In 2001, something extraordinary happened in the world of cinema. Awkwardly mingling with glamorous Hollywood titans from Nicole Kidman to Sean Penn at the 54th Cannes Film Festival was a quiet, humble Canadian Inuit director named Zacharias Kunuk. That year, Kunuk’s film, 

 became the first indigenous-language film to scoop the prestigious Camera d’Or prize for best feature film. Kunuk was as surprised as anyone at the reception of his film, which retells an ancient Inuit legend of two hunters engaged in a bitter and violent feud in the Canadian arctic. “We made it for an Inuit audience,

. “I never expected that outside countries would be so interested. It never even crossed my mind.”

Almost 15 years later, indigenous films are slowly climbing their way into the mainstream. 

, this could have profound implications for how we appreciate and better understand native peoples and cultures — much as film has illuminated cultural peculiarities throughout the world.

Cinema has always had a power to deepen our knowledge about the past. Public 

 has been greatly enriched by films, such as Steven Spielberg’s 

 (2002). But there has long been a tendency for films focusing on the experiences of indigenous peoples to be period dramas — 

these are a people who once were, and now are not

 — and produced by nonindigenous filmmakers. Consider two much-heralded films from the early 1990s: Michael Mann’s 

 (1990), the latter of which won the Academy Award for Best Picture — though not before 

 film critic Pauline Kael memorably panned the film

 as “a kid’s daydream of being an Indian.”

The way that indigenous communities have been presented to Western audiences in films has reenforced continued misperceptions and stereotypes of indigenous cultures, many of which are branded in the popular imagination as perennially stuck in the past, with dated and traditional ways of thinking incompatible with the modern world. These misperceptions are highlighted in a 

2013 report published by La Trobe University

, which lists various erroneous but widely-held ideas of Australian aboriginals — that Australian indigenous people were “simple and uncivilised,” that they somehow “cannot look after themselves,” and that “all stories about indigenous people are about their failures.” Similarly, 

 continue to underscore many people’s perceptions of American Indians, with widely held images of decaying, ‘backward’ cultures living meaningless existences on reservations.

All of this could change as modern, indigenous-made cinema increases in popularity. The 

, a biennial event first held in London in 2007, celebrates modern indigenous culture through a series of film, theater, and art performances. This year’s festival celebrated portrayals of the recent past for indigenous peoples, screening movies from the early 2000s, including 

, a drama focusing on a Maori community in New Zealand, and 

, which observes the interactions between an Australian Aboriginal and a white policeman. Both of these films came out to critical acclaim in 2002, a year which Sophie Mayer has described as “the key date for fourth-world cinema,” when indigenous cinema met global success.

This year’s festival also screened Sydney Freeland’s 

 (2014), which took last year’s Sundance Film Festival by storm. The film, made by a prominent Navajo auteur, focuses on the hardships and struggles faced by young Navajo teenagers living on an Indian reservation. Set in the present day, the film breathes relevance and vitality into the indigenous cultures it represents — 

Politically speaking, the last several decades have produced major milestones for native peoples across the world. In 1995, the New Zealand government formally apologised to a Maori tribe for stealing 500,000 hectares of land 130 years earlier, and has since provided them more than 

 for the stolen generations of Aboriginal children who were taken from their birth parents and placed with white families or in white-run orphanages. A few months later, Canada apologized to its own first nations, and 

has compensated the native children abused in its

 residential schools to the tune of $2 billion. Even in the United States, the 2010 defense appropriations bill offered a short apology to Native Americans.

A clear trend of towards reconciliation and interaction with native communities has arguably been bolstered by a greater representation of indigenous cultures within the broader popular culture. “Taking representation, production and even distribution into its own hands,” writes Mayer, “twenty-first century indigenous cinema is resurgent.” This resurgence is already changing our perceptions of native peoples for the better.

Breaking your reservation: the rise of indigenous cinema

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What the rise in indigenous filmmaking means for the future of our understanding and appreciation of native cultures all over the world.

