Dubbing ‘A Fistful of Dollars’ to Spread the Navajo Language: NPR

The Navajo National Museum will premiere a Navajo dub version of Clint Eastwood’s 1964 classic, a handful of dollars on Tuesday.

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The Navajo National Museum will premiere a Navajo dub version of Clint Eastwood’s 1964 classic, a handful of dollars on Tuesday.

Silver Screen Collection / Getty Images

Ravonelle Yazzie is not an actress. And before taking on the role in a small, two-line piece, she’d never recorded her voiceover, been in a studio, or even heard of foley Work.

But she is fluent in Navajo.

And that, combined with her willingness to direct “and just go for it” made her perfect for the role in the Navajo-voiced version of the West’s iconic pasta. a handful of dollars The film will be showing in select theaters on Navajo Nation reservations over the next month.

The movie, called Beeso Dah Yiníłjaa ‘ in Navajo, is the latest commitment in the Navajo National Museum’s campaign to preserve the Navajo language, which, despite being the most widely spoken indigenous language in the United States, is in serious decline.

Manuelito Wheeler, the museum’s director, told NPR that the film has been in the works since 2018. It was originally scheduled for a spring 2020 release but the pandemic has caused some delays.

“I really don’t know what the movie is about or who the characters are,” Yazzie told NPR, laughing as she confessed that she was completely unfamiliar with the 1964 Clint Eastwood classic that made him so famous and introduced many Americana to the film genre.

Yazzie said: “Auditing for this role was a bit of a fluke. She was tasked with taking pictures for Navajo Times when she learns there are two female speaking parts in the movie.

“I can read my lines and pronunciation very well…so I figured out what the heck,” she said, adding that she was also encouraged by the success of her previous projects. Museum.

Ravonelle Yazzie in the recording studio plays Marisol, a beautiful young woman imprisoned then freed by The Stranger in the Navajo dub version of “A Fistful of Dollars”.

Ravonelle Yazzie / Ravonelle Yazzie

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Ravonelle Yazzie / Ravonelle Yazzie

Ravonelle Yazzie in the recording studio plays Marisol, a beautiful young woman imprisoned then freed by The Stranger in the Navajo dub version of “A Fistful of Dollars”.

Ravonelle Yazzie / Ravonelle Yazzie

In 2013, the Navajo National Museum, based in Window Rock, Ariz., teamed up with Lucas Films to voice a version of Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope and followed in 2016 with Disney’s Looking for Nemo.

The idea to port popular, mainstream American films to the Navajo – also known as Diné – came from Manuelito Wheeler, the museum’s director.

“We wanted to do a project that was fun and got people excited,” Wheeler told NPR.

From the outset, the films, casting and even writing, he says, are all about “creating a space for open dialogue about why we don’t speak our language.” me more.”

That includes Wheeler until he gets married. Although he was born on a reserve and spent his established years there, it was his wife, a teacher and fluent Navajo speaker, who helped him learn the language. .

An archival photograph from the Southwest Studies Center at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, shows an unidentified group of Indigenous students who attended the Ramona School of Industry in Santa Fe.

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Susan Montoya Bryan / AP

An archival photograph from the Southwest Studies Center at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, shows an unidentified group of Indigenous students who attended the Ramona School of Industry in Santa Fe.

Susan Montoya Bryan / AP

Navajo speakers are running out

In 2017, Navajo Times report there are about 7,600 people only Navajo is alive speakers and more than 171,000 fluent speaker.

And the drop in recent decades has been shocking. The publication states that 93% of Navajos spoke the language in 1980 but that number dropped to 51% in 2010.

Sovereign tribal states and the federal government of the United States have embarked on a series of programs aimed at reviving indigenous languages ​​across the country that have been wiped out or to the brink of extinction by policies. brutal and punishing colonialism. The 1819s Civilization Fund Act kicked off a terrible era of forced assimilation that eventually led to Indian boarding school. The schools, which operated from 1860 until 1978, were part of a federal plan to strip indigenous children of their cultural and linguistic identity.

Among the government’s efforts to re-establish mother tongues are early education and Head Start programs as well as inclusive language schools for young children.

Navajo elders wanted their own version of a Western classic

Wheeler hopes that the films will appeal to everyone from young to old. The first two films were intended to appeal to younger audiences, but after those projects, he says he’s begun to listen to older people in the community.

“” You should do a Westerner,” they will tell me.

“And then I think about it, and their age group are the primary language keepers of Navajo and probably all of the indigenous peoples… so that’s stuck in the back of my mind. my mind.”

There’s only one problem and it’s a big deal, Wheeler said.

Traditional Westerners do a poor job of providing positive portraits of Native Americans. “Typically they are very offensive, whether they are belittling the natives or portraying them as primitive or barbaric and brutal.”

But there are no Native Americans in Sergio Leone’s 1964 film. He thought, problem solved!

Another plus is the style of the movie. Western Spaghetti, which was new to American audiences at the time, had a crude look and featured flawed anti-heroes – the exact opposite of westerners in white, glossy, glossy hats. sevens of the 50’s.

“I mean, it’s great,” Wheeler said. “I think that’s going to appeal to younger Navajos who really have no interest in the genre. It’s not part of the world they’re growing up in but they can connect with this. .”

The absence of Native American characters in the spaghetti west, known as Beeso Dah Yiníłjaa ‘ in Navajo, was the perfect choice for dub because it didn’t contain any offensive stereotypes, Navajo Nation Museum director Manuelito Wheeler told NPR.

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United Artists / Getty Images

The absence of Native American characters in the spaghetti west, known as Beeso Dah Yiníłjaa ‘ in Navajo, was the perfect choice for dub because it didn’t contain any offensive stereotypes, Navajo Nation Museum director Manuelito Wheeler told NPR.

United Artists / Getty Images

Young generations need help

For Yazzie, being a part of the movie was a deeply meaningful experience.

Although very fluent, the 27-year-old said she rarely gets a chance to say it in her day-to-day life. She’s a student at San Diego State University, and she’s only a few months away from earning her master’s degree to become a school counselor.

Raised on the Navajo Nation reservation in Steamboat, Ariz., she was surrounded by language and attended a Navajo immersion school “from kindergarten through my eighth grade.”

It was the key that linked her to her grandmother, who moved in with the family when Yazzie was still a toddler. “She only speaks Navajo.”

But more recently, she says, “I feel like I’m losing a little bit because I’m not training anymore,” she says. And even when she does visit, her mother and family tend to learn English pretty quickly.

“My mother went to boarding school and my uncles went to boarding school and trauma is still a part of it,” explains Yazzie.

But she was steadfast in her determination not only to not lose sight of the language and all its complex nuances, but also to convey it, she said.

“I think that depends on us too. Younger generations. We have to let our parents know that we want to learn. That’s how we can continue… is you have to help us. Speak to me in the Navajo!” she said.

At the early screening of Beeso Dah Yiníłjaa ‘ she said she would think about her grandmother who passed away a few years ago and who loves cinema even though she doesn’t speak english. She’s a fan of the West “because they’re pretty easy to understand because of all the action.”

“I can’t wait to be in a theater and be around people who will really appreciate it or who might think, ‘Hey, I want to learn Navajo or better,'” Yazzie said. “