|
Case Study: Indians, Outlaws and Angie Debo
By Barbara Abrash, Center for Media, Culture
and History, New York University
 Overview
The making and distribution of Indians, Outlaws and Angie Debo
shows how a network of feminist activists and scholars working with
public-spirited citizens in New York and Oklahoma brought the dramatic
story of an important but little-known writer of American Indian
history to national public television audiences. It demonstrates
how the telling of little-known stories that enrich our view of
American history can be enabled by a vital web of cultural activists
and public institutions.
Indians, Outlaws and Angie Debo is a one-hour
documentary film about a woman historian whose scholarship, which
began in the 1930s in a social climate hostile to female scholars
and to “history from the bottom up,” became central
to the new Native American social history that came to the fore
in the early 1970s.
The production and circulation of the film was supported
by individuals and institutions – including libraries, foundations,
academic institutions, and public media organizations -- who believed
this regional story was significant for a national audience, as
well as schools, tribal and community groups. It was nationally
broadcast on PBS on November 15, 1988 on the WGBH series, American
Experience, and was distributed from 1989 to 2003 by PBS Video.
This report traces the reciprocal relationship between a network
of individuals, public organizations and civic groups - and the
consequences for the long term life of the film.
Background
In 1983, Glenna Matthews and Gloria Valencia-Weber, feminist faculty
members at Oklahoma State University, approached me about making
a documentary film about Angie Debo. WOSU-FM, the Oklahoma State
University NPR station, had broadcast a series of their oral histories
with Debo, who was then in her 90s, and they wanted to take their
project further. Given her age, time was obviously of the essence.
At that time, I was head of media projects at the Institute for
Research in History in New York City, an organization of independent
feminist historians (much like Debo), and it seemed a perfect fit.
I brought in Martha Sandlin, a newly-minted NYU film school graduate
originally from Oklahoma, and together we produced the film, which
was directed by Sandlin.
The social and institutional environment within which
the film project evolved was shaped by the civil rights movements
of the 1960s, which gave voice to women, people of color, and working
people, and triggered the transformation of master narratives of
American history. We worked with a network of individuals, institutions
and programs that had developed out of these struggles and who saw
themselves as builders of civic life more broadly. This network
provided the financial and cultural resources for the production
and circulation of the film, and was instrumental in ensuring its
wide reach and long life.
To the feminist historians and filmmakers who “discovered”
her in the 1980s, Angie Debo exemplified the talented women who
had long been excluded from professional life. Entering the field
of history in the 1930s, she was unable to find an academic position
in what was then an all-male historical profession, despite her
outstanding graduate work at the University of Chicago. She became
an independent scholar and author of nine books of Western and Indian
history, and a forceful advocate for Indian land and water rights.
In the 1970s, her books became the bedrock of the New Native American
History and her scholarship was invoked in federal court decisions
and Indian policy reforms.
The Film
Indians, Outlaws and Angie Debo is a character study of
98-year old Angie Debo, living in her home town of Marshall, Oklahoma
(pop 354), as she reflects on her life and struggles to publish
the truth of Oklahoma history in a hostile political climate. It
follows her career in a harsh, if not dangerous political environment,
as she tracks down and reveals the systematic criminal activities
of politicians and the U.S. government in their dealings with the
Indian tribes of Oklahoma.
 Angie
Debo labored in relative professional isolation until the 1970s,
when the feminist and civil rights movements spurred interest in
the historical significance of once-marginalized people, and identified
them as active historical agents. Debo’s books were required
reading in newly-established programs in Native American studies,
and became (at least in academic press terms) best sellers. Her
scholarship, which incorporated Native perspectives and cultural
life, was cited in landmark Indian tribal sovereignty cases and
introduced into Indian law programs.
In order to legitimize the scholarly significance
of Debo’s work and raise it beyond regional Southwest interest,
we at the Institute for Research in History assembled a panel of
scholarly advisors and organized presentations at national conferences
of the Organization of American Historians, the Berkshire Conference
on the History of Women, and the American Historical Association,
for whom we also wrote newsletter articles. With support from Oklahoma
State University staff and a small grant from the Oklahoma Humanities
Council, 16 mm location filming began in 1984. It was the first
of five location shoots, all of which depended upon the availability
of our frail central character, and the willingness of local citizens
including Apaches and members of the Creek Nation, to share their
memories, documents, and resources.
