by Dale Reynolds

‘‘ ‘Oh my god!’, we would shout. ‘We could get this,’" says Chris Eyre, thirty-four, reflecting back on his high school sex education classes and how the students reacted to the dangers of HIV and other STDs. "[Though] I was only gradually made aware of the fear-factor surrounding sex, it opened my eyes to a world of scary diseases–as well as scary people–in the real world. Fortunately, my attitudes have matured and have become a lot more rounded." Part of that maturity is being highly concerned about AIDS education and condom distribution in Native American schools. He explains: "The trouble with learning about such diseases in any vacuum-community is that our youth are not taught about it in a context they can relate to. When the poster says, ‘Don’t Have Sex,’ without any accompanying words, then they get to ignore it, assuming it to be more ‘Old People’s Crap.’" 

The significance of context has never been lost on Eyre. A film director with four features to his credit, Eyre (pronounced "air") readily describes himself as a "hybrid"–born "out of wedlock," as Chris tells it, to Native American parents but then adopted within a week by an Anglo couple, good folk from the small, homogeneous community of Klamath Falls, Oregon. Thus, having an average American upbringing in a small Oregon town meant that being "red" and not "white" just wasn’t an issue–as long as he lived in a sheltered community.  

"It all changed when I was eighteen and I moved to nearby Portland," Eyre continues. "Instead of knowing and being known by everyone in town, I became an intimidating, dark-skinned stranger. I know what black males have been through, because I was followed in stores–they thought I might rob them or shoplift something." These experiences also forced the issue every adopted kid has confronted at one time or another: "Who is my birth-mother and how can I find her?" Eyre did the required work and quickly discovered his ancestral roots. He subsequently joined the Cheyenne Nation and began to carve out an artistic niche for himself as a filmmaker. Presently, he lives in South Dakota with his wife, Lori, a member of the Lakota tribe, and their four-year-old daughter, Shahiyela (which means "Cheyenne" in the Lakota language). 

Eyre’s feature films have received strong positive reviews so that each new movie has been budgeted at a higher level than the previous one. Smoke Signals (1998), Skins (2002), last month’s PBS/Sundance-funded Skinwalkers, and a new one still being edited, Lady Warriors (the story of a "rez" girls basketball team), have made Eyre one of the premiere Native American film directors in North America. 

Skinwalkers was the brain-child of Robert Redford, who hired his son, Jamie, to adapt Tony Hillerman’s hit mystery novel. Eyre was brought on board after the critical success he earned from Smoke Signals, not so coincidentally developed at Redford’s Sundance Institute in Utah. 

Shot in the summer of 2001, at the New Mexico and Arizona settings described in the book, it uses an all-Native American cast of actors. The concept of "skinwalker" is tied up with the Navajo concept of good and evil, the belief that life is a kind of wind blowing through the self; some people have a dark wind, and that can make them evil. And if they turn to witchcraft, they can become powerful–able to transform themselves into dogs or birds, or become invisible. These darker sides of Native American religion are generally not discussed out loud in Navajo society as one never knows when one of them might be in the room, listening. There might be repercussions if offended. 

As a counterbalance to such superstitions, Eyre wants all his scripts to be more about bringing Native Americans into the twenty-first century, about Native peoples in contemporary social contexts. "It’s about not romanticizing the past as much as portraying the present," he points out. "The period pieces weren’t grounded in much reality, but in the romance of icons or myths." Eyre says he is more interested in making movies that show Native Americans to be as complex as any other people. "You can make a movie about us in 2002 and have nothing to do with spirituality or oppression–just about people being people."

The director/activist is clear that he is not making movies solely for the Native American community. "I’m the bridge to other people who aren’t like us. I make the movies because I care, because I love my characters. I think these people are worthy of being known."

Jamie Redford, in a PBS interview, said he spent a great deal of time–as did novelist Hillerman–on the Navajo ideas of healing when working on the screenplay for Skinwalkers: "It has to do with harmony. Their culture is more interested in how the person views their own place in this universe. Bringing the individual to harmony is not simply about changing the condition of somebody on a physical level; it’s allowing them to be at peace." This sense of harmony also reflects current thinking on how to educate Native Americans about the dangers of HIV infection.

And it seems that Eyre also stresses harmony when talking about connecting to friends who have confided in him about their HIV-positive status but also connecting to those who have not. "What’s sad is that of course I’d support them, especially if they are gay. The Two Spirit theory is something I can believe in," he says. "Two Spirit" is a new idea that originated from the organizing efforts of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Native Americans to distinguish themselves from mainstream culture. The name attempts to reclaim and honor the historical roles and traditions of individuals within many tribes that were at one time inclusive of alternative gender roles and sexualities. "My [non-sexual] experience is similar–I, too, enjoy a vantage point of being between two places; it gives you a perspective you can use in your work." 

Native tradition actually discourages intrusive discussions about sex, which has contributed to the silence that cultivates ignorance surrounding HIV/AIDS. Eyre summarizes: "We really have to [find] a new way to approach and discuss AIDS. The trouble is we don’t discuss sex–we just have it!" He laughs and continues: "A journalist recently asked me how I wanted to further the Indian cause; could I give some advice? I thought about it for a moment and just said, ‘Breed!’"

Dale Reynolds is formerly West Coast Editor of A&U. He is currently a freelance writer on entertainment themes, and can usually be spotted at www.zap2it.com.