Fundraising effort seeks to turn Perma Red into TV series
A group of indigenous and women filmmakers is raising funds to transform Perma Red, a novel by Debra Magpie Earling, into a television series set in Mission Valley in the 1940s.
Based on a true story, the series will follow Louise White Elk, a young Séliš woman growing up on the Flathead Reservation in western Montana. Smart, strong, and beautiful, she plays pranks, challenges boys and men to race her, breaks horses, dives in the dangerous waters of the Flathead River, saves her sisters from Bureau of Indian Affairs officials, and lives as a free spirit in a world that denies Indians freedom.
Three men in her life symbolize her struggles and give her very different choices: reservation police officer Charlie Kicking Woman; Harvey Stoner, the quintessential rich, and dangerous, white man; and Baptiste, the man who represents the power and necessity of the old ways.
According to a description of the project at www.indiegogo.com, “Montana is itself a pivotal character of the movie. There is no substitute for the untamed Mission Mountains or the breathtaking valley cradled by that range.”
The author, producers and screenwriter are all Montanans and say it’s their aim “to do justice to Louise’s story and to exalt the beauty that is Montana.”
The television adaptation for this highly acclaimed literary work is rooted in the history of Séliš (Salish) storytelling, beginning 14,000 years ago, when the Séliš began to inhabit the ancestral homeland, now known as the Bitterroot Valley and Flathead Reservation.
“Salish languages, songs, and narratives were heard across the land before the sea of colonization threatened to drown Salish voices and traditions,” write filmmakers. “We hope ‘Perma Red’ will ignite a new generation of Selis and Native storytelling.”
By mid-September the crew had raised more than their goal of $25,000 via the Indigogo campaign to produce a pilot of the series. Once the pilot is complete, they'll submit it to Sundance and South By Southwest film festivals, in hopes of generating enough interest to create a limited series of four or five shows for a streaming service.
The crew has already assigned the lead role of Louise White Elk to Veyanna Webster, a 17-year-old senior at Ronan High School who is Salish, Kootenai and Coeur d'Alene. Actors also include Alishon Kelly from the P'end d'Oreille and the Blackfeet tribes as Florence and J.C. Augare, an experienced actor who was born and raised on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation, as Charlie Kicking Woman.
Respected tribal elder Frank John Arlee serves as Salish language and cultural adviser, technical adviser and acting consultant. Director Maya Rose Ditloff, culturally Blackfeet and an enrolled member of the Three Affiliated Tribes in North Dakota, is director, and the team as a whole is 50 percent Native. Most leaders of the project are women – which points to another goal: to raise awareness of the epidemic of murdered and missing Indigenous women.
“Native women need to tell their own stories. Now is the time for those stories to rise. ‘Perma Red’ is only the beginning,” says Magpie Earling, who serves as a consultant on the project.
For more information, visit www.permaredfilm.com.
Tags: Native News