Bury My Guilt at Wounded Knee (Hollywood “Discovers” the Indians. Again.)
September 23rd, 2006 by Carole Levine“It began with Christopher Columbus, who gave the people the name Indios. Those Europeans, the white men, spoke in different dialects, and some pronounced the word Indien, or Indianer, or Indian. Peaux-rouges, or redskins, came later…” Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
Dee Brown wrote his ground-breaking book in 1970. Ground-breaking for white folks, anyhow, in that it was the first mass appeal account of the true Native experience in
Few non-Natives had even heard of
This was years after Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus; after we watched the attack dogs and fire hoses aimed at protesters in
Native
A lot has happened since then; some good, some not so good. Russell Means, Dennis Banks, and John Trudell shook the sensibilities of the sleeping masses and even kids from
White America had discovered the Indians. Again.
In the world of entertainment, John Wayne was put out to pasture and replaced with Robert Redford and Kevin Costner. They loved Indians; so much so that they even cast them in their movies!
Yes, some progress has been made. Real Natives are making movies with real Native actors about real Native lives. Meanwhile, the real Natives making movies with real Native actors about real Native lives; well, they don’t have the power and money to reach the kids from
They do what self-respecting mega-wealthy, do-as-I say-not-as-I-do liberals in the entertainment industry can always be counted on doing. To assuage their white guilt, they toss a couple o’ bones to the aggrieved minority while actually perpetuating the very stereotypes they profess to abhor.
Case in point: HBO is filming a miniseries based on Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee to be aired next year. Hiring the crème de la crème of the Native acting world, HBO is putting ‘em in buckskin breeches and slapping on the war paint one more time.
You better appreciate it. You’re gonna fight the
White America has discovered the Indians. Again.
Self-flagellation never felt so good.
So what do you conclude…that Hollywood shouldn’t make any more historical documentaries about Indians? That the American people know Native history well enough and don’t need any more lessons or guilt trips? In other words, how many documentaries are too many? Have we really reached the point of saturation already?
Comment by robschmidt — September 23, 2006 @ 4:38 pm
Let’s start with your first question, Rob, about whether or not Hollywood should make any more period pieces. My answer? When the big studios create a similar ratio of Native-centric contemporary dramas, action movies, comedies and soap operas versus historical that are made about whites, then I’ll stop yapping. It’s not a question of whether a historical drama per se is a bad thing in and of itself, it’s that it’s the ONLY thing coming out of Hollywood with Indians as the central theme. Nobody loves history more than I do; but natives live in the here and now, which a lot of nimrods don’t realize.
Question two…about guilt trips. Guilt trips are only beneficial when they spur the guilty into positive action. Unfortunately, some use this "virtual cleansing" as a confessional which gets them off the hook for making any substantive changes. Let’s see some real action—more resources earmarked for reservation health care and schools; a concerted effort to denounce negative stereotypes and support Native entreprenuers. I work in social services, Rob. And let me tell you, the spouting of feel-good blather by phonies doesn’t feed one baby, send one kid to college, or give one old person a blanket and medicine.
Lastly, we haven’t reached the saturation point for documentaries—which this production is not. This isn’t Ken Burns. This is TNT—with a little bit more quality, I hope.
Comment by Carole Levine — September 23, 2006 @ 5:53 pm
I thought this was PBS…which would make it the equivalent of Ken Burns.I had a feeling you’d say something like that. Good. That’s why I asked <g>Memo to studios: Make more contemporary Native movies so Carole will stop yapping!
Comment by robschmidt — September 24, 2006 @ 5:13 pm
Oh, it’s HBO, not PBS. Never mind.
Comment by robschmidt — September 24, 2006 @ 6:10 pm
Writerfella here –
The production entity in question is Home Box Office, not TNT or PBS. HBO does high-quality presentations that usually are the result of careful market considerations and demographic research. Thus BURY MY HEART AT WOUNDED KNEE cannot be seen as a ‘bone’ thrown to an aggrieved minority simply because that alone would not be enough reason to justify the commitment of either their ‘power’ or their ‘money’. And it is not a ‘Hollywood’ project either, as it is to be filmed in Canada as a ‘runaway’ production. In any case, HBO has little reason to wish to reach ‘the kids in Laguna Beach’ because they aren’t the ones who pay for cable or satellite TV or even ‘movies on demand’.
