his own voice on Kroeber's original wax recordings, and will enter Ishi's world through archival motion picture footage and hundreds of photographs taken by Kroeber and others. Along with the filmmakers, anthropologists Jerry Johnson and Brian Bibby retrace Ishi and Kroeber's 1914 trip back to his country. On that trip, Ishi showed how he had lived, and brought Kroeber to his last refuge, called Grizzly Bear's Hiding Place. The film cuts back and forth between photographs of Ishi's trip with Kroeber and the modern anthropologists' attempts to replicate it. After much searching, Johnson and Bibby find Ishi's last refuge, a nearly inaccessible ledge above a steep, overgrown ravine. No one had been there since 1914.

Ishi, the Last Yahi also looks at the American philosophy of Manifest Destiny and examines the impact of unrestrained growth on this country's original inhabitants. It explores attitudes towards California Indians in Ishi's lifetime, and suggests how a people who are perceived as different can be objectified, their persecution rationalized and extermination justified.

Most films about Native Americans portray Plains Indians on horseback, wearing feather headdresses and buckskin. California Indian cultures were rich and varied and very different from those of the plains. This film brings an almost forgotten people-- the California Indians--to a national audience.

In addition to archival photographs and motion picture footage, the recreation of the 1914 trip, and dramatized readings of letters and articles by Ishi's contemporaries, the film has interviews with several renowned anthropologists and Native American advisers. Rayna Greene, Director of the American Indian Program at the Smithsonian Institution, and anthropologist Thomas Buckley discuss Ishi, Kroeber, and the implications of their story. Jerry Johnson, the leading expert on Yahi culture, talks about what happened to the Yahi during the Gold Rush and the massacres that followed. Brian Bibby, a Native American story teller, dancer, and scholar, talks about the meanings of Ishi's songs and myths, their broader implications in his life and in Native American philosophy, and the relevance of Ishi's message today. Ishi, the Last Yahi is a Rattlesnake Productions Film Presentation. Major funding for this program by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Additional funding from the California Council for the Humanities, The Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation, The Lucius and Eva Eastman Foundation, Inc., The Pioneer Pacific Foundation and the Marin Community Foundation.