Four Sheets on DVD

Four Sheets to the Wind:  An Insider’s View of One Native American FamilyThis Sundance award-winning film was recently released on DVD and is widely available at mainstream video rental sources. Oklahoma native and writer/director Sterlin Harjo writes and directs what he knows: Seminole-Creek Indians living in Oklahoma. Although the film is fictional, it has an air of authenticity that left me contemplating the special situation of Native Americans like the Seminole-Creek Indians, who do not live on reservations.

Four Sheets to the Wind is so interesting because it shows us a marginalized and underrepresented community from the inside. Harjo’s script and direction never panders or lectures; rather, the viewer comes to understand the lack of choices in the lives of young Native Americans who have grown up in communities devastated by poverty, alcoholism, and a profound lack of hope. Four Sheets to the Wind makes it clear what we have to gain as a nation by empowering the Cufes among us.