MOVIE REVIEW: Lost On A Mountain In Maine

I took my 10 year old granddaughter to see LOST ON A MOUNTAIN IN MAINE yesterday and she pronounced it the corniest movie she had ever seen. Full disclosure: I had tears in my eyes throughout the finale because I am a mom and a kid was lost!!!!

But really this book and the film bug the hell out of me for completely different reasons.

More full disclosure: I once taught 4th graders and have read this book aloud more than once as it was part of the Maine studies curriculum. Also, I have hosted the adult Donn Fendler (the lost kid) in my classroom to answer my students' questions. I always thought it was a poorly written book, and about as far from literature as one could get in a memoir even with a ghostwriter helping. But, I digress.

Katahdin is in the homeland of the Penobscot Nation and is considered sacred by indigenous people of this area. It is not a tourist attraction or a reason to get outfitted at L.L. Bean. 

This reality gets a passing mention in the film as the guide who loses Donn has already scared him around the campfire with a white boy's version of the Penobscot legend of Pamola, an entity alleged to live at the summit and to condemn those it encounters to wander alone for eternity. Like much traditional knowledge and culture of Native people, whites have tried repeatedly to appropriate Pamola over the years. Not being Penobscot myself, I cannot tell you how accurate the movie's version is -- but I can tell that it's quite likely completely inappropriate to use it as a ghost story to scare youngsters about to trespass on sacred ground.

Then there is the huge, huge, huge fuss made over a 12 year old kid from Connecticut being lost in the woods. Many before me have noted that if this was a 12 year old Indian kid or Black kid, the press and law enforcement agencies would have considered it a nothing burger.

In fact, in 1939 when the story takes place, Native children were being kidnapped regularly and either forced into boarding schools (you know, the ones with the mass graves of children out back) or adoption by a white family. They were beaten for speaking their Native languages. If female, they might be raped, murdered, or both -- and if their male relatives attempted to protect them, said relatives would be killed, too.

Georgina Sappier’s elementary report card after she was removed from her family and culture to be raised white. Photo by: Ben Pender-Cudlip from the documentary Dawnland

Needless to say, none of this is in either version of the book or the movie.

Then there is the movie's central plot line: dad has an epiphany after taking himself out of the search by running into a tree branch with his eye. What he realizes is that he was trying to make his twin 12 year old sons tough because "the world is a mess" (when is it not?) and as a result he forgot to just be their dad. He works too much and mom picks up all the slack but that's not what he regrets (or even acknowledges). He regrets presiding over the basic WASP early 20th century cultural indoctrination for males: keep a stiff upper lip and carry on as if you had no emotions other than anger (Donn's anger at his dad canceling a fishing trip is the reason he gets lost in the first place). A related theme that the movie goes out of its way to develop: if you are stubborn, that's a good thing.

Ok maybe Donn's stubborn will to live did help him survive nine days without much food or clothing. It certainly wasn't his intelligence. Time and again both he and dad appear to be challenged in basic logical reasoning.

And this is one of my biggest objections of all: this story teaches kids who are lost to take off on their own and keep moving. Which makes it impossible for searchers to find them!!! What kind of an idiot teaches his kids to do this? Why would Sylvester Stallone produce an entire film glorifying this approach without even one voice speaking up to say: if you get lost on an outing with a group, sit your ass down and wait to be found. If you're so cold you've got to move, run in place and flap your arms.

I did not take my 3 year old grandson to the movie but I did ask him afterwards what he thinks people are supposed to do if they get lost. Unsurprisingly, he knew the right answer. I will never take him to see this film nor will I take him to hike Mt. Katahdin. Because it is not for the likes of us.

A Nation Built On Child Ab**e Is Nothing To Celebrate

Native and First Nations, Inuit, and Metis people throughout North America tell us they are in mourning. 

A Penobscot elder I respect has asked us (white people) not to celebrate our nation's birthday on July 4 today, but instead wear orange* and to remember and grieve the unmarked graves of children starved or otherwise tortured to death in "Indian" residential schools. 

Many residential "schools" were run by the Catholic Church in what is now Canada, or other churches -- even Quakers. 

Michael YellowBird

October 4, 2018  · Carlisle, PA  · 

The jail/stockade at Carlisle Indian boarding school, where Native American child were locked up for various minor infractions, like "stealing" food from the kitchen because they were so hungry from starvation diets; or running away because they wanted to go home...prisoners in the US war to "Kill the Indian and save the Man."

The U.S. was also full of such torture organizations and will soon have its share of discoveries as modern technology is applied to find the mass burials of evidence. 

The campaign to "kill the Indian to save the child" was fundamental to the attempted genocide of Native and First Nations, Inuit, and Metis people in order to steal their land, water, and food. 

The widespread and continued sexual enslavement and related murder of Native girls and women is also a vicious expression of the colonization project on this continent. This continues around oil pipeline construction projects to this day, and at times we wear read and call attention to the brutal risks of being female and Native. Here in Maine I remember particularly Passamoquoddy elder Peter Francis, beaten to death by white hunters from Massachusetts as he defended Native teen girls from being raped by the intruders.

How many of the dead children were conceived during rape of girls in the residential schools? Priests who raped and otherwise abused children were protected by patriarchy, a system of top down authority that silences all but the most powerful.

Because I live in what's now called Maine and taught high school for many years I have studied and taught about the work of the Maine-Wabanaki Child Welfare Truth & Reconciliation Commission which convened to study a local and fairly recent aspect of cultural genocide. The painful stories of children removed from their own homes and put into often abusive foster "care" were given space for expression by the TRC, and the excuses and self-criticism of the social workers who carried out child removals were included. The report issued by the TRC shocked me. This was happening right nearby while I attend Bowdoin College in the 1970's studying history in Maine; why was I never taught about it?

Because the patriarchal system exists to enable abuse by patriarchs, then and now.

As white people we can witness the truth which it has cost so much pain to uncover.

We can reflect on how we, personally, have benefited from genocide against Native people. We can start to decolonize our thinking by examining beliefs taught to us in order to cloud our vision and our judgement. We can listen to Native people when they demand tribal sovereignty and a return of their lands and waters.

What better hope for our moral growth than to examine these ugly, hidden truths and to teach about them?

What better hope for the survival of human beings on planet Earth than to listen and follow the wisdom of indigenous people about how to live sustainably with reverence and respect for all our relations?

*Why wear orange? Here's why:

Phyllis (Jack) Webstad's story in her own words...

Instead of celebrating Canada's Land Day this year: