here I talk about non-Indians living in indigenous communities. …Mostly, it’s for movies, literature, and what not.

Epithets and Implicatures, and History as Damage Control

19 Thursday Apr 2018

Posted by danielwalldammit in Native American Themes, Politics, White Indians

Tags

Football, Indian Mascots, Ives Goddard, Native Americans, Race, Redskins, Sports, Sports Mascots, Washington redskins

I haven’t been monitoring the controversy about the Washington football team that closely for awhile now, but the topic hasn’t entirely escaped my attention. This morning, I took a moment to scan the old Redskinsfacts website, which is a case-study in double-speak if there ever was one. That hasn’t changed.

…either.

One thing I find fascinating and revolting in equal measures is the way the site uses the work of a linguist, Ives Goddard, in defense of the team’s name, If you click on the option to “Get the facts” on the home page of the “Redskins Facts” website, you will be taken to another page telling you about the history of the name. Near as I can tell, that page hasn’t changed in awhile. Here is a screenshot of that history as it is now on 4/19/18:

Screenshot 2018-04-19 12.19.54

With just three items, this is a brief history to be sure, but the omissions aren’t entirely a function of brevity. What they leave out here is every bit as important as what they choose to tell us. Taking their bullet points in reverse order:

Notice they tell us that when the team came into being four players and the head coach “identified themselves as Native Americans.” This wording was carefully chosen to promote a common team legend without actually claiming that legend is true. Defenders of the team name commonly tell us that the team was named after a Native American (William “Lone Star” Dietz). It’s not at all clear that the team name was ever meant to honor him, but more importantly, Dietz’s claims to Native American heritage are questionable at best, having come under intense scrutiny when Dietz stood trial for evading the draft during World War I. The folks at Redskinsfacts.com know very well that team fans team defenders still cite the story of Lonestar Dietz in defense of the team name. Telling us that Dietz claimed a Native American identity enables them to promote that story without actually making any false claims on the topic themselves. So, I guess it’s not an outright lie. More like, a cowardly equivocation.

The second bullet point in this ‘history’ is simply off topic (and rather vague). That prominent native leadership of the 19th century, have referred to themselves as ‘redskins’ does not establish that the term is not now or at any other time free of pejorative implications. Resting as it does in this simple, narrative the claim that some of them have done so does nothing to tell us how they felt about the term or why they came to use it. It doesn’t even enable us to sort which ones called themselves ‘red men’ and which ones called themselves ‘redskins’. It doesn’t address problems of translation. It really doesn’t establish anything except for the sloppy thought process of the website administrator. He’d have to answer a few questions before we could even get to the ‘so what?’ part of the conversation. Or we could just skip to the chase, I suppose.

So what?

The first point in the pseudo-history of the team name is the one that interests me the most. Defenders of the name will often cite Goddard’s article as proof that the term in question is not an insult. (Seriously, I’ve long since lost track of the number of people that have done this,) I always ask them if they have actually read the article. Often that seems to be the end of the conversation. When these folks do tell me they’ve read the article, I ask them if they’ve read the last line in the article. To date, none have answered that question. So, what is the last line in Goddard’s article?

The descent of this word into obloquy is a phenomenon of more recent times.

My point is of course that Goddard didn’t write an article telling us that the term in question is not an insult. He wrote an article telling us that it did not begin as an insult, which is an entirely different claim. It isn’t entirely clear from Goddard’s piece just how he would account for the present significance of the term, but he is very clear on the fact that his own work does not actually address that question. So, the article should leave us with a full stop right around the 1830s. Goddard helps us to understand the use of the term up to that point, and he doesn’t have much to say about anything after that.

Goddard’s work is interesting for a number of reasons, but it doesn’t tell us much about what the term means today, or even what it meant by the end of the 19th century. He does take issue with the claims of at least some modern activists, Susan Shown Harjo being among them, but he himself points out that rejecting her claims about the origin of the term does not prove that many Native Americans find the term objectionable in the present time (p.1). I think Goddard does a pretty good job of showing that Harjo and others have been wrong about the origins of the term, leaving the rest of the case against the team name largely untouched by his article. The correction seems a bit one-sided to me, but at least Goddard has been clear about the limits of his own work on the subject. If he has published anything addressing the later history of the term or correcting any of team’s misuse of his work, I am not aware of it. (If anyone does know of such a response, I would very much appreciate a reference.)

So, why is Goddard’s work the first thing Redskinsfacts.com cites in their history of the term? Well they have to know that many people equate the origin of a term (or at least our earliest known account of it) with its contemporary meaning. This is called the etymological fallacy, and it’s an extraordinarily common mistake. So, they don’t really have to tell us the article proves the term is innocent; the folks at Redskinsfacts.com know very well that is what many of their fans will take away from their reference to the article. Citing Goddard and providing a link to his work enables them to strengthen the impression that the team name is innocent without actually going so far as to say that’s what Goddard has shown. They invite their readers to indulge in an etymological fallacy, just as they invite us to think of Lonestar Dietz as a Native American when he was likely an outright fraud. It’s fascinating to see how the site avoids making the false claims in question, even as they invite readers to infer those very claims from the one they do make.

Don’t get me wrong. This isn’t even the worst of it. Defense of the Washington football team has produced all manner of horribles over the years. This isn’t even the worst of it.

Still, it’s pretty damned deceitful.

And cowardly.

Tears of an Uncommon Indian

27 Monday Jan 2014

Posted by danielwalldammit in Native American Themes, Uncommonday, White Indians

≈ 13 Comments

Tags

Authenticity, Commercials, Crying Indian, Environmentalism, Indian, Iron Eyes Cody, Mother Night, Pollution, White Indians

Few commercials have been as memorable as the ‘crying Indian’ from the seventies, and I reckon few commercials have had more impact on people’s behavior. The crying Indian left quite a mark on American popular culture.

I was a kid when I first saw that image, and I distinctly recall the sense of shame I felt upon watching it. It wasn’t just that I’d seen people littering like that, I’d done it myself. In fact, littering was pretty damned common back in those days, hence the commercial! I don’t think it’s a stretch to suggest the image of that crying Indian moved a lot of people to rethink their behavior.

Some of it anyway.

So, I was pretty damned surprised to learn many years later that the crying Indian belonged to a rather unusual tribe. He was Italian. ‘Iron Eyes Cody’ was born Espera Oscar de Corti. He had been playing Indian parts in the movies ever since the 1930s. Cody claimed Cherokee and Cree ancestry during much of that time, but this appears to have been a fabrication.

It’s tempting to think of Cody as an outright fraud, but that doesn’t begin to cover the facts of the matter. By all accounts, he seems to have actually lived the life he proclaimed. Cody married a native woman and adopted native children. He assumed a Native American identity on and off-screen, supported native causes, and essentially became the role he played in real life. Just what the process might have been in his own mind is something of an open question at this point, albeit one that most of us will never have an answer to. He is a rather successful example of a white Indian, a non-Indian who went native, so to speak.

One could well wish the ‘crying Indian’ had been a ‘real Indian’, and it’s hard not to feel a little betrayed to learn the truth of Cody’s ancestry, and yet he still remains a sympathetic figure. It’s tough to let him off the hook entirely for his self-presentation, but it’s also tough to be too hard on him for it. His story reminds me of an old line from Kurt Vonnegut’s book Mother Night; “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”

By that standard I’d say Cody did pretty well in life.

***

The photo above was taken from Cody’s obituary in the Los Angeles Times. Cody has his own Snopes page of course, and the Wiki article on him isn’t bad. Findagrave also has a decent write-up. It’s interesting to note that these sources provide different times and dates for Cody’s birth, with the L.A. Times piece coming in as the outlier with 1916 and Fort Gibson, Oklahoma. The others tell us Cody was born in Louisiana, and in 1904. Cody also features prominently in the documentary, Reel Injun, which is definitely worth a watch.

Ten Little White Indians, Final Volume! (Spoilers Already Spoiled!)

28 Saturday Apr 2012

Posted by danielwalldammit in Movies, Native American Themes, White Indians

≈ 13 Comments

Tags

American Indian, Avatar, Dances With Wolves, Film, Graham Greene, Kevin Costner, Lakota, Last Samurai, Movies, Pawnee, Stereotypes

Bet y’all didn’t notice!

