This Sunday, Ithaca’s Cinemapolis will host a special screening of Neither Wolf Nor Dog, a film based on the book by Kent Nerburn. The event is part of the Gayogo̱hó:nǫʼ Learning Project’s ongoing film series, which highlights Indigenous stories and perspectives.
The film tells the story of a white writer drawn into the life and teachings of a Lakota elder named Dan. For Nerburn, the book wasn’t a literary project — it was an extension of the years he spent working on the Red Lake Reservation in northern Minnesota.
“I didn’t come to it as an author,” Nerburn said. “I came to it as a teacher. I taught on the Red Lake reservation for three years during an oral history project, which is what really resulted in the book Neither Wolf Nor Dog being done.”
The film adaptation was directed by Steven Simpson, who made the film with a skeleton crew.
“He had just one camera. He was the only cameraman, and he had a soundman with him. ... It was a shoestring operation, and I thought he did a wonderful job,” Nerburn said.
At the heart of the film is Dave Bald Eagle, the Lakota elder who played Dan.
“He was a Lakota speaker before he was an English speaker, so his whole cognitive orientation, his whole way of understanding the world, was through a Lakota mindset. And that comes through in his characterization, in his way of presenting his answers, his facial expressions.”
Nerburn took care to avoid turning the story into a tale of a white man’s transformation, something he feared would fall into the “white savior” trope.
“The thing I was most afraid of was the ‘white man gains wisdom from the Indian’ ... a story about a white man becoming a wise man because of his dealings with the Native people.”
For Nerburn, both the book and the film are an invitation to reflect on stories that are too often ignored.
“The Native experience has essentially been expunged from our historical narrative,” Nerburn said. “We have built an American mythology and American historical story that has not listened to their point of view.”
Neither Wolf Nor Dog screens Sunday, June 1, at Cinemapolis in Ithaca. For more information, visit cinemapolis.org.