#skoden

If you were young and spending too much time online in the late 2010s, you’re probably familiar with the meme. An older Native American man, looking much the worse for wear, raising his fists as if to hurl himself into a fight. It was generally used in a mocking way, often with the deliberate intention of perpetuating a racist stereotype. In places where that stereotype was less familiar, people found comedy in the idea that the man was pathetic. Few seemed to see his humanity.

The #skoden tag came into being as a means of trying to reclaim the image, to take ownership of the meme and restore the balance of power. It’s a contraction of ‘Let’s go then,’ but many people outside Native communities seemed to miss this, finding it mysterious and confusing, at which point it became a sort of rallying cry and a means of trolling back. White people’s frequent failure to recognise that Native people have humour made it even funnier. When it was painted on a water tower, it prompted a panic among local white townsfolk. To Native people used to mistreatment, this was delicious.

Damien Eagle Bear wanted to go further. His documentary, which screened as part of ImagineNative 2025, sets out to restore the dignity of the individual at the centre of it all, whose family had been deeply saddened by what they experienced as an act of bullying against someone they loved. For complex reasons predominantly attributed to their historical experience of racist violence, Native Americans are almost twice as likely to develop alcoholism as the average person. What happened to Pernell Thomas Bad Arm, a Blackfoot man from the Blood Tribe and a member of the Kainai Nation, was already a tragedy; that he became a meme added insult to injury.

It’s rare for any non-famous alcoholic, from any background, to have their story told in a documentary. Though the reality is commonplace, such narratives are largely elided from public conversations about our societies and who we are. Getting close to them, getting at the truth, is difficult, because alcoholics generally find solace in one another, and the memory damage they experience makes them poor witnesses. Eagle Bear does an impressive job, often by focusing on feelings first and addressing moments which speak to character rather than trying to amass a linear assemblage of facts.

Pernell was part of a group of old drunks who hung out in the local park, muttering, one man recalls, like Statler and Waldorf. Several people attest to his willingness to engage in violence, but they cast it in a rather different light from the original meme, explaining that gangs of white boys would routinely beat up vulnerable Native people for entertainment. Pernell, they say, was always fighting to protect his friends.

Another source of stories is the local organisations supporting street people. Of course they don’t learn a great deal about every individual, but when discussing the difficulty of the work and some of the challenges they face, they describe Pernell as a quiet, gentle man. Sure, he was in and out of jail, but his scary reputation was something he had cultivated to keep himself safe, and he didn’t try to scare people when it wasn’t necessary. The tragedy of his situation, they recall, came from his sometime success in getting sober and beginning to rebuild his life, only to lose everything, again and again, as a result of a system which didn’t care about him or take account of his complex needs.

Repeatedly forced to survive on his own resources whilst coping with his condition, Pernell was ingenious. He found a space under a building and made a good camp that he was proud of: warm, dry, hidden, convenient. Other people facing similar struggles admired him. By approaching him on these terms, Eagle Bear is able to craft a documentary that forces viewers to recognise the weight of disadvantage he faced without presenting him simply as a victim. We have the privilege of seeing him as a three dimensional human being, and #skoden becomes a tribute to his fight for justice.

Reviewed on: 09 Jul 2025