Seeking a Happy Balance

What are the riskiest theme-park attractions in Orange County? Not Disneyland’s Space Mountain, or even Knott’s Berry Farm’s pulse-pounding Montezooma’s Revenge.

No, those most fraught with peril probably are among the slowest-moving anywhere, the ones that try to convert sacred Native American rituals into entertainment for park guests: Disneyland’s “Spirit of Pocahontas” show and Knott’s Mystery Lodge and Indian Trails.

Coincidentally, since last summer, both of Orange County’s big amusement parks have been putting Native American culture and folklore on display daily in attractions ranging from arts and crafts booths to high-tech stage shows.

Officials at both parks acknowledge the high wire they walk in attempting to create shows that will sufficiently intrigue visitors without offending members of the tribes those shows depict.

It’s a balancing act that’s not always successful.

But the lengths to which they have gone in attempting to succeed are greater than ever.

“We’re here not only as entertainers but also as cultural representatives,” says Guillermo Martinez, 33, a dancer with Indian Trails at Knott’s. A Purepucha from Mexico, Martinez makes his own instruments and choreographs the shows.

He said the performances are especially important to Mexican American children, who may be unaware of their Indian heritage.

“This may be the only way these children can hear their ancestral drums,” said Martinez, who now lives in Costa Mesa. As a roller coaster called Montezooma’s Revenge whizzed by, Martinez said he believes that traditional song and dance belong in a theme park.

“It’s not only how fast you can go, how many loops you can do, but how deep you can touch something,” he said.

The 28-minute live “Spirit of Pocahontas” musical playing at Disneyland’s Fantasyland Theater is just one of myriad spinoffs from the animated film.

“We titled it ‘The Spirit of Pocahontas,’ which allowed us to more directly embrace the Native American culture” than did the animated feature, said Mike Davis, the show’s executive producer and Disneyland’s vice president of entertainment. Davis said producers sought to emulate traditional Native American storytelling in constructing the musical.

“The conceit for us is we’re inviting our audience to sit in and be part of a Native American powwow,” he said. To aid in authenticity, Davis brought in a choreographer of Native American heritage and made special efforts to hire Native Americans as performers.

That alone represents a sea change from when the Anaheim park opened 40 years ago. Native Americans were still portrayed as savages, albeit sometimes as “noble savages,” in such early attractions as the “Friendly Indian Village” and such rides as the Indian War Canoes.

At that time, Disney’s “Davy Crockett, Indian Fighter” was a television sensation, and Hollywood churned out countless pictures purporting to depict life on the frontier--often that of settlers and soldiers under threat of Indian attack.

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Starting in the 1960s, however, Native Americans all but vanished from the entertainment industry’s menu. Aside from “Little Big Man” and a handful of other revisionist westerns, the treatment of Native Americans no longer seemed an appropriate subject for mainstream entertainment. At Disneyland, the Indian Village was paved over in 1971 to make room for the attraction now called Critter Country.

But with 1990’s “Dances With Wolves,” which won the Academy Award for best picture, depictions of Native Americans began to reenter the cultural mainstream, this time not as savages obstructing Manifest Destiny, but more often as wise, spiritual people proud of their culture and sensitive to their environment.

Last year, this rebirth trickled down to the youngest family members, whose impressions of the first Americans are being shaped such films as the animated “Pocahontas” and the live-action “The Indian in the Cupboard.”

“The Spirit of Pocahontas” begins with tribal elder Werowance inviting the audience to join him at “a sacred gathering place of the spirits” as he relates the legend of the tribal princess who fell in love with Capt. John Smith.

Dancers play both the Native Americans and, wearing masks, the English colonists. Their props are designed to look as though they were made of sticks and other materials that would have been available to the Indians.

The only identifiably Caucasian character is Smith, who frolics and sings duets with his buckskin-clad sweetheart.

True to the animated feature, if not to history, Pocahontas remains with her people at the show’s conclusion, while John Smith returns to England.