The decline of westerns as an entertainment form was the actual reason ‘Indians’ disappeared from films and television. Historically, television series about contemporary Natives never have performed well enough to keep themselves on the air and before the public. HAWK with Burt Reyolds, a series about a NYC investigator in the district attorney’s office, went 17 episodes. NAKIA with Robert Forster, about a marshal on a Southwest Native reservation, went fewer than that. Apparently, the general run of the American TV audience, and especially ‘the kids in Laguna Beach’, weren’t watching. During TV pilot season, a contemporary drama or sitcom about Natives surfaces occasionally, only to find no takers because of poor past performance.
And John Wayne was not ‘put out to pasture’, he was put under it. Robert Redford has been in films and TV since 1960, so he hardly qualifies as any kind of replacement for John Wayne, who was his contemporary. Kevin Costner has made three westerns total and the stalled sequel to his DANCES WITH WOLVES is being done by other people, if it gets done at all.
Like myself, my uncle T. Dan Hopkins is Kiowa and an actor, and has just auditioned for BURY MY HEART AT WOUNDED KNEE. Most assuredly, he worries first about getting the job and worries least about the production’s content, though since it is HBO it will be of superb quality.
Lastly, Russell Means and Dennis Banks and John Trudell shook no one’s sensibilities but their own, becoming household words which later translated into books, paid public appearances, and new careers as artists and movie actors. The people they allegedly championed truly are no better off than they were before any of AIM’s ilk came on the scene. In some cases, the people are worse off, such as Native students at the University of Oklahoma. Once, Natives there were a symbol of pride because a costumed Native danced on the football and baseball fields during games. In 1970, AIM came to Norman, OK, and led a protest that ‘Little Red’ constituted a degrading image for American Indians. The Native mascot and symbol of pride was ended after such protests and today Native students are harrassed by frat rednecks who also trash, burn, and urinate on the Indian Heritage Week tipis and cultural displays. Someone’s sensibilities were shaken, to be sure, and AIM went its way assured only that their protest had succeeded and that they had won the day for themselves.
All Best
Russ Bates
‘writerfella’
Comment by writerfella — September 25, 2006 @ 7:56 pm
Russ, you bring up so many points, this could merit several new blogs!
Let’s see~~reference to "TNT" was for the type of genre they are famous for, not the actual network producing the series. Sorry if I misled with that comment.
I actually started writing a lengthy response, but I have to learn to know when to shut up (and yes, Rob, stop yapping) and let others hold court. Your views are certainly interesting, Russ, even provocative, and worth further discussion in future blogs. Thanks for jumping in.
Comment by Carole Levine — September 25, 2006 @ 8:25 pm
Writerfella here –
Future blogs? By All Means (but not Russell Means). Russ Bates is a Kiowa Native science fiction writer and thus is a great believer in futures, especially for our Native peoples. My best known credit was placing the first Native American aboard the Starship ENTERPRISE in the Emmy-winning "How Sharper Than A Serpent’s Tooth’ episode of The Animated STAR TREK, which is due out on DVD Nov. 21. writerfella never intends to be provocative, it just happens that way.
All Best
Russ Bates
‘writerfella’
Comment by writerfella — September 25, 2006 @ 9:04 pm
Speaking of Means, Russ, take a look at my piece on the inimitable (other Russell) in the most recent edition of NAICA: http://www.thenaica.org/edition_three/index.html
So you wrote that episode of Star Trek? Hey, that’s pretty impressive. I’m going to have to check it out:)
Comment by Carole Levine — September 25, 2006 @ 9:24 pm
Writerfella here –
And now I will tell you a story. My sister and brother-in-law , Joan and Richard, were teachers at an Indian school outside Albuquerque. I was dragooned by my parents to take them to New Mexico so they could visit and commune with their grandchildren. My brother-in-law Richard asked if I could appear before the Native children in his school and then show them my STAR TREK episode, as I as a writer would fit in with their program of bringing Native artists to influence and inspire the children to possibilities that Natives might achieve. Somehow, the info that I was to appear got altered. ‘Russell Bates’ was transmuted into ‘Russell Means’ and ‘Dennis Banks’, and that meant that AIM was coming to their campus. The school suddenly went on high alert and extra security was hired because AIM supposedly had chosen to send a representative to their school, or so they believed. On the appointed day, I went to the school with my brother-in-law and we were greeted by armed security men who were ready to fire on ‘AIM activists’ out to turn their school into anarchy. Holy moly! Thus, we ignored the security and instead went to the school auditorium where I spoke for a few minutes, and then showed my Emmy-winning STAR TREK episode, "How Sharper Than A Serpent’s Tooth." The children loved it and even the armed security personnel confessed to enjoying the episode.
All I know is this: interpretation sometimes is larger than life, but sometimes life is larger than interpretation.