No Reservations: The Rise of Indigenous Cinema

“I’m Siberian.” This simple but loud slogan has been emblazoned on merchandise from iPhone cases to T-shirts since 

2012, as part of a branding campaign aimed at changing global perceptions of this huge chunk of Russian tundra.

 The “I’m Siberian” brand encapsulates a growing sense of pride and self-identity among Siberian youth, but where has this sentiment come from, and what does it mean for Russia?

Siberia has historically been a byword for remoteness and unforgiving cold. Scottish explorer 

 wrote in 1824 that “there is so little of interest in Siberia, so little to be seen, that it is hardly possible to form an interesting work on the topic.” 

Covering a vast area of over 13 million square kilometers — 77 percent of Russia’s total land mass — Siberia is inhabited by 40 million people

, which equates to just 3 inhabitants per square kilometer, making it one of the most sparsely populated areas in the world.

In recent years, this icy expanse has seen political activism and regionalism ignited, as 

Stanislav Zakharkin, a Russian sociologist, writes in

 Yet Siberian nationalism is not a new phenomenon. In the nineteenth century, an argument evolved among Siberian intellectuals that the region had effectively been colonized by Russia. Having been tossed aside as a penal colony for centuries, Siberia’s economic concerns, long neglected by those in power in Russia’s far west, seem to have been paramount to the people who lived there.

According to influential works at the time, such as Nikolai Yadrintsev’s 1892 book

, the imperial center was exploiting Siberia’s abundant natural resources through an uneven trade and revenue system. This system was enforced by a central political bureaucracy and a lack of cultural or intellectual investment in the region, all designed to submerge Siberians into the wider Russian Empire.

Following the collapse of Tsarist Russia, the region was quickly swallowed up again by the highly centralized Soviet Union. The economic inequalities in the relationship between Russia’s central government and Siberia have thus never been resolved. 

In 2012, the Siberian region of Tomsk delivered 130 billion roubles in tax revenues to Moscow, and received just 10.3 billion roubles back in investment

; to meet its financial needs and obligations, the region was forced to resort to loans from commercial banks.

The grievances of the Siberian people may have been historically suppressed, but they have never gone away and now rise anew under Vladimir Putin’s ever-more-centralized regime. Under Putin, 

Russian executive powers have been hugely increased 

 giving the central government significant influence over the selection of regional governors. This system of 

 has meant that, according to Zakharkin, “Russian governors have finally turned into the mouthpieces of federal policy,” and it is this erosion of local power that has inflamed Siberian hostility to Moscow. 

A separatist rally was held in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk in 2011

, with demonstrators chanting the slogan “stop feeding Moscow!” At a press conference, Rostislav Antonov, the protest’s key organizer, complained that Siberia “

is the main source of wealth for Russia, and yet it does not have enough money for basic necessities

This growing hostility to Moscow has contributed to a resurgence of regional pride across Siberia, as demonstrated in the popularity of the “I’m Siberian” brand among Siberia’s younger generations. Beyond this commercial manifestation, Siberia’s insistent pride has blossomed in the region’s art scene. In 2013, a popular 

 titled the “United States of Siberia” was one realization of a Siberian artistic renaissance led by 

Anna Tereshkova and the Siberian Centre of Contemporary Art

. The centre and its various exhibitions have been denounced by many local MPs and conservative organizations — all eager to show allegiance to Putin — as offensive to Russian patriotism in its celebration of local culture.

Last year, the gulf between the growth of Siberian pride and the conservative federal government reaction found a stark embodiment in a proposed 

“March for the Federalization of Siberia.”

 The demonstration, due to be held in Novosibirsk in August 2014, was banned by the Russian government, with a 

 imposed and several organizers arrested. Putin’s harsh response implies a degree of fear that the federalist movement is in danger of succeeding and threatening his centralizing agenda. 

In comments to the press in December 2014

, Putin reignited the commonly held suspicion among Russian nationalists that outside powers intend to annex Siberia for themselves. “We have heard it even from high-level officials that it is unfair that the whole of Siberia, with its immense resources, belongs to Russia in its entirety,” said Putin. “Why exactly is it unfair? So it is fair to snatch Texas from Mexico, but it is unfair that we are working on our own land? No, we have to share.” Stoking anti-American sentiment and Russian patriotism arguably indicates a sense of fear of internal disharmony.

There have always been tensions between local federalists and the central government in Moscow, but the last few years have seen these tensions heat into a rolling boil. Zakharkin makes the case that the Siberian movement, at least in its present form, does not pose any immediate threat to Russian unity. He labels it “a grassroots cultural phenomenon that is gaining popularity against the background of real anti-Moscow sentiment.” However, Zakharkin notes that “activists have neither the political nor the financial leverage to influence those in power.”

If the status quo continues — and with it, the perception that the centralized government is benefiting from an unequal and exploitative economic and political system — Moscow could face a real problem in the coming years.

“What’s in store for the Siberian movement?”

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What explains the resurgence in Siberian regionalism in recent years, and what does it mean for Putin’s Russia?

The Rise of Siberian Nationalism

A small city tucked into the northwest corner of Arkansas seems an unlikely setting for a major immigration debate. But as the adopted home of 

more than 4,000 immigrants from the Marshall Islands

, the city of Springdale, Arkansas, has won the limelight for all the wrong reasons. 

 delves into the complexities of America’s inbound immigration from the Marshall Islands, asking vital yet awkward questions about deep, persistent cultural misunderstandings, and the efficacy of American integration of immigrants.

America’s relationship with the Marshall Islands is rooted in controversy. During the Cold War, the small Pacific archipelago became a testing site for America’s growing nuclear arsenal. Between 1946–1958, a total of 67 nuclear tests were conducted at the islands, one of which — 

the famed Castle Bravo test of March 1954

released nearly thirty times more radioactive iodine than the 2011 Fukushima and 1986 Chernobyl leaks combined

 produced in 1990 outlined the devastating impact of nuclear tests on the health of the Marshallese people. Even today, radiation levels render many of the islands uninhabitable, while 

stillbirths and miscarriages are disproportionately high

, and childhood illnesses, cancers, and blood conditions are commonplace.

the United States has awarded financial compensation

 and opened its borders to Marshallese immigrants, who are able to live and work in the U.S. without a visa under the 1986 

as much as one-third of the total Marshallese population

 has taken advantage of this compact and relocated to the States, lured by the promise of America’s education and healthcare systems. As the hometown of Tyson Foods — a known and trusted employer in the Marshall Islands — Springdale, Arkansas is a major destination for these immigrants. There, jobs and a sense of community is easily within reach. Less attainable is integration into American society; culturally, the Marshallese people have either been misunderstood or rejected, with tragic consequences.

All is reflected by a look at the murky world of Marshallese adoption. 

The surge in international adoption in the 1990s

 — coupled with relaxed visa regulations that eased the ability to bring babies into the U.S. — led hundreds of American families to adopt Marshallese babies, a “startling outflow of the nation’s offspring,” writes Joyce. But the ethics of U.S. adoption of Marshallese babies is fraught.

Jini Roby, a professor of social work at Brigham Young University, conducted a survey

 of Marshallese mothers whose biological children were adopted. It yielded troubling results: 87 percent of the mothers interviewed believed that their children would return home once they reached age 18; 70 percent of the parents believed their children could come home if the adoptions did not work out. According to Roby, “if they had known otherwise, the mothers said, they would not have agreed to give up their child.” Fourteen years later, this misunderstanding festers. Joyce interviewed a woman in Arkansas who gave her child up for adoption in July 2014. The woman had signed legal papers in English, which she could not read or understand, and was distraught to realize that under the U.S.’s closed adoption system, it was likely she would never see her child again.

The root of the problem seems to lie in a clash of cultures. 

