Martha Anderson and other women pull up to a Washington D.C. country club in Mercedes, Jaguars, and BMWs. All pretty women with pretty blonde, redheaded and brunette daughters. Beautiful little girls and young women up to their 20s. All wearing girl scout uniforms. They enter a room and lock the doors behind them. They move to an inner room behind another set of doors and lock those behind them. The girls all sit on the floor in a circle and light candles. Someone with long white hair appears at the center of the circle — an ancient, dark, leather-skinned man. He delivers a sermon in a strange language. The girls and women all repeat after him in the same tongue. Small hands beat on skin-wrapped drums. The chanting and drumming builds to a frenzy.
The mothers prepare Martha's oldest daughter, Carol. They strip her uniform from her and bring her to the old man in the center of the circle. He bares a knife of cut stone. There is a hush of silence. He removes the blanket he wears to reveal a body and arms filled with a thousand scars. He raises the knife. He runs the knife across his arm opening the skin, drawing blood. With his finger he paints Carol's face with his blood. Strange markings. He paints on her chest, then marks her stomach. Close on Carol's face.
Match cut to Carol in a wedding gown. Martha wipes some blood from Carol's eyebrow with her handkerchief. Then kisses her there. Carol marries a young Senator. Martha watches with her husband Ken, CEO of a large industry who is many years her senior, and her 3 other daughters.
A dark-skinned young man with long dark brown hair works his way through the crowd of light-skinned people toward Carol. He comes up to her and kisses her and shakes the Senator's hand. It's Joe, her brother. Martha notices her son. The sight of him startles her. She admonishes him for his long hair, glancing around at the crowd as she does.
Martha's next oldest daughter, Alice, is in love with a boy who is not favored by the 'Council.' Martha is very angry with her. She tells Alice she knows who she has to marry. Alice is in tears. Says she will run off with her boyfriend. Martha tells her they will find her. Alice breaks down. She doesn't care, she'd rather die. Martha holds her, tells her maybe there is a way if they can find a position for her boyfriend to make him worthy of the Council's favor.
Joe tells his dad he made the college football team. Ken is excited, asks him what position. Joe tells his family they'll have to come and see.
Martha and family are at Joe's college football game. Huge letters spell out the word, WARRIORS, in the end zone. The sound of tom-toms break the silence and a yelling, whooping figure dances out onto the field. It's Joe in buckskin pants and loin cloths flapping up and down. Dad breaks out in laughter. The girls are in shock. Martha turns pale. She searches the crowd with her eyes.
Martha demands that Joe be sent to school in Europe. Ken can't refuse his beautiful wife anything.
Joe, drunk, confronts Martha. He tells her he knows she put his dad up to sending him to Europe. He asks her if she is afraid he'll turn into a savage. She slaps him. Tells him never to use that language about a people again. Joe is confused. He storms out of the room. Martha cries.
Later, at a business conference with her husband, Martha spies a necklace from across the room. It is a design she is familiar with, but she doesn't know the woman who is wearing it. She does not approach the woman directly. The woman sees Martha's earrings with similar ancient animal symbols. Martha uses hand sign language. The woman responds the same way. The woman looks over toward a gray-haired gentleman at the speakers' table. It is the U.S. Secretary of the Interior. The woman takes a napkin and draws a stick-figure on it with her lipstick and draws an arrow through it. She hands it to Martha and walks away. Martha stares at the Secretary of Interior and crumples the drawing and puts it in her purse. Carol notices Martha's pallor and remarks that she is turning white. Martha replies that today she wishes she was.
In Europe, Joe's Indian antics continue. He dances for the ladies with nothing but his loin cloths on. It turns on the ladies, young and old. He takes up the bow and arrow and bareback horseback riding. His Indian antics become well-known to the European gossip press.
The Council warns Martha about Joe. Say he can jeopardize all they've worked for the last 50 years. They tell her how far they'll go to prevent it.
Joe comes back to the U.S. for a visit. He is hunted down by four shadowy figures — tough-looking Native American women. They abduct him and take him to a reservation. Joe tells his abductors he won't play Indian anymore. He was just doing it as a lark, he didn't realize it would offend anybody this much. They realize he doesn't know. They release him.
When he is leaving the reservation, he sees one of his mother's friends, Mrs. Conrad, visiting some Native American children there. Seeing him there, she believes he knows. She tells him how lucky he and his mother were. Martha didn't have to give him up at birth to spend his life on the reservation like she had to do with her children who were dark-skinned throwbacks. And were replaced with breeded children who were fair-skinned girls. Joe is in shock, but he doesn't let on.
At home, Joe presses Carol for all the answers. She tells him it could be death to know. He says he already knows. She assures him all his sisters are Martha's children. He was the only throwback and mom died his hair when he was small. Joe asks why it is just women who are doing all the important work. She says there are light-skinned boys doing some work, but it is difficult for even most white men to achieve positions of power. Beautiful women have an easier time of achieving positions of power by marrying power. She tells him the Council Elders couldn't trust the dark skin children who they were putting up for adoption at the reservation with the secret. And that there was always the fear they would have to send him (Joe) to the reservation and couldn't risk telling him.
Joe asks her how they think they can hide this forever. Somebody is bound to let it slip. What would be lost if they did find out, she replies. We would still be much further ahead than if we hadn't attempted this. Our people's might is certainly greater and the degradation of our land is surely less than it would have been under total white control.
Carol tells him only the criminal actions would be dealt with if they found out. Joe asks what criminal actions. Carol tells him mother has been assigned to eliminate the Secretary of Interior to make it possible for dad to be appointed. Joe can't believe it. Believe it, she says. How, he asks. At a function, probably with a poison brew, she thinks.
Joe moves quickly. He sets the Secretary of the Interior up with a very sexy girl he knows and tapes the liaison. He sends the tape to the Secretary and threatens to expose him to the media. The Secretary resigns.
The Council likes Joe's tactics. They take Joe into their confidence. It's that or kill him.
Martha thanks Joe, tells him how hard it's been not being able to tell him all these years. Joe asks his mother how she could deceive his father all this time.
Ken becomes the Secretary of the Interior. Sweeping environmental changes are introduced. Industry labels him a turncoat. He tells them this is his new job and everybody knows he does the best job he can for the people he works for. And now he's working for the public. Joe is proud of his father, but hurting inside with the knowledge his dad doesn't know what's been going on all these years.
On his 30th birthday, Joe opens his present from his father. It's a pair of real moccasins. No words are exchanged.
Martha and other mothers attend more girl scout ceremonies and weddings. Joe works behind the scenes. When they play the wedding march, Martha hears drums. Carol's husband, the Senator, is nominated for the Vice Presidency.
Mothers bring their daughters to a girl scout ceremony at a large building. They shut the doors behind them and move into an inner room. They sit in a circle and light candles. In the center of the circle is the back of a person's head with long dark hair streaked with gray. It's Joe, much older, wrapped in a brightly-colored blanket. A nude young woman is brought to him. He throws off his blanket. He has scars all over him. He presents the stone knife and cuts a wound in his side. He marks the face of the young woman with his blood.
