Middle Passage Narrative

In a follow up to his highly acclaimed program "Middle School/Middle Passage (The Journey)", TWW Inc. (Talks with Wolves) takes us back inside special classrooms in Brownsville, Brooklyn – a tough, urban neighborhood in the heart of one of the country's most diverse cities. Outside the school walls, the community fights to overcome its legacy of marginalization, which manifests in violence, drug addiction, and other forms of social deviance. Inside the classroom, middle school students struggle against a lack of resources, low expectations and a failing educational system in order to gain the skills and aptitude necessary for a successful and productive life.

In the midst of these challenges, the young people at PS/IS 298  & PS 150 are introduced to an innovative arts and literacy program. Using an innovative arts-based curriculum, teaching artists take these students on a journey into the history of African American and Native American peoples. Through theater, visual arts and dance, these children explore their shared heritage, bringing up questions about their own marginality, identity and resilience.

This year, the curriculum focuses on the legacy of Black Indians, a little-known ethnic community made up of Americans with both African and Native heritage. The term Black Indians is unfamiliar to many, and their stories are excluded from most historical narratives of both African-American and Native American cultures, yet the history of Black Indians provides students with a unique model of inclusion, collaboration and resistance.

Along with the students, the viewer delves into the interesting and unique history of the Black Indians. Although the U.S. government attempted to restrict and punish alliances between African slaves and Native Americans, keeping them segregated in order to further disempower them, these communities often joined together to fight against their common oppressors. In other forms, the government invented "The 5 civilized tribes-Cherokee/Choctaw/Chickasaw-Creek-Seminole" to copy the ways of America, buying African Slaves. Some Native American communities worked to free African slaves, while some freed slaves provided assistance and support to displaced Indians. Some used or appropriated a "mixed" identity, in order to escape laws that would seize their land or bind them into slavery. As time passed, many Indians lived in urban centers, outside of reservations, and formed close bonds with African-Americans – while some African-Americans fled to reservations in search of freedom -- others20were taken from plantation by the native Maroon society. In other ways, while natives were being forced or their lands "Trail of Tears", the African Slaves were never returned. They stayed with the New families and build new bonds between each other. In Military, such as the Buffalo soldiers that were recruited to hunt natives, many AWOL and joined the nations, other military such as 1st Kansas colored that had both cultures. Even from sailing jobs, many "jumped ship" and joined the nations in Haiti. Schools that had African/native students, outlaws with both blood, famous people such has Langston Hughes with African/Native ancestry. So many more circumstances. With a fact that 85% of African Americans from the US and the Caribbeans have African/Native ancestry.

With the help of dedicated teaching artists, the children at PS/IS 298 & PS 150 explore this history through a range of arts projects. The arts encourage learning as a process of discovery – from practicing Native American dance, to crafting masks and other traditional arts, to writing and performing original narratives, these young people connect deeply to the material, and as they do so, begin to draw connections between the history of this exploited minority and their own histories.

As they contemplate the reality of exclusion suffered by Black Indians – exclusion from the dominant society, due to their minority status, as well as from their own cultures, due to their mixed identities – these young people come face to face with their own exclusion, which keeps them ghettoized in the city's worst schools, often without the resources or support to make it out. The viewer is confronted with the inequalities these children battle against. After all the emphasis on saving the city's f ailing schools, the gap between white and minority student educational achievement remains largely unchanged. Only 14% of African-American eighth graders achieve at a "proficient" level in Math, and only 12% are rated proficient in English. Issues like these extend far beyond the classroom, grossly limiting what these young people can do and become. What is the fundamental in equality that is keeping these young people from succeeding, and what can be done to reverse this devastating pattern?

Drawing striking parallels between these marginalized communities, Middle School/Middle Passage (Black Indians) makes a strong a statement – not only about the importance of arts programs for children's development and learning, but also about the oppression of black children in the nation's failing schools, and the need to learn from history in order to reverse the trend of illiteracy and lack of opportunity for this community.

Though the program takes place primarily in small classrooms, these rooms become alive with a historical narrative that excites the imagination of students and viewers alike. Footage of the students' learning process is complemented by one on one interviews with teaching artists, school administrators, and leading scholars in the fields African American and Native American histories. Captured with an intimate shooting style that weaves together verité scenes with revealing and intimate interviews, the film chronicles the students' progress over time as they are transformed through reconnecting to their ancestry, coming to terms with the injustice and violence in their collective history, as well as the beauty and resilience embodied in their people.

 In the end, even while confronting the viewer with the harsh realities of oppression, Middle School/Middle Passage (Black Indians) paints a beautiful portrait of resistance, of marginalized communities coming together to fight oppression, of the power of culture and rituals sustained through the ages, and most importantly, of the hope of creating a better future, by owning, understanding, and celebrating our pasts