All Best
Russ Bates
‘writerfela’
Comment by writerfella — September 26, 2006 @ 2:19 am
I’ll have to agree with Russ on this one. We liberals never do things for less than noble reasons. <g>
Comment by robschmidt — September 26, 2006 @ 4:23 am
hi carole, its joel… nice article and stuff… actually, this is a test of previews… hmm, i dont know how they’re supposed to work!
Comment by admin — September 26, 2006 @ 8:29 pm
Great topic Carole!
Russ, I love many of your comments and I disagree with a few. Either way, it’s all good. I agree totally with the part about Russell, Dennis and John. Maybe in the beginning AIM was created to do good and to help Indian people. Sadly, in the end it appears, it may have done more harm than good….except for it’s founders.
I disagree with the fact that if it’s HBO it must be great. Like every other studio, they are in it to make money. This is not a documentary, it is entertainment. If it were a documentary we would be allowed to hold them to higher standard. Because it is not, they are allowed to take "artistic liberty." Whether they do so or not is yet to be seen. One would hope they would pay close attention to detail, but that may be too much to ask. We can only hope that they use decent wigs or hair extensions. Nothing worse than seeing some of the best Indian talent around put into bad wigs. Almost as bad as seeing them appear in factually incorrect productions.
I absolutely understand about the need for Native actors to worry about getting the job so they can earn a paycheck, but I don’t agree completely that it should be the first thing to think about. Maybe on equal par with the content or even more importantly, the amount of the pay. Should qualified Indian actors make less than say equally qualified White actors, just because they are Indian? I don’t believe salaries were an issue with this production, but they have been an issue on other productions recently.
As far as interest in shows about Indians, the examples you gave didn’t seem to include any with Indian actors. I haven’t looked lately but are Burt Reynolds or Robert Forster Native? If so, it is news to me. Not that I am an expert in any way, hell, I’m not even Indian, but I would think if they were Native, with the influx of Indian wannabes out there, by now they would surely have spread it all over the place that they possessed enough Indian blood to make even the toughest blood quantum tribes happy.
I believe that America as a whole is smarter than Hollywood tends to give us credit. It’s not that we don’t have interest in a show about modern Natives. It’s that Hollywood and the modern Native community have never given us a show worthy of our interest. One that shows us real modern Native life, not some new age, all Natives have long hair, high cheekbones and are able to solve crimes because some eagle flew overhead and they had a vision showing them the real killer, or as Carole so eloquently put it….as noble symbols of oneness with nature and spirituality, LOL. You are right in saying Americans don’t want that crap.
What is needed is for a good if not great Indian writer to put down on paper the real lives of Indian people. We already know that white people don”t do a very good job of trying to tell the intimate details of Native family life on or off the reservation. It’s like trying to have an Italian woman convey what life as a Black man is like. We also know that white America tends to dislike the guilt card …unless it is being done with wit and humor. So give me a modern Indian comedy or even a one hour drama. Just leave out the stereotyping unless it’s in there for a laugh or to prove a point.
Men in Trees had a realistic, albeit brief scene in a sweat lodge on a recent episode. It was one of the best portrayals I have seen of "real" Indians in a long time. If they could only do a whole show based upon such "realness." Show me a comedy about modern Native life and I’ll show you a hit. Maybe throw in an episode where the NDN kid raised by educated Native parents or at least one Native Parent and maybe one White or Black parent, living in the burbs who goes to spend a summer with Grandma on the Rez. Show his or her first encounter with a 49 after the local Pow wow and the "cultural shock" the kid goes through. Teach America about real Native people, their lives, their own special brand of humor and their issues while giving us a laugh or two. Throw in some known as well as up can coming Native talent in both lead and supporting roles and you could have a winner.
Yes, I got off on a tangent. Not the first time nor the last. Bottom line is that it appears many if not all here are striving for the same thing although we may go about it in different ways. Let’s just hope that at some point Hollywood listens. While many productions are shot outside of the US, often to save money, most of them are still financed and produced by the major US studios.
Liaison
Comment by Liaison — October 3, 2006 @ 12:42 pm
Russ was wrong about "Bury My Heart" being of "superb quality." Oops. Russ’s episode of animated "Trek" was just average, as you’ll see if you watch the whole series. I’m not sure how it won an Emmy, but I’m a bit tired of hearing about it. Burt Reynolds and Robert Forster are part-Indian but don’t identify themselves as Indians. Most Indians don’t identify them as Indians either. You’re right that there hasn’t been a serious attempt to portray modern-day Indians on a continuing TV series, Liaison. That’s why Adam Beach’s role in "Law & Order: SVU" is a breakthrough of sorts.
Comment by robschmidt — June 6, 2007 @ 5:01 am