It's been shown to students at a high school in Monument Valley, Ariz., and to employees at the Pittsburgh Zoo & PPG Aquarium. It's been selected as a featured entry by several prestigious film festivals. Adults have stood up afterward in tears to praise it; young people have lingered afterward to ask questions about it.

	Ramon Mena Owens photos "Nettie" from the film "When Your Hands Are Tied." Click photo for larger image.

Highland Park resident Mia Boccella Hartle's film, "When Your Hands Are Tied," about young American Indians learning to create spiritually meaningful lives in a modern world, has been quietly and steadily building an audience of fans since its release in September. Its fans can be found, most notably, among native youth, who are responding to its positive message.

Instead of a film dredging up the usual fare of a reservation's isolation and despair amid high rates of alcoholism, drug abuse and domestic violence, Boccella Hartle took a different tack when making the 56-minute film. She talked with musicians, skateboarders, rap artists and break dancers, as well as teens on the edge of puberty -- all of whom live on various pueblos in the Southwest and all of whom have found positive new ways to live their lives, despite a paucity of role models in contemporary society.

"These young native children don't ever get to turn on the TV, open a magazine, watch movies and see themselves reflected in the contemporary world," she said. "If you ever see a Native American on television, they're always playing an Indian. Other than that, they're virtually invisible in the mainstream media. Watching how they try to deal with that was what led me to do this project."

Last fall, "When Your Hands Are Tied" was accepted into the 31st annual American Indian Film Festival in San Francisco and was one of six out of 350 entries selected for a showing at the Palm Springs Native American Film Festival in March. A week ago, the film earned the Empowering Youth Award at the Sin Fronteras Film Festival. This weekend it's showing in Albuquerque during the Gathering of Nations Pow Wow, which attracts nearly 5,000 American Indians annually.

At least geographically speaking, Boccella Hartle might seem an unusual choice for documenting the lives of young American Indians. Born in Pittsburgh of Italian-American parents and a graduate of Sacred Heart High School in Shadyside, Boccella Hartle, 41, attended Dickinson College and graduated from Carnegie Mellon University. During her college years she had planned to become an artist but found herself drawn to filmmaking.

"With some pieces of artwork, the most you can get is a few seconds of a person's attention. With film, you have a lot more time to impact an audience, and you have a better capacity to reach in and evoke different emotions, making people cry or laugh and have their undivided attention."

"When Your Hands Are Tied" is a movie about hope, not anger. Click photo for larger image.

She spent years working odd jobs on films being shot in Pittsburgh before moving to Santa Fe, N.M., in 1992, where she continued to work on film sets as a dresser or a propmaster, from Westerns, to "Natural Born Killers" to indie films like "The Tao of Steve." She also met her husband, Tom Hartle, a sculptor, and the two married and started thinking about raising a family.

In 2001, with movie work in Santa Fe scarce after Canada aggressively wooed filmmakers to shoot there, "We came back to Pittsburgh to visit my parents, and Tom saw all the affordable prices for these big old houses," she said with a laugh.

So they moved back to her hometown, and she went to work at Four Winds Gallery in Shadyside, helping to sell American Indian jewelry and art.

That's when Boccella Hartle met Chris Hennessey, a Four Winds customer, who also works with the Harber Charitable Foundation, a London- and Amsterdam-based philanthropy focusing on children and education.

"We got talking about art and what she was interested in, and she started to tell me how it worried her how people bought these beautiful pieces but couldn't understand how it was made or where it came from," recalled Hennessey. After spending so many years living near Indian communities, "Mia felt that she needed to do something for these people. She couldn't put her finger on it, but she kept talking about some kind of documentary that would give Native American kids some hope. It just came pouring out of her."

"There's this big disconnect between native and non-native people," Boccella Hartle added. "People come into Four Winds and buy all this beautiful work, but their imagination of who could have made it is so limited."

With encouragement and financial support from the Harber Foundation, Boccella Hartle gathered together a crew -- her husband, Tom, shared cinematography duties -- and headed west. Knowing that she couldn't just arrive and expect to be received with open arms, she contacted Marley Shebala, a longtime reporter for the Navajo Times, who was able to open doors for her.

"Mia wanted to do a film of a caliber that would be shown on PBS," said Shebala. "I told her I didn't want to sound racist, but so many of those films are made for non-natives and bypass the natives altogether."

So Shebala introduced Boccella Hartle to a Navajo medicine woman.

"I use her in my work, and I knew she would guide us so that what would result would be something good, that would help all of life," she said.

"We needed to proceed in a spiritual way, which is not always the non-native way," added Boccella Hartle. American Indians have "historically been exploited for so many different things. There's lot of sensitivity in native culture, but they don't always tell you" when you're stepping over the line.

For example, when they were filming a young girl's puberty ceremony, the medicine woman cautioned them that some of the imagery was too sacred to be shown on film.

Elsewhere, "We also see a young girl, Jessica, getting ready to do a traditional dance, but we don't see the dance. There's no reason for us to show it for us to tell the story."

The film also shows teenage males who rap in English and in Navajo about the importance of embracing mainstream culture and education as well as their own native languages, customs and traditions. Apache skateboarders travel outside their reservation, learning about filmmaking and photography while developing a sense of self worth along the way. There's a break-dancing team sponsored by the governor of Nambe Pueblo, who started it to help the young people stay fit and healthy -- while also encouraging them to participate in their traditional dances at home.

Some real edge is provided by Black Fire, a Flagstaff-based Navajo punk rock band that has developed something of a following for its incendiary "alter-native" style, delivering strong messages about uncomfortable topics -- government oppression, relocation of indigenous people, eco-cide, genocide, domestic violence and human rights.

Still, overall, the film is about hope, not anger.

"We knew the film had to be very positive," said Shebala. "Children needed to look at the film and say ... I can get help before I get sick, I'll learn my language, I'll know who I am, and I'll know the beauty of my people."

"I've seen it maybe 30, 40 times, and the people in it just get you. I'm just gripped by what they're saying," added Hennessey.

Copies of the film are available free to individuals or groups, and, Boccella Hartle says, there's been a steady stream of requests from schools, treatment centers and juvenile facilities. The Native Women's Network -- which has links to 30 tribes -- is also using it in their communities.

"A high school language teacher told me she's shown it to her Navajo kids over and over again, and she says that each time they find something new in it," said Boccella Hartle. "The response in native communities has been very emotional. It really seems to be healing these kids."

"I don't think anybody, including her, thought Mia would come up with what she did," said Hennessey. "You can't plan to produce something inspirational, and yet she has."

For more information about the film, log onto www.whenyourhandsaretied.org.