In Marshallese tradition, children are often raised by

 people other than their biological parents — family friends or relatives who volunteered to take the burden away from what are often already large families. This type of ‘adoption’ is more informal, as mothers retain contact with their children and are able to see them whenever they wish. When Marshallese parents move to the U.S., they are confronted with a rigid and formal system of closed adoption, wherein adoptive parents often take the child far away and raise it as their own.

Why does this cultural misunderstanding continue unabated? The sad answer is that adoption is, simply put, a lucrative business. In the 1990s, adoption agencies would fly pregnant Marshallese mothers to Hawaii, heaping promises of a college education and a new life in America if they gave up their babies. Concerns about the legality of all this led Hawaii to tighten its adoption laws. The adoptions didn’t end, they just simply moved to states with looser adoption laws — states like Arkansas. For everyone but the mothers, it’s a cashgrab. Lawyers who execute adoption paperwork can make 

up to $13,500 per baby, while Marshallese recruiters who woo mothers to give up their children can take home a commission of up to $2,500 per case

The Marshall Islands Adoption Act of 2002

 made it illegal to solicit a baby for adoption through financial incentive, and adoption brokers have grown accustomed to threats of prosecution if they’re caught recruiting pregnant Marshallese women. In reality, it is difficult to enforce these rules in international adoption, an intrinsically private and closed-off world.

Some have spoken out, uttering words that few dare to say, at least publicly. “Many observers,” writes Joyce, “including some of the adoption brokers and attorneys themselves — just call all this moving of bodies what it looks like: human trafficking.”

“Do you understand that your baby goes away and never comes back?”

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For Marshall Islanders in the United States, cultural misunderstandings have curdled into exploitation, raising difficult questions about America’s immigration and integration policies.

The tragic confusion of adoption from the Marshall Islands

“Peace and justice are indivisible,” 

said Kofi Annan, then-Secretary-General of the United Nations, in 1997.

 “The International Criminal Court is the symbol of our highest hopes for this unity of peace and justice.”

The idea of some kind of internationally arbitrated justice system to preserve peace and punish crimes against humanity has become a popular one, 

spawning the creation of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague

, which was enacted in 1998 and opened in 2002. At face value, it would seem uncontroversial — who would be opposed to prosecuting crimes against humanity? But the ICC has attracted criticism for both its design and execution. 

 Duncan McCargo argues that even in concept, an international justice system is flawed and perhaps unworkable.

“Transitional justice” is the umbrella term which encompasses both 

South Africa-styled truth and reconciliation commissions

 and specially created sentencing courts. Both models have been used as a means of reconciling war-torn nations and apportioning blame for atrocities. Perhaps the first real application of international transitional justice came at the 

and Tokyo war crimes tribunals of Axis military leaders

 after World War Two. The trials garnered widespread support in the victorious Allied nations: after many long years of war and genocide, conventional wisdom held that it was time for an accounting.

Of course, those trials were not without their critics. Radhabinod Pal, the judge who represented India on the Tokyo tribunal, 

dismissed them as an imperialistic “victor’s charter”

 — the Allies excluded themselves from all crimes, he reasoned, such as the mass targeting and bombings of civilians (as happened when 

U.S. forces firebombed the wooden residential areas of Tokyo

), while they were in control of choosing who should be prosecuted (Emperor Hirohito, who was 

reportedly willing to take the fall for Japan’s war atrocities

, was conveniently let off the hook by American postwar forces). “About this whole judgment, there is the spirit of vengeance,” said Robert Taft, a leading Republican U.S. senator, whose 

vocal opposition to the tribunals was memorably saluted in

The creation of the ICC was partly an attempt to answer criticisms of imperialism or bias, but McCargo points to the fact that of the 36 people the ICC has indicted in the entirety of its existence, 

 36 have been African leaders. This implies unfair selectivity at best, and smacks of neocolonialism at worst.

Over its entire history, the ICC has successfully convicted only two people.

In a practical sense, the ICC’s efficacy has also come under scrutiny. For a start, 

 (which in 2015 alone is projected to top $152 million), the court has only successfully convicted two people. There’s also the matter of several high-profile “debacles” in recent years. 