In Oklahoma, a network of women scholars, foundation
program officers, and civic activists (many of whom had not been
aware of Debo’s work) began to mobilize production support
for the film, the final budget for which was $650,000. Through them,
we gained entree to influential citizens, historical societies and
libraries, and especially to financial support. Urged by scholars
and citizens active in public education, the Oklahoma Humanities
Council awarded the project grants totaling $75,000, a major commitment
for a state humanities council with limited funds and for a project
as risky as a film production. Penny Williams, a state legislator,
opened her Rolodex and wrote a solicitation letter which produced
more than 100 contributions, ranging from $15 from a couple in Stroud
City, Oklahoma to $15,000 from the John T Noble Foundation. This
fund-raising effort not only brought together New York filmmakers
and Oklahoma citizens across cultural divides, it effectively created
a community of stake holders who saw Angie Debo’s story as
a counter to conventional Western histories that valorize the accomplishments
of white men. This network of civic activists provided access to
the schools, libraries, museums, and other public institutions through
which the completed film circulated in public screenings, school
curricula, discussion programs, and Chautauqua-style events in Oklahoma.
As a direct result of the film, Penny Williams and
Anne Morgan of the oil-fortune based Kerr Foundation, led a drive
to commission Debo’s portrait (the first of a woman) to hang
in the State legislature, which now hangs in the Rotunda alongside
favorite sons Jim Thorpe and Will Rogers, as well as several of
the politicians whose crimes Debo detailed in her books. At what
was locally called “the hanging”, the governor and state
political leaders publicly honored Debo – the first such recognition
she had ever received in her home state. This imprimatur would later
reassure corporate funders, such as the Oklahoma Natural Gas Foundation,
which provided finishing funds and sponsored the premier screening
in Washington, D.C., which was attended by Senator David Boren and
other members of the state congressional delegation.
Broadcast
Release
Indians, Outlaws and Angie Debo was nationally broadcast
on PBS on November 15. 1988 at 10:00 pm, in the premiere season
of the WGBH series, American Experience. It received a
1.1 rating.
In 1987, in a time of funding desperation, I heard
that WGBH was launching American Experience, a new series
on American history. It was initiated in a decade that saw a surge
in the production of historical documentaries that was stimulated
by 1) the interest of once-marginalized communities in rediscovering
(and validating) their own suppressed and forgotten histories, 2)
the availability of NEH funding, which encouraged cooperation between
scholars and filmmakers, and 3) U.S. Bicentennial celebrations,
which often highlighted the contributions of immigrant and regional
groups in the national narrative.
The quality of this work and lively public interest
encouraged WGBH to create a series led by a respected network documentary
veteran, Judith Crichton, and vetted by an advisory committee of
distinguished historians. The series had a conventional format--contemporary
witnesses/experts, archival film, and voice-over narrative—and
was pitched to a broad PBS audience. Its popular tone was reminiscent
of Life magazine, as was its inclusive view of the American
scene, but Crichton also pushed the boundaries of both content and
style. (The series opened with Robert Stone’s Radio Bikini,
a searing inquiry into US atomic-bomb testing and its aftermath
for native populations.)
Crichton, who strongly supported the film and chose
it for the second slot in the opening season of the series, was
queried by the WGBH programming committee about giving prime time
visibility to a regional historian who had never held a prestigious
academic position. When Yale historian Howard Lamar, a member of
Crichton’s advisory committee, testified to Debo’s significance
to Western American and Native American history, WGBH signed on
to the project, eventually providing $350,000 in finishing funds.
In return, the final contract between the Institute for Research
in History and WGBH-TV granted creative control and distribution
rights to American Experience. Copyright was held jointly
by the Institute (now defunct) and WGBH-TV (which has no apparent
further interest in the film).
The broadcast was never repeated, but the film went
into educational distribution through PBS video, in a deal that
split royalties three ways (after the PBS cut) between WGBH and
the two co-producers. While American Experience publicized
the show as part of the launch of the new series (including a feature
article in TV Guide), they provided little information
to the producers on reviews and other press coverage. There were
several reviews in historical journals, which focused on the quality
of the film as an historical narrative – contributing to an
emerging debate in the profession about the relationship between
visual history and the canons of written history.
 Outcomes
The film contributed to the increased public visibility and appreciation
of Angie Debo’s work and influence. Following the broadcast,
sales of Debo’s books spiked and all nine of Debo’s
books were reprinted by Oklahoma University Press. (Her classic
work, And Still the Waters Run, which was rejected by Oklahoma
University Press under political pressure in the 1930s and later
published by Princeton University Press, was recently named by Princeton,
in a double-page spread in the NY Review of Books, as one
of their “100 most important titles” of the twentieth
century.)
