The Chief's Prophecy is ostensibly a documentary of the political, social and religious history of the Northern Cheyenne Nation. While its current home is a reservation in Montana, the Cheyenne were a dominant Native American group in the North American Great Plains during the 19th Century. With its Council of Forty-Four Chiefs, the Cheyenne were one of the few Plains Native American groups to cultivate a system of sophisticated social and military alliances among its various bands. Having migrated to the Plains from the Northeastern American continent, the Cheyenne maintained a proud warrior tradition built upon the teaching of the early 19th century culture hero/prophet Sweet Medicine, who introduced the totemic Medicine Arrow Bundle and the organization of the group into warrior clans such as the Dog Soldiers, Kit Foxes, etc. He is also credited with bestowing the concept of “Ma'heo'e” (literally God or Great Spirit, but also the ideas of peace, community and interdependence).

The film is an exploration of “Ma'heo'e” and the various prophecies made by Sweet Medicine and other prophets regarding the coming of Euro-Americans to the Plains, the Cheyenne's loss of their homeland, the destruction of their traditional society and eventual cultural renewal by adherence to their ancient traditions. The sixty-minute film is divided into three parts, each roughly twenty minutes in length. The first section (“Sweet Medicine”) provides a history of the Cheyenne from the appearance of Sweet Medicine to the wars against the United States from the 1840s to the 1870s. The film adheres to a Ken Burns-style documentary format. It relies upon breath-taking landscape shots and captivating period photographs, along with a haunting traditional music score to set the mood and establish its themes. Interwoven into this fabric are interviews with informants such as current Cheyenne elders, tradition-bearers and reformist political leaders. Title shots in black and white provide information as necessary. While recounting stories about Sweet Medicine, the Council of Forty-Four Chiefs and the U.S.-Cheyenne wars, this section of the film primarily explores the spiritual and political role of the chief. The chief is portrayed as a selfless leader of a pre-capitalistic nomadic community who makes sure that all are fed and conflicts resolved amicably.

While the exposition of the ideal chief is perhaps well-intended, one wonders how actual historic chiefs led their people in the face of the onslaught of the ruthlessly expansionist United States. Also, the focus on “Ma'heo'e,” or peace, as the guiding virtue of the Cheyenne, does little to explain their obvious mastery in warfare (whether fighting other Native Americans of the Plains or the United States Army). The film also elides the sophistication of the warrior clans in political and military terms—indeed, the Cheyenne aided Lakota and Arapaho warriors in defeating General Custer at the Battle of Little Big Horn (1876).

The film's second section (“Warriors on the Reservation”) provides a solid overview of the period in Cheyenne history from their removal to reservations in the 1880s to the Indian Reorganization Act of 1935 in which a democratically elected Tribal Council replaced the traditional role of Chief. The film does an excellent job of discussing how the egalitarian nature of traditional Cheyenne culture is fundamentally at odds with the market capitalism of the Tribal Council model of governance. However, the film never moves beyond theory to memorable specifics. At times it is unclear how the visuals relate to the commentary. For instance, several informants discuss the corruption and mismanagement of the Tribal Council. Their commentary continues over an extended visual sequence of a contemporary pow-wow inside a reservation basketball gymnasium (complete with drumming and dancing of traditionally costumed Cheyenne). Does the film mean to intimate that such ceremonies are inauthentic? (Oddly enough, in the third section of the film, this sequence is reused over commentary regarding the renewal of Cheyenne tradition.) Another ambivalent sequence shows a gallery of photographs of Cheyenne U.S. military veterans from Operation Desert Storm (1991) while a commentator discusses the group's loss of cultural identity. Given the Cheyenne's traditional military prowess, one could argue that group members' participation in the U.S. Armed Forces is a continuation or adaptation rather abandonment of its warrior code.

The third and final section (“Modern Warriors and Chiefs”) is the most problematic of the film. A submerged narrative and not-so-hidden agenda appear in the form of an off-camera conflict between the younger generation of Cheyenne leaders and the established Tribal Council. Eugene Little Coyote, President of the Council from 2004-2007, featured in previous sections of the film, figures prominently in this section. Though the issue is never dealt with directly, the viewer can surmise from comments that Little Coyote has been removed as President in a power struggle between the Tribal Council “establishment” and a younger group that would heed the Sweet Medicine's prophecy to return to a more communal, less capitalistic way of life. L. Jace Killsback, still serving on the Tribal Council, is also featured as a voice of the younger reform generation. (The film does not offer any explanation of any possible relationship between the filmmaker Leo Killsback and L. Jace Killsback.) Little Coyote and Killsback speak eloquently about the burdens of leadership in a time of cultural and spiritual crisis; however, the film never gives voice to their opposition. How exactly would the Cheyenne reformers disestablish the reservation system to create a more self-sufficient model? Would landholding Cheyenne ranchers and farmers be expected to give up their private property? How would such a non-capitalistic experiment survive within the larger context of U.S. market capitalism? Unfortunately, none of these questions are addressed. Instead, the film ends with speculation and prophecy rather than specifics.

A more interesting film might have directly addressed the power struggle between reformers and the Tribal Council establishment on the Northern Cheyenne reservation. One does not know if the establishment members of the Council did not wish to speak for the film or did not have the opportunity. This undermines the film as an objective documentary and places it more in the category of propaganda. The propagandistic elements (particularly in the final third of the film) in turn undermine the authority of the historical information offered in the preceding two sections. Certainly Sweet Medicine and the other leaders of the traditional Cheyenne society seem to have been spiritual figures endowed with visionary powers, but they also must have been practical men of affairs capable of shepherding their people through times of peace and war. Their success as a group on the hotly contested lands of the Great Plains (even before the entrance of the United States military) suggests that the Northern Cheyenne relied upon more than just prophecy to survive through various crises to the present day. Unfortunately, the film and its featured reformers seem to offer little more than prophecy and abstract talk of “Ma'heo'e” to address the complex social, political and historical situation that the contemporary Northern Cheyenne face.

Reviewed by Luke A. Powers; Professor of English and Coordinator of Graduate Studies Tennessee State University

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Tags: Montana  DVD  Northern Cheyenne