I am one short on my promise of 10 Little White Indians. Well, it turns out that my three-part series on White Indians has four parts, and there is surely a good Monty Python reference in there somewhere, but maybe we’ll save that for another day

***

Let us start with a brief consideration of the near misses.

Wind talkers

WIND TALKERS (2002): I remember when this movie was on its way to the theaters, rumor had it that the flick was about the Navajo Code Talkers. Working as I did then on the Navajo Nation, I was (like a lot of my students and colleagues) really excited to see this part of American history portrayed on screen. My enthusiasm waned considerably when I realized it wasn’t about a Code Talker so much as a white guy who might have to kill a Code Talker if things took a turn for the worse. I don’t think I was the only one who sank in my seat when I realized where this was going.

…not quite a white Indian, but definitely the same sort of bait&switch one normally gets with this theme.

The Last (White) Samurai

THE LAST SAMURAI (2003): Don’t act surprised. You know this movie is about a white Indian. I mean, the Indians are Japanese, but let’s not get too worked up about the details. It’s the same story, just transplanted to a different setting. Tom cruise goes to live with a strange and seemingly savage people. He comes to know their ways and love them. Finally, he leads them in a battle to revitalize the way of life that is so brilliant, it needs an outsider to save it.

What separates this from A Man Called Horse? Geography.

Avatar

AVATAR (2009): I owe this reference to simplycarola as she mentioned it in another discussion. But the story of a human who enters an alien world filled with nature-loving creatures is just too much to pass up. Jake Sully, our hero, in this film struggles to survive among these savages, finds them wonderful, and leads them in war against his own people. Yes, this is a white Indian on another planet. …and the ease with which ‘white’ transits into ‘human’ while the role normally reserved for Native Americans morphs into an altogether alien species, …well that takes icky to infinity!

***

Okay, so what about it? Why does it matter that Hollywood makes so many stories about white Indians?

Truth be told, I don’t see anything wrong with this kind of story. In fact, the subject of white Indians (or any other non-Indians going native) is fertile ground for storytelling. The problem lies rather in the way this persistent theme seems to marks an inability to venture into stories about Indians themselves, a sort of hesitance at the threshold of another interesting subject. We want to know about Lakota, about Cheyenne, about all of these people! But in the end it seems that they prove too strange, their world too foreign to deal with on its own terms, so we end up with a story about someone else, someone who knew them.

That is the problem; in at least some of these cases, the white Indian is a confession of sorts, an admission that certain movie-makers, and perhaps certain audiences are not quite up to the subject at hand.

Non-Natives seem to better appreciate film depictions of Native Americans if we get to see that depiction through the lens of another non-Native. That in itself certainly isn’t a crime, but it does skew the details of the story in odd ways. The frequency with which the white guy gets the red girl is a bit disturbing, as is the myopic celebration of a romance in the midst of a world that is rapidly falling apart around the fair Indian maiden. Are we really supposed to be happy for the hero that he gets the girl, devastated though she must be? And doesn’t the loss of her family and her people merit a little more than a brief moment of regret. Hell, I can’t help wondering if her story isn’t clearly the more dramatic one in every single one of these films. That the Indian maiden is so often portrayed as a kind of princess should drive the irony meter all the way to 11.

And then of course there are the men who come to lead their adopted native communities. It isn’t enough to imagine one’s white self as an Indian, one has to be their leader too! The characters have to out-Indian the Indians (or in the case of Tom Cruise’s, out-samurai the samurai). As far as self-indulgence goes, I have to admit this theme makes me a little ill.

It’s not that these movies are terrible. Okay, some are. (Pathfinder was dreadful!) Others are really quite wonderful.

And some are both at the same time.

***

Dances With Wolves

Which brings us to the 10th and final white Indian. You guessed it, DANCES WITH WOLVES (1990). The narrative is familiar to most by now. This is the story of a white Indian made larger than life and then some. Disturbed by his experiences in the Civil war, John J. Dunbar (Kevin Costner) asks for a post on the frontier and soon finds himself quite alone on the great plains.