In 1988, Debo received the Lifetime Achievement Award
of The American Historical Association, as a direct result of the
efforts of a group of feminist historians including Natalie Zemon
Davis, a distinguished professor at Princeton University who became
aware of Debo through the film. Texas writer Larry McMurtry, whose
many works include Lonesome Dove, The Last Picture
Show, and Hud, wrote an appreciation of Debo’s
influence on his own career in the NY Review of Books—perhaps
not a direct result of the film, but part of a larger public acknowledgement
of her work. In 1989, Indians, Outlaws and Angie Debo received
the prestigious Organization of American Historian’s Erik
Barnouw Award for best historical documentary, which helped to launch
it into educational distribution.
Marketing
PBS Video targeted colleges and high schools, as well as libraries.
A special educational version was prepared, accompanied by a teacher’s
guide. After primary markets were exhausted, the film was packaged
thematically with other titles in women’s history, Native
American history, the American West, and Indian law. The film is
taught in college courses in Western history, women’s history,
and Native American history. It is cited in scholarly articles on
Indian law, and is included in law school syllabi in Indian law.
From 1989-2003, when the distribution agreement lapsed,
PBS Video sold approximately 4,000 videotapes, principally to schools
and libraries. The co-producers were unable to obtain any detailed
information from PBS or WGBH, which controlled the agreement, about
distribution strategies or results. (The figures quoted here are
extrapolated from my own royalty statements.) A recent inquiry to
WGBH by a citizen group in Oklahoma interested in picking up the
license on the occasion of Oklahoma’s upcoming Centennial
celebrations, received no reply.
The film’s after-broadcast royalties were impressive,
reflecting the institutional pricing scale which began at $250 and
was later scaled to $99.95 and less. It surely benefited from video
distribution, which made the film more accessible to technology-challenged
schools than 16mm had been. But it was released before home video
was widely available. Judging from the many inquiries I have received
on a purely informal basis from individuals ranging from Indian
rights activists to history buffs; it thereby lost another potential
avenue of distribution.
Were the film to be re-released today, rights issues
would likely not be a great problem. Most of the archival material
is in the public domain, and the music was commissioned for the
program.
Conclusion
The long life of Indians, Outlaws and Angie Debo was the
result of a unique partnership between feminist scholars and activists
and a civic network which sought to bring public recognition to
the work of a unique and influential historian and which brought
substantial resource to the production and circulation of the film.
This story of one person’s life enabled its supporters to
bring public attention to larger issues: i.e., the politics of history
telling, the centrality of Native American history to the larger
American story, the exclusion of women from the professions, the
vital importance of publishing and public education to democratic
life, and the role of women and Native Americans in Oklahoma life
and culture.
 This
group mobilized substantial resources for both the production and
circulation of the film in a period that has been shaped by the
civil rights and feminist movements that brought new voices into
public life and transformed the master narrative of American history.
The agendas (and even the existence) of the institutions and programs
that provided the resources for making the film--which included
publicly-funded organizations like the Oklahoma Humanities Council,
non-profit groups like the feminist Institute for Research in History,
and the affirmative action programs of Oklahoma State University—represented
the priorities and values of the members of those movements.
Coda
On October 1, 2004, the Angie Debo Papers at the Oklahoma State
University Library were declared a National Literary Landmark of
the Library of Congress. The keynote speaker was Gloria Valencia-Weber
who, after graduating from Harvard Law School as a “mature
returning student of color,” went on to establish the model
Indian Law Certificate Program at the University of New Mexico School
of Law, which is now being replicated on other campuses. She and
other speakers described the impact of Debo’s work on transformations
in Native American and Western history, on U.S. Court decisions
regarding tribal sovereignty and land claims, and on federal Indian
policies. Indians, Outlaws, and Angie Debo was screened at the start
and conclusion of the event. Local speakers described the incorporation
of the film Debo’s writing into grade school and high school
curricula, and talked of Debo as an honored figure in the upcoming
Oklahoma Centennial celebrations.
The ceremony in October, 2004 is evidence of the
continuing influence of the film in bringing Debo and the history
she wrote about into public visibility. It was there I discovered
that the film is shown in Indian law programs; in women’s
history courses at the University of California at Berkeley; and
in junior high school classes in San Antonio, Texas. It was also
there that a group of public-spirited citizens expressed their desire
to bring the public television station into an effort to obtain
the distribution license that WGBH has let lapse. School teachers
and librarians asked how to purchase new tapes to replace ones worn
with use. These anecdotal examples suggest the extended life that
is still possible for Indians, Outlaws and Angie Debo.
It is also a testament to the vitality of civic and educational
networks that contribute to the healthy life to independent media.
Funded by:
|