, the case against Kenyan leader Uhuru Kenyatta for inciting post-election violence in 2007 

collapsed amid claims of sabotage by the Kenyan government

indictment of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir for crimes against humanity

 committed in the region of Darfur has similarly failed miserably. Seven years later, Bashir remains in power and continues to travel freely throughout Africa. He even recently visited South Africa, which, despite being a member state of the ICC, allowed Bashir into the country and looked the other way as 

Bashir fled while South Africa’s High Court prepared to demand his arrest on the 2008 charges

Why is the ICC’s success rate so low? According to McCargo, the concept of transitional justice is rooted in an ideology of “legalism,” which regards justice as superior to politics — as “somehow suprapolitical and even beyond criticism.” This can be a counter-productive basis for the pursuit of war criminals, as it suggests that politics has no role in solving what are often inherently political problems. It universalizes the issues, charges McCargo, applying lofty and vague notions of “justice” while glossing over the complicated facts. “Transitional justice does not, as a rule, pay much attention to the messy particularities of history,” which undermines its capacity to provide peaceful solutions to violence, while arguably exposing it to political manipulation.

The Cambodian case illustrates this. In 2003, the UN helped to establish 

the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC)

Khmer Rouge leaders for the war crimes they committed during the genocide of 1975–1979

. Many have criticized this international judicial approach for an alleged failure to take into account the unique and complex situation on the ground in Cambodia. Not only did the genocide claim the lives of nearly one-fourth of the nation’s population, but the lines between victims and perpetrators often became blurred during the violent frenzy. The subsequent government of the Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) under the leadership of Prime Minister Hun Sen (who has stubbornly held the reins of power on-and-off since 1985), 

has drifted further towards authoritarianism, dashing the West’s hopes for a peaceful transition towards democracy

. So far, the ECCC has indicted only five people: one died before he could be convicted, one was acquitted, and three others were found guilty.

McCargo charges that the UN’s involvement in the Cambodian reconciliation process has caused more harm than good — lending credence to fears that the West is intervening while claiming moral high ground. For some in the Cambodian government, the UN’s forthright intervention has aroused suspicions that the West is using the tribunal as a means of ousting the CPP. 

Hun Sen has done his best to sabotage it while still claiming his title as Cambodia’s savior from the Khmer Rouge.

Whether in The Hague or Cambodia, writes McCargo, the UN’s involvement in complex local conflicts under the banner of “transitional justice” can backfire and entrench further political despotism. Downplaying the role of politics and the historical context of a situation can open up tribunals to exploitation on the ground — particularly in those cases where there has, in fact, been little meaningful political change.

The healing process for nations may not be best served by a cumbersome international judicial process after all, says McCargo. A better way to come to terms with a difficult past would be through independent national inquiries — which can foster internal debates and discussion — supplemented by prosecutions within national court systems. Although its involvement is well-intentioned, the UN may be inadvertently preventing war-torn nations from healing — wresting control out of the hands of the aggrieved communities while making it harder for the victims to actually pursue justice and win peace.

“Transitional Justice and its Discontents,”

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock/Ioan Panaite

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With the International Criminal Court and its concept of transitional justice failing — it has only two convictions in 36 indictments — should the United Nations take a step back from its involvement in the prosecutions of war crimes?

Why is the International Criminal Court so bad at prosecuting war criminals?

Life expectancy has long been a useful measure of progress and development, a sort of numerical yardstick testing a society’s fundamental duty to care for its citizens at every stage of life. Over the course of generations, massive improvements in public health and advances in medicine and technology have primed advanced societies to steady increases in life expectancy and standards of living.

, are increasingly tenuous, with demographic trends suggesting worrying patterns for the future. In 

, Olshansky, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Illinois, limns out these troubling demographic trends and reaches some startling conclusions.

