MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Wiping the Tears’ Recalls Sioux Suffering

To commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Wounded Knee Massacre on Dec. 29, 1890, 300 Lakota Sioux participated in an annual two-week “Bigfoot Memorial Ride” between 1986 and 1990.

The subzero 250-mile horseback ride tracing their ancestors’ futile retreat from the U.S. Cavalry became an opportunity for formal mourning and symbolic preservation of the once-vast Sioux Nation’s history and culture.

Documentarians Gary Rhine and Fidel Moreno use this commemorative event as the point of departure for their moving and informative documentary “Wiping the Tears of Seven Generations” (screening Saturdays and Sundays at 11:15 a.m. throughout December at the Monica 4-Plex).

Over images of the memorial riders we read Gen. Sherman’s blunt advice to President Grant: “First, clear off the buffalo, then clear off the Indian. We must act with vindictive earnestness against the Sioux, even to their total extermination--men, women and children.”

Interviews with descendants of Wounded Knee survivors tell a sadly familiar story of hypocrisy, greed and bad faith on the part of the white man. The descendants’ words, which echo those of the children of Holocaust survivors, are intercut with a treasure trove of archival material, most notably the photographs of American Indians taken by Victorian-era photographers Edward Curtis and Walter McClintock.

The late Hanna Left Hand Bull Fixico, the film’s narrator, points out that within four years of the signing of documents in 1868 preserving the Great Sioux Nation, gold prospectors were scavenging the Black Hills of South Dakota and Wyoming, the region considered most sacred to the Lakota.

There are a number of ways “Wiping the Tears of Seven Generations” could have been a richer, more involving experience and less a sermon to the already converted. Since the Indians interviewed tend to recount the same, though affecting, story of their ancestors’ fate, we should have been able to learn something of their present-day lives. More footage of the Bigfoot ride itself also would have had more impact than the only-occasional glimpse of their procession.

Nonetheless, “Wiping the Tears of Seven Generations” (Times-rated Mature; some material may be too intense for children) is an effective consciousness-raiser, reminding us how comparatively few documentaries have been made on the tragic history of American Indians.

The filmmakers are donating their share of the box-office receipts to the Native American Rights Fund.

‘Wiping the Tears of Seven Generations’

A Kifaru Productions release. Directors-cinematographers Gary Rhine & Fidel Moreno. Producer Rhine. Writers Rhine, Phil Cousineau. Editor Laurie Schmidt. Music supervisor Robert La Batte. Narrator Hanna Left Hand Bull Fixico. Running time: 1 hour.

Times-rated Mature (some material may be too intense for small children).