I was invited by a friend to the Apsaalooka (Crow) Indian reservation in Montana. The day before I left for home after my first visit my friend, Etting Little Owl, (seen here with his wife Harriet) gave me the Crow name Hillegyo Maakuuxshiibiish. It means One who comes from yonder to help. It’s a name to live up to.
During my visits—eight of them— I have driven across the land, hunted a buffalo, filmed the Sun Dance and the Handgame, gotten advice on how to live from Joe Medicine Crow, and prayed in a sweat lodge. All the time the camera was running.
When I first arrived on the reservation someone asked me what I wanted to say with this film.
“I don’t want to say anything,” I answered, “I want to listen.”
This film is what I heard.
More on Sean Kernan
Sean Kernan is a photographer, writer, and teacher who came to photography from theater. He is the author of two monographs, The Secret Books (with Jorge Luis Borges) and Among Trees, a book on creativity called Looking Into the Light, and a book on the sculptor Darrell Petit.
He has exhibited at galleries and museums in France, Egypt, Mexico, South Korea, and Italy, as well as in the US.His photographs have been published in a range of publications including the New York Times Magazine, Smithsonian, New York, Harpers,as well as magazines in Iran, Greece, Italy, China and Switzerland.
He has produced and directed several award-winning documentaries: The Kampala Boxing Club, about boxing in Africa; Crow Stories, about the Crow Tribe of Montana; A Mind of Winter, about the feeling of cold; and The Visitor, filmed in his grear-grandfather’s house in upstate New York.
He has taught and lectured at the New School/Parsons, Art Center (Pasadena), Yale Medical School, International Center for Photography, University of Texas, Wesleyan University, and has won numerous awards, most recently from the Center in Santa Fe for teaching, as well as a an honorary doctorate from Art Center in Pasadena.