As with most Western nations, the U.S. population is rapidly aging. In 1900, just over one in twenty-five Americans were aged sixty-five or older. Today, that prevalence has more than tripled: one in seven Americans is over age sixty-five; by 2050, it will likely by one in five. But while the average health status of older Americans has improved over the last half century, Olshansky writes that closer examination shows “population subgroups within the United States are simultaneously moving in opposite directions with regard to future longevity.”

 America’s Latino population makes up seventeen percent of the total U.S. population

projected to rise to roughly twenty-eight percent by 2060

. Latino immigrants over age sixty-five are, on average, healthier than any other ethnicity at that age, despite socioeconomic disadvantages. This, says Olshansky, is largely due to low levels of cigarette smoking and ‘positive health selection’ at the time of immigration — referring to the reality that only the healthiest are able to migrate to the U.S. in the first place.

For younger Hispanics, the future is less rosy. Evidence shows that second- and third-generation Latino immigrants are adopting increasingly harmful health and behavioral patterns, resulting in high levels of obesity and diabetes, and eroding the high standards of health in America’s Latino population. Ongoing socioeconomic inequalities, diminished levels of health, and increased rates of obesity and diabetes entrench troubling patterns as far as health and lifespan are concerned. Among Hispanics, writes Olshansky, longevity is “spiraling downward,” and in the coming years will have a “notable negative impact” on national life expectancy and health statistics.

Robert Hummer and Mark Hayward, two professors from University of Texas, explore this dynamic further. 

 they point to the fact that compared to America’s non-Hispanic white population, Latinos are more likely to work in physically taxing jobs, causing more ‘wear and tear’ on the body and an increasing the likelihood of physical disability in old age. Moreover, middle-aged and older Latino immigrants typically face limited access to health insurance. 

According to a 2014 Gallup poll, less than eleven percent of uninsured Hispanics obtained health coverage during open enrollment periods

, compared with increases of sixteen percent among black Americans and fourteen percent among whites. Hummer and Hayward claim that this is due to restrictions imposed by several large states (e.g. Texas and Florida) on the availability of Medicaid to low income families under the Affordable Care Act. Such health disparities seem likely to persist, synchronic with yawning gaps in economic well-being. On average, 

the total wealth of the average Latino household in the U.S. is equivalent to roughly one-sixteenth that of the average white household

 — a gap which is widening. Educational attainment rates are similarly troubling: the Pew Research Center found that 

Hispanics are less likely than any other American ethnic group to graduate from college or high school

For millions of undocumented Latino immigrants living in America, challenges are even more substantial and pervasive: 

lack of access to public healthcare or social services

 and constant stress, worry, and insecurity

 — all of which have profoundly negative consequences on health and life expectancy. With seventy-three percent of the children of undocumented immigrants being natural-born U.S. citizens, these poor health standards will have a significant impact on America’s overall wellbeing and health statistics in the years and decades to come.

Wisconsin-based journalist Doug Larson once quipped that “life expectancy would grow in leaps and bounds if green vegetables smelled as good as bacon.” He undoubtedly had a point, but it is clear that poor health and low life expectancy are not only caused by behavioral patterns, but by structural societal flaws, which can be rectified (or at least ameliorated) by the state through policy reforms. Hummer and Hayward suggest several meaningful changes: better integration of Latino and immigrant populations into state-run healthcare options; increasing access to higher education; fighting the rise of obesity in young people; and helping immigrant workers and the working poor by enforcing the minimum wage, subsidizing housing, and providing affordable childcare options.

As the Latino population’s prominence in American life rises, their health outcomes and socioeconomic opportunities will be increasingly relevant to both national statistics and America’s standard of living. Without serious reforms in immigration, healthcare, education, and employment, ongoing disparities may shorten the lifespan of what we think of as the American way of life.

“The Demographic Transformation of America,”

“Hispanic Older Adult Health and Longevity in the United States: Current Patterns and Concerns for the future,”

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Without reforming education, employment, and immigration policy, America may soon see a drop in average life expectancy.

Elizabeth Peet