The Gift

Native American lore has it that when Sky Woman fell through a hole in the sky and landed upon the earth, she had corn under her fingernails. Corn was the legacy that she bequeathed to her daughters, which was further handed down through the generations until the earth grew rich with the green and gold stalks. The Gift offers both a beautifully photographed celebration of corn's central and sacred role in Native American culture and a brief history of the crop's pre-Columbian cultivation and spread from Mesoamerican roots to the larger world. In attempting to tell its story, the video swings rather haphazardly from Native American communities in Northern Ontario, Canada, south to the state of Chiapas, Mexico, interviewing farmers, corn vendors, shamans, anthropologists, and others about the personal, cultural and political significance of corn (including the impact of NAFTA on Mayan corn-based economy). Unfortunately, while the video has its moments (the wise observations of Cornell-educated Native American midwife Katsi Cook about the relationship between scientific knowledge and traditional "indigenous knowledge," for example), these moments never quite come together into an effective whole. There's also a slight tendency throughout this piece to ever-so-slightly gloss native wisdom and folk practices with a kind of romanticism that becomes just plain annoying after awhile. And what's with those three sylphlike women in bogus native/ballet regalia doing a corn dance on a misty cornfield studio set? Just plain corny. Optional. Aud: H, C, P. (G. Handman)