In time, Dunbar will befriend a local band of Lakota. He will hunt buffalo with them, help to defend them against Pawnee raiders, and fall in love. His love interest (“Stands-with-a-Fist” played by Mary McDonnell) is herself a white woman, adopted by kicking Bird (Graham Greene), the village Medicine Man. Dunbar soon finds himself on the Indian side of hostilities with the U.S. Army. It is a role he embraces willingly.

There is no happy ending here. Realizing that his presence puts the people in danger, Dunbar leaves with Stands-with-a-Fist, and the movie ends with an epilogue telling us that the Sioux were subjugated 13 years later.

…ouch!

Kicking Bird Takes a Look

This movie has all the elements one might expect from a story about a white Indian, and it presents those elements in truly majestic fashion. The Buffalo-hunting scene alone is enough to warrant at least three viewings of this wonderful movie. And the Indian characters around Dunbar come through with a richness seldom seen in Hollywood productions. Greene proved himself to be especially brilliant.

But Dances With Wolves also has all the vices of a movie about white Indians. Dunbar’s girl is not quite an Indian princess. At least the facts of her life story seem to complicate that theme, but then again she is still the daughter of the most prominent Indian in the story, and Stands-with-a-Fist is fully assimilated when Dunbar finds her. White or not, she occupies the role of an Indian princess to a T (…or maybe a P), helping us to tread old ground in this awful movie.

Stands With a Fist

Do I need to comment on Dunbar’s role as a leader in the battle scenes? He never quite becomes a chief, but Dunbar rallies the troops (…pardon me, warriors) to great effect during a battle scene with the Pawnee. If he lacks a crown (or rather a feather), it is clear enough that Dunbar has already begun to assume the role of a war chief when the final plot twists interrupt his happy ending. As far as the out-Indianing-the-Indians theme goes, Dances With Wolves would have to be considered among the worst offenders.

But of course this magnificent film is best remembered for its nuanced treatment of Indian characters. The film rightfully received much praise for getting past stern warriors and stoic expressions to show us real people with complicated lives and rich personalities living in that Lakota camp. Dances With Wolves did a lot to dispel the Hollywood Stereotypes and introduce people to a fuller sense of the humanity in Indian peoples.

…unless, of course you are a Pawnee. If you are Pawnee, this movie takes all those stereotypes and dumps them right on your shoulders. Don’t get me wrong. Dances With Wolves does not make any overt statement that Pawnee are evil; it just consistently portrays them as the aggressors in every major conflict of the film. (The historical irony is, well a topic for another post.) It is Pawnee that orphaned Stands-with-a-Fist, and it is Pawnee that attack the Lakota village forcing Dunbar to become the white Indian hero that he was meant to be. The closest we get to any indication that Pawnee might not be a uniformly homicidal indigenous nation is a line from one Pawnee warrior questioning the wisdom of his aggressive leader. That one moment, aside, Pawnee appear largely to exist in this movie for the sole purpose of making other people miserable.

In its treatment of Pawnee, Dances With Wolves carries forward a Hollywood tradition. It seems that so many films sympathetic to Indians deal with Cheyenne or Lakota, indigenous peoples that went to war with the Pawnee. Not surprisingly, Pawnee come out bad in the resulting narratives. Even Jack Crabb didn’t have much use for them, as he told us. But if Little Big Man’s treatment of the subject was nuanced, qualified through use of an obvious frame, the treatment in Dances With Wolves seems flat-footed. One cannot help but to think that we are invited to think of Pawnee as the bad Indians in this awful movie just as its main character would.

After all, we do need some sort of villain don’t we?

And here is where I come to wonder about the real significance of Dances With Wolves. I remember the rave-reviews when it came out. I remember the gushing praise from folks happy to finally have a movie that portrays Indians in a positive light. And I wonder how the Hell so many people could have forgotten about Little Big Man? The stereotypes had already been kicked around quite a bit back in that old flick. So, why didn’t people remember the last time someone went out of their way to introduce us to the rich characters living in those tepees? Why did the stereotypes need a fresh thrashing in 1990?

Dances With Wolves

It might well be that those characters faded with time, and what we were left with was the story of the white guy who lived among them.

And therein lies the problem. However wonderful the part, a supporting role is still a supporting role. And that can be a wonderful thing. But one must remember the difference.

