Indian Children (1955)
Opening titles and “A film based on the life and customer of present day Indian American Children” superimposed over a close-up image of a woven tapestry; field of saguaros below a mountain with rocky peaks; a Tohono O’odham (T/O)/Papago girl walks out of a small, square adobe home in a desert landscape over to a woman seated on the ground weaving baskets, a boy walks around in the background; the boy joins them his dog (gogs) walking alongside; closer view of the group; close-ups of the boy (Cochise) and girl (Conca), and then of the mother as they talk; Conchise walks off and Conca walks over and picks up two metal buckets and walks off into desert; Conchise runs alongside his dog across patches of desert; he sits to pet his dog, then they keep moving; closer view of their legs as they pass cacti; closer view of the mother weaving, and then getting up to gather wood which she puts into an outdoor wood-burning cooking stove; close-up of her face attentive to her work; another T/O woman places flat bread on a long paddle into an adobe oven near an adobe and wooden home; back to the mother at her stove; close-up of her stirring a pan of light-colored beans, she then checks something in the stove’s oven; she walks over to her weaving and picks it up again; close-up of her hands working; saguaro field, and close-up of one; Cochise and his dog walk into a corn (hu:ñ) field where his father is farming ('oidag-cikpan) and joins him in hoeing; closer views of the boy working; the dog resting in the shade beneath a tree; Conca walks carrying her buckets to a well made out of a tree limb cross-beam structure; a wood tree limb fence behind her; she begins lowering a wooden bucket on a rope down into the water hole; closer views of the rectangular hole and her pulling up the bucket and filling her metal buckets; she walks back to a dirt road cutting through a saguaro field; she returns and hands the buckets to her mother; Conca then sits and picks up the weaving her mother had been working on; close-up of her hands working; Conchise and a smaller girl playing catch with a floppy cloth object outside an adobe structure; various shots of a big group of T/O and other Native children playing keep-away in possibly a school or recreation yard with poles; three teenaged girls and a boy carrying a super long T-shaped pole walk through a desert patch to a saguaro; shots of the boy tapping the top of the cactus with the pole to knock down prickly pears from the very top; close-up of the boy laughing as he tries, and then of the girls laughing as they watch; close view of the fruit falling and a girl catching in a metal bucket; close-up of the girl showing them in her bucket; various shots of Conca, Conchise and two other boys around his age gather buds (to'olvadaj) from a cholla cactus; close-ups of Conchise’s hands pick the thorn-ridden fruit; Conca picks thorns from her hands; Conchise and three other boys walk up an incline past cacti and mesquite trees (kui); various shots of the four as they dig, play, and chat; close-ups of little children’s faces as they laugh, smile, and subdued as they look at the camera; back to the Conca and Conchise’s home where their mother still weaves; different view of their house (or another) where people stand in the yard in a group; various views of Taos Pueblo — a multi-story, multi-dwelling adobe structure; two mud ovens, or kivas, with the openings propped shut; up shot of a cliff wall and pan down to a Navajo/Diné hogan below; closer views of the hogan and its wooden joints; view of the sky from inside the hogan through the sun roof; two Diné girls gather wood and carry it back to another hogan; one Diné girl sits with a dog and a sheep while an other one walks toward the flock of sheep; the older girl walks over and picks up a lamb; closer view of the same; back to Conca and Conchise’s home where people sit beneath the porch sun shade; closer views of a medicine man shaking a rattle and feather and blowing/chanting over a boy laying on the ground while the two children, their parents, another woman, and the dog look on; back to a closer view of the sick boy and the rattle shaking over him, then of the medicine man working; close-up of Conchise watching, then his father, then Conca and her mother; then back to the group as they look on as the medicine gets up and walks away leaving the boy on the ground; closer view of the woman friend and then the family seated; Conchise hoeing in the field; the dog resting under the tree nearby; closer shot of the corn plants; back to the boy hoeing; an adult white woman and white man holding a bible stand next to a pick-up truck while they talk to the two children and ten more; closer views of the children listening; views from behind the children as the man addresses them; close-ups of Conchise and Conca listening, then of other children’s faces; shots of Conchise and his father as they rest next to their crop and chat; cars parked and people milling about outside an adobe building (perhaps a health center?); a young (perhaps Native) doctor gives a small boy a shot as two girls look on; the white missionary walks from his truck to Conchise’s and Conca’s where their father comes out to shake his hand; children and mother follow; closer view of a young Native man sits and prays with a group of small boys in chairs outside against a wall; close-up of their bowed heads; Conca and Conchise’s family walk through a gate into a yard; reverse shot of them walking towards the First Papago Baptist Church where the missionary man stands at the door greeting a woman and boy as they enter; the man greets their family too as they enter. End credits: “The End, A Broadman Films Production.”