Hacker Cinema
Smoke Signals
1998 · Film · 89 min
Directed by Chris Eyre
Young Native American man Thomas is a nerd in his reservation, wearing oversize glasses and telling everyone stories no-one wants to hear. His parents died in a fire in 1976, and Thomas was saved by Arnold. Arnold soon left his family, and Victor hasn't seen his father for 10 years. When Victor hears Arnold has died, Thomas offers him funding for the trip to get Arnold's remains.
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2 comments on Hacker News
I can only speak from my observation of the tribes local to me.
In the 80s and early 90s the reservation was very poor on average (entire area is/was rural so it wasn't just on the res but it was significantly worse there). If you have ever watched the movie "Smoke signals" it has scenes shot which depict life on the local reservation (Coeur d'Alene tribe). Since the mid 90s or so things changed very rapidly for the tribe. The people are healthier, the infrastructure is better and the population seems to be growing and overall happier (again...observations).
What changed? Casinos.
Our local tribe went from being very poor with seemingly little voice in local politics to "very important" to the local community. They have not only improved their own lives but also invest heavily in improving the region and have a focus on things like the lake and natural preservation. Again...from my general observations...
I suppose it would be possible to learn faster than by just going the official route. Does Batman need a detective license? I think not.
I wonder if there are cases of people leading batman style lives. Or even maybe Dexter style lives (going about dishing out illegal justice in their spare time).
One thing that comes to mind is from a movie I saw (maybe smoke signals?), where the native american tribe (living in modern times) had a traditional role of some people disguising and teaching other people a lesson.
As for the signalling problem, maybe something could be built with modern technologie (SMS, mobile internet, social networks).
In fact today I had this thought, fueled by paranoia: what if your child was abducted, but could send one last distress call. I suppose police wouldn't be able to block the roads in time to catch the abductor, but what if by a snowballing flash mob effect, all people would take to the street and blocked all roads until police would arrive? It would be a kind of distributed batman effect...