WILD INDIAN: FILM REVIEW
Lyle Mitchell Corbine Jr.’s Wild Indian can be described as violent in its own right; there is murder, abuse, strangling, and even a (brief) shoot-off. However, the crux of the film’s violence lies not in the number of limp, buried bodies or the amount of brute force used, but rather in the anger that bubbles within its protagonists. In his intimate debut feature, The First Nations writer-director conducts a character study, placing two Ojibwe cousins at the heart of a childhood murder and exploring the way that a decades-old secret embeds itself in their lives and consciousness.
Corbine’s Wild Indian revolves around two Ojibwe cousins named Mak’wa (Michael Greyeyes) and Ted’O (Chaske Spencer), who grew up on a Wisconsin reservation in the Midwest. Living in poverty, they both become each other’s saving grace. Mak’wa’s home life is plagued with neglect and abuse from his parents, and his school life is marked by bullying from his peers. Such suffering builds a deep sense of resentment inside Mak’wa — one that eventually translates into him senselessly murdering his classmate.
Mak’wa enlists Ted’O to help him bury the body, thereby asking him to share the guilt. The film then fast-forwards to a few decades later when the two boys are adults and living drastically different lives from each other. Mak’wa has changed his name to Michael and is engulfed in a soul-sucking corporate culture — one that makes him filthy rich yet also brings out his deepest insecurities. On the contrary, Ted’O has frequent brushes with the criminal justice system, and when he finally gets out, it’s with facial tattoos and a long-standing criminal record.
However, unlike Michael, Ted’O still possesses empathy and a desire to make things right. Michael, on the other hand, wants to put his past as far behind him as possible. He hangs Native American paintings on his wall as decoration, but anxiously asks his white co-worker if his braid is getting too long. He embraces his skinny, blonde white wife in his arms when he gets home, but goes to the strip club later and pays a dancer to let him choke her. Both Michael and Ted’O continue to be weighed down by guilt and shame — despite projecting these feelings in different ways.
Wild Indian excels at crafting characters that fail to exist within a vacuum. Many of their traumas are generational; Corbine makes this point clear from the opening of the film, which includes a title card that reads, “Some time ago, there was an Ojibwe man, who got a little sick and wandered West.” The camera pans to a man covered in pox blisters, reflecting stories that the director says he heard about his Ojibwe tribe, in which people would wander upriver if they got sick from diseases caught from white settlers. They would only come back if they got better. The film speculates on Michael’s behavior, begging the question: Will he ever come back? Will he ever heal from his “sickness”?
In a predictable turn of events, Michael and Ted’O’s paths inevitably cross in adulthood. Such guilt can only be cast away for so long before bubbling to the surface; it was always a ticking time bomb that both cousins knew would eventually go off. Corbine’s Wild Indian attempts to explain the events that occur when it finally does — the result is both a meditation on morality and an open-ended contemplation of one man’s attempt to absolve himself of guilt.