Museum Piece

Ishi, the last aboriginal Indian in North America, who became an anthropological wonder when discovered in 1911, will be the subject of a feature film and a PBS documentary--both projects funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Berkeley-based filmmaker Jed Riffe hopes to begin his unusual double filming late this year, with writer-director Avery Crounse adapting Theodora Kroeber’s book, “Ishi, the Last Yahi.”

A television movie, “Ishi, the Last of His Tribe,” aired in 1979 on NBC, and another Kroeber book, “Ishi in Two Worlds,” has been previously announced as a film project, but never made. Riffe tells us Crounse has done “extensive original research” beyond existing material that will shed new light on Ishi’s remarkable life.

The middle-aged Ishi had lived undetected by whites until he was encountered near Oroville, Calif., in 1911, the last survivor of his tribe. Until his death from tuberculosis five years later, he lived in San Francisco’s Museum of Anthropology, where thousands lined up to see him as he devoted his last years to passing on his tribe’s history.

Despite his strange situation, Riffe says, “Ishi never lost his own sense of self, his uniqueness. Even though he lived in a museum, he maintained his spirit.

“His is a story of someone who lost everything, but never lost himself.”