BENTONVILLE — The words of tribal elders, colorful dances from powwow and two years of student work fill a documentary on the Quapaw Tribe of Oklahoma being screened today at NorthWest Arkansas Community College.
Some tribes are well-documented, said Everett Bandy, tribal historic preservation officer for the Quapaw Tribe, but there was no documentary about the Quapaw. Until now.
“Our tribe really doesn’t have that much produced about us,” Bandy said.
That changes today when the student documentary “Those Who Went Downstream” premieres at the college.
Creating a finished documentary has been the goal at the end of each of the three semesters she’s worked on the project, said Bethany Hollis, a sophomore at the college. As the spring semester faded, she was disappointed that the project was not complete. The documentary was heavily focused on narrative, some of it taken by the first group of students a year and a half before. Then the team visited the 141st annual Quapaw Powwow this summer.
They talked with tribal members and filmed dances; some, such as the Turkey and Quapaw dances, had not been seen for years at the Quapaw Powwow.
Dances have a progression, Bandy said. The Turkey and Quapaw dances were historically done in the morning, and powwow, gourd and stomp dances end the day, Bandy said.
“All those dances mean something; each one has its own purpose,” Bandy said.
One evening as the documentary crew members headed back to their campsite, they were told the dancing was beginning again. Caddo dancers and musicians began the Quapaw dance.
Tribal members taught, or gave, the Quapaw dance to Caddo and Shawnee tribes, Bandy said. It had been more than 30 years since the dance had been performed at the Quapaw Powwow, he said.
“A hundred years from now that might be the only footage of that dance,” he said.
Much tribal history is oral.
Bandy compares losing a tribal dance to losing an important historical document.
“Imagine if the United States of America lost the Constitution. It would be really demoralizing,” he said.
History is easy to lose and almost impossible to bring back, Bandy said.
The documentary team dived into telling the story, Bandy said, something not everyone would do.
Putting people on camera to tell the story of another culture can be intimidating, said Bethany Hollis.
“It makes you self-conscious,” said her sister, Hillary Hollis, a freshman, who also worked on the project.
The sisters worked with Bo Darde, multimedia specialist, to finish the project. Darde said he was drawn to the story after helping them troubleshoot equipment they checked out from the school’s library.
The goal was for a 25-minute film, said Darde, but the team had whittled down 350 gigabytes of film to a 40-minute story. They were still editing Monday for today’s premiere.
“There’s so much to be told,” Darde said.
Because the documentary work was finished under student copyright rules, it will probably only be shown in educational settings, he said.
The documentary started with research into Tar Creek, then morphed into a story about the Quapaw, said Chris Huggard, history instructor and service learning coordinator at the college.
D’Etta Stephens-Mason was the student who started the project, Huggard said.
Hollis will be awarded service learning credit on her transcript, documenting her volunteer hours and the project they encompassed. Service learning is defined by when students take what they learn in class and apply it to the community, Huggard said. Service learning credits appear on the student transcript showing students went beyond the objectives of the class,he said. A journal or work product is required and the documentary will be the product for both Hollis sisters.
When students started the documentary two years ago they promised those they interviewed they would give a copy of the finished video to the tribe.
Making good on that promise was the goal for Bethany Hollis.
“The story we hope to tell is that their culture is still alive and they’re working to preserve what they have,” Hollis said.