Dances With Wolves  is showing on cable this week. Just like most other weeks, come to think of it.  Hours of Kevin Costner morphing into the consummate wannabe under the tutelage of the ever-patient Kicking Bear, played by Graham Greene.

I’m almost embarrassed to admit how many times I’ve seen Costner’s John Dunbar gain the trust of the wary, untamed “Two Socks,” the wolf  serving as the  none-too-subtle metaphor for the Lakota. How many times I’ve wanted to take a baseball bat to my TV screen listening to Mary McDonnell’s verbally palsied pidgin English. And that madhouse hair of hers. Yeeesh. 

When it was released 17 years ago—yes, it’s been nearly a generation—DWW  was heralded as a masterpiece of sorts, a film that humanized Indians by portraying fully-developed characters speaking their native tongue.

But that was then, and then isn’t now. The film has grown wearisome; the portrayal of John Dunbar as the White superhero swooping in to save the Indians was just a new age version of an old, old tale. But maybe, just maybe, it’s time to rethink that idea. Maybe, just maybe, Dances With Wolves  isn’t so bad after all. 

That’s right. Maybe… 

I say this with more than a little trepidation. But recent events, or shall I say, films, have caused me to revisit my visceral dislike of most anything Costner. This past weekend, Marcus Nispel’s $30 million gore-fest Pathfinder  was released nationwide. A historical epic, for sure, but dammit, it has Indians in it fighting Vikings and yet another opportunity to showcase Native acting talent including Jay Tavare, Nathaniel Arcand, and the Al Sharpton of Native America, Russell Means. It even cast a Maxim  Magazine pin-up girl, Moon Bloodgood as the Native love muffin of the White hero. Nah, she ain’t Indian, but she looks close enough, right? 

Alas, alas. Pathfinder  also has something else. Karl Urban. He-from-Lord-of-the-Rings  plays a Viking boy raised by Indians who, 15 years later, is leading the fight against said Vikings on behalf of his adopted homedogs. Probably because they’re too…what?  Dumb… naïve…noble… to go eyeball to eyeball with the plundering Scandinavian invaders? 

So that’s what we get. Two hours of Karl, and not a particularly buff Karl at that, resplendently bouncing his man-boobs and stringy hair across the screen while the Natives…remember them?….serve as poignant backdrops. But it didn’t start out that way, nosiree.  There was plenty o’ screen time and speaking parts for Natives in the original filming; yet in the final cut, the little dialogue that remains is laced with classic Tonto-talk. "He must find how own way. His heart is full of vengeance." 

Where’s my baseball bat? 

Several years ago, Hollywood seized another opportunity to depict Natives onscreen in the miniseries Into the West.  Yeah, it was historical—of course  it was historical—but dammit, it had Indians in it but this time they weren’t fighting Vikings they were fighting for survival during the era of Westward expansion. 

The miniseries had it all—Spielberg, TNT, every Native actor from Canada and the States you can think of—and it was looking good indeed for those of us who thought that this time we’d see a galloping step forward from what DWW  wrought years earlier.  

Well, no Costner or Urban, but let me put it this way. You know you’re in trouble when you see the medicine wheel symbolically tied to the wagon wheel, or worse yet, the name of the featured family, the “Wheelers.”  And that was the good part of Into the West.  Despite nodding to the Sand Creek Massacre, boarding schools and Wounded Knee, the miniseries pretty much minimized the Native experience, treating their story as poignant backdrops. Sound familiar? 

Which leads me to where I am today. 

Looking for Mr. Dunbar.  

Bad hair, Costner’s nekkid butt, and pathologically evil cavalry men aside, Dances With Wolves  included something signficant. Native characters who were able to speak, think and be something more than a poignant backdrop.

In Hollywood, almost two decades later, they still haven't figured that out.