Choreographer Marla Bingham, whose ancestors were Wampanoags in Massachusetts, said she sought to incorporate elements of traditional dance in a way that appealed to modern audiences.

“I wanted to highlight and enhance what Native Americans are about--and to contemporize it, to highlight the movement of today” said Bingham, a dancer formerly with the Alvin Ailey troupe who also helped choreograph videos for the New Kids on the Block.

“I didn’t want to overtraditionalize it, I didn’t want to become too ceremonial, in order to protect sacred elements of the Native American religion,” Bingham said.

The show impressed many in the audience, both with the production and what they saw as its underlying theme.

“Both Pocahontas and John Smith wanted there not to be a war,” explained 10-year-old Deborah Hom, of Manhattan Beach. Her father, Ron Hom, 51, said the show properly focused on the Native American perspective.

“It’s time to tell the other side of the story,” said Hom, a computer programmer.

Their feelings about the Pocahontas story are not isolated. Park spokesman John McClintock said Thursday that “it has proven to be the most popular live stage show we’ve ever done.” As a result, it will continue through the summer and possibly through the end of the year or beyond.

Still, some activists don’t like the way the movie and the show tinker with history.

The real Pocahontas “was 11 years old, not a 25-year-old woman running around in a skimpy buckskin dress,” said John Orendorff, executive director of the Los Angeles school district’s American Indian Education Commission.

At the same time that the entertainment industry rakes in huge profits through Native American-themed ventures, he complained, government support of educational programs has diminished.

“The House [has] slashed Indian education, so on the one hand we’re having falsehoods come out, and on the other, we’re losing the remedy--education.”

Knott’s comparatively low-keyed Mystery Lodge and Indian Trails fare better with Orendorff.

“Some people find [Mystery Lodge] boring,” he said, “and the story’s a little shallow. Still, I give it the thumb’s up for re-creating a traditional type of storytelling.”

Inspired by the traditions of Northwest Pacific Coast tribes, the Mystery Lodge opened in 1994 as a $10-million extrapolation of storytelling techniques that originally required only a campfire and perhaps masks.

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While the attraction received praise for its technical craft, some viewers complained that it held too little genuine mystery.

“They made it seem too simple,” said Karen Johnson, 16, of Corona. “Like the Indians were only about fishing and hunting. They’re too good to be believed.”

Mystery Lodge was designed with the aid of a curator from Bowers Museum of Cultural Art in Santa Ana, and resembles an open-air educational exhibit more than an amusement park.

John Castillo, director of the Southern California Indian Center in Garden Grove, considers it “a good thing” that the center supports.

“It [the long house] is authentically made as far as the structure and carvings,” said Castillo. And the story told inside the lodge is based on stories Canadian Indians shared with their children, he said, adding that the park provided buses last summer so that 600 Native American children and their parents could visit the attraction.

Indian Trails displays reproductions of artifacts from three different tribal cultures. Totem poles and canoes suggest the Northwest Coast tribes, Cheyenne and Nez Perce tepees the Great Plains Indians, and Navajo hogans the natives of the Southwest.

Native American dancers perform throughout the day in a small square and hold the attention of hundreds of adults and children who sit on the ground to watch.

For those who want a little more excitement, Knott’s adopted a Native American motif for its Jaguar thrill ride. The entrance to the German-built roller coaster is an imposing structure designed to look like a Mesoamerican pyramid.

The Temple of the Jaguar won the approval even of more critical voices. “I’ll go out on a limb here and say it’s OK,” said Orendorff. “As long as they don’t have people greeting you in silly Mayan costumes.”

Indeed, some said that Knott’s Jaguar had paid too much attention to cultural authenticity--to the detriment of other aims.

“The building’s cool,” said Ray Lopp, 19, admiring the temple’s green glowing heads as he waited in line to ride the Jaguar a second time. “Unfortunately,” the Anaheim security guard added, “the ride sucks.”

Freelance writer Alan Eyerly contributed to this report.