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Ishi, The Last Yahi
(1994) The
year 1911 was a low point in history for Native Americans. Contact with
white men's diseases and violence had reduced their numbers from over
10 million to less than 300,000. In California, there were only 50,000
Indians alive. Most were living on reservations or had been assimilated
into the general population. It was into this world that Ishi, The
Last Yahi walked. Ishi came to be known as the "last wild Indian in
North America," and his sudden appearance stunned the country. He had
been in hiding for forty years. His tribe was considered extinct,
destroyed in bloody massacres during the 1860s and 70s.
For Alfred Kroeber, an
ambitious young anthropologist at UC Berkeley, Ishi's appearance was
great news. He had been searching for years to find unacculturated
Indians so that he could document true aboriginal life in America. He
arranged for Ishi to come to the Museum of Anthropology in San
Francisco, where he lived for the rest of his life.
 Ishi
lived only four more years, but during
his brief stay he transformed the people around him. His dignity and
sense of self, his tireless dedication to telling his stories and
showing his way of life, and his lack of bitterness towards the people
who had destroyed his own, amazed and impressed everyone who met him.
Ishi, The Last Yahi
is a brand new telling of Ishi's story based on original research.
Narrated by Academy-Award winning actress Linda Hunt, the hour-long,
l6mm color film offers a unique window to aboriginal life in America.
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