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Idyllwild Town Crier, June 29, 2006 - Page 23
Owen directs Cahuilla documentary film, ‘Borderlands’
By Marshall Smith
Staff Reporter
S e a n Owen, former
Idyllwild Arts (IA) dean of
students, recently wrapped
a yearlong journey of making
his documentary film,
“Borderlands.” It is the story
of Native American Cahuilla
Gerald Clarke, his art, his
community and his return,
upon his father’s death, from
a tenured university teaching
position in Oklahoma
to the reservation home he
inherited from his father.
Owen said that his film
“emphasizes contemporary
rather than historical perspectives,
contains interviews
with Gerald, other Cahuilla
tribal members, including
elders, and centers on the
themes of mixed blood,
adaptation to reservation
life and cultural identity.
Gerald’s performance art,
satirizing television shows
(such as ‘Antiques Road
Show’ and ‘Extreme Makeover’)
highlights the dilemmas
and incongruities of Native
American life today.”
Owen, who in addition
also taught in the IA Moving
Pictures Department,
had met Clarke at IA, where
Clarke was teaching sculpture
and mixed media parttime.
“I originally thought the
documentary would focus
[only] on Clarke’s art, but
found, in spending time
with Clarke and his extended
family on the reservation,
that the film would better
be about Clarke’s transition
from his [assistant professor
of art] teaching position
at East Central University
[ESU] in Ada, Okla., to
reservation life.”
For Owen, directing the
film also became his own
personal journey — dropping
into Cahuilla family
and tribal ways during his
year with Clarke, much of
it on the reservation, and
experiencing the differences
between Cahuilla life and his
own.
When asked what, in his
judgment, made Clarke’s
return to reservation life
so compelling, or what he
thought the overarching
theme of the film might be,
Owen thought for a while
and said, “It’s about the
clan-based family nature of
the Cahuillas” — how families
must all move together,
not separate or live too far
apart.
“It’s about what makes
a Cahuilla a Cahuilla, how
there are no boundaries, how
that anyone can show up [at
a Cahuilla home] at anytime
[with no invitation or notice
and be welcomed].
“And, for a boundarydependent
white guy, that
is heartening.” Owen said
this familial glue that is
such a part of the Cahuillas
“sometimes makes it difficult
for the tribe as a whole.”
Clarke, the titular center
of “Borderlands,” was
born in Hemet and until
his parents’ divorce, lived
on the Cahuilla reservation
in Anza. He then moved
with mother and siblings to
Orange County, then at 16
with his mother and sister
to Arkansas to finish high
school.
He attended vocational
school where he learned
welding. After working two
years as a welder, he enrolled
at the University of Central
Arkansas, earning a bachelor’s
degree with honors in
painting and sculpture. He
then obtained a master’s
degree in arts and one in fine
arts from Stephen F. Austin
State University in Texas.
He went on to head the
art department at Northeast
Texas Community College in
Mount Pleasant, Texas, then
to ESU as assistant professor
of art. Clarke was absent
from reservation life from
the age of 16 until his return
upon his father’s death.
“Every generation has
an occasional artist of great
importance emerge and that
artist is often challenging
people’s stereotypes and not
taking the market defined
or the road defined by the
popular market — they are
not playing Indian to the
greater population. Gerald
Clarke is such an artist,” said
Dr. Joe Baker, Delaware (Lenape)
tribe member, Lloyd
Kiva new curator of fine
arts at the Heard Museum
in Phoenix, Ariz., and one of
the panelists who will speak
after the IA screening.
“This is a serious film
about a Cahuilla artist and
the Cahuilla people done
with good humor,” said Dr.
Lowell J. Bean, author of
“Mukat’s People, the Cahuilla
Indians of Southern
California,” published by
“Borderlands” director Sean Owen (far left) sits
at the Cahuilla Tribal Hall in the Anza reservation
after a special screening of the film for tribal
members and guests. With him are Cahuilla
the University of California
Press. “If I were still teaching
in the University of California
system, I would use this
film in my classes.”
Reflecting about completing
“Borderlands,” Owen
said, “I was so nervous when
I screened the film [at the
tribal screening] being a guy
from the outside, making a
film about a very different
culture. But they saw the
film, laughed in all the right
places, and when the lights
came up, there was loud applause
and lots of wonderful
questions for Gerald.” Owen
said he relaxed after that.
Owen, an avid climber,
said he came to IA from
a previous job as dean of
students “so [he] could continue
climbing. … [After
historian and author Dr. Lowell J. Bean, and
Gerald Clarke, Cahuilla Indian and, along
with his family and tribe, the subject of Owen’s
film.
Photo courtesy of Sean Owen
10 years] I retired from
Idyllwild Arts so that I could
make films. [It’s] the best
thing I ever did.” He laughs
that instead of facing the
many student crises any
dean of students faces, “the
biggest crisis I have now is
getting the master DVD of
‘Borderlands’ finished for the
Idyllwild screening.”
See Borderlands, page 33
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