When done well, stories about white Indians may give us a glimpse of life in Native American communities, but that glimpse is always filtered through the significance of a character whose role in that world is tenuous at best. At their worst, such films celebrate Native themes only to subordinate them with a (hopefully unintended) message of white dominance. Even at their best, however, one should always remember the real subjects of the story-line are NOT the indigenous people. Whether the treatment of Native American subjects in such films is sympathetic or hostile, nuanced or crass; either way the treatment is filtered through the eyes of the white characters.

The limitation is rather signifcicant.

Ten Little White Indians, Volume III (Despite the Spoilers, These Heroes All Get the Girl)

25 Wednesday Apr 2012

Posted by danielwalldammit in Movies, Native American Themes, White Indians

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

Black Robe, Film, Indian, Last of Mohicans, Movie, Native American, Pathfinder, Russell Means, Sterotype, Wes Studi

Pathfinder

We need a guide to help us through this next installment of Ten Little White Indians. for that purpose, we will turn to PATHFINDER: THE LEGEND OF THE GHOST WARRIOR (2007). Our main character is the sole survivor of a Viking expedition to Vinland sometime before the Columbian exchange. He is discovered as a young boy of about 12 following a battle with the hated dragon warriors (as the vikings are known in the movie). The Wampanoag who take out hero in call him ‘Ghost’, in an obvious reference to his pale skin.

Some years later, we find Ghost (played by Karl Urban) struggling for acceptance and pining for the daughter (‘Starfire’ played by Moon Bloodgood) of a nearby chief called ‘Pathfinder’ (played by Russell Means, yes THAT Russell Means). It is worth noting that Ghost retains possession of a sword from his old father, and he practices with it regularly.

A Budding Romance

Yes, that is a possible Pocahontas theme brewing here again. (You noticed it, didn’t you, my dear reader)

Enter a new band of Vikings, and the plot begins to thicken. They soon slaughter Ghost’s adopted people and upon capturing him, subject Ghost to a duel. See now that is why you needed to know about the whole sword thing, because Ghost acquits himself surprisingly well in the fight. After taking an eye from his opponent, Ghost manages to escape by sledding down the mountain on a shield. He then hides for a while before heading to Pathfinder’s village to warn the of the coming danger.

Let us fast-forward a bit. In time the Vikings kill Pathfinder (who later appears as a vision of sorts at a key moment in the story). They capture Starfire and force Ghost to help them find the other village, but our hero tricks them and ultimately defeats their leader, Gunnar, leaving him mortally wounded and dangling from the edge of a cliff. Gunnar begs Ghost to grant him an honorable death. Knowing that Ghost is himself of Viking descent, he explains that death by the sword is the only honorable end for their kind.

Big mistake!

Ghost promptly disavows his viking kindred and sends Gunnar down the cliff instead. Do I need to mention that he gets the girl in the end?

Full on Pocahontas-meme for the win!

***

Black Robe

So, let’s stay in the whole Northeastern part of America for a while and fast forward some more, all the way to the 1630s. Made in 1991, this next movie follows the story of a Jesuit Priest, Father LaForge, or ‘BLACK ROBE‘ as his native companions refer to him. LaForge (played by Lothaire Bluteau) sets out on a mission to the Hurons, but of course this story isn’t really about his interaction with the Hurons. No, it is about his travels with the Algonquans who have agreed to take him up the St. Lawrence River to the Huron mission. He is further accompanied by one other Frenchmen, Daniel (played by Aden Young).

Daniel is the white Indian in this story.

Daniel and LaForge will be escorted to the Huron missions by Chomina (played by August Shellenberg). his wife (played by Tantoo Cardinal), and their daughter Annuka (played by Sandrine Holt) as well as a small band of relations. They have agreed to take LaForge to the Huron Mission in exchange for a number of trade goods (knives, axes, and such). The journey will take them through dangerous territory well away from their normal hunting grounds, a fact which displeases a number of traveling companions, and eats away at the morale of the party.

Did you notice that Chomina has a daughter?

Annuka (Holt)

Father laForge is definitely not a white Indian. He is here to change people, not to be changed by them. LaForge makes little effort to learn the customs of his companions. He knows their language of course, but he is never quite comfortable with it, and that is his strong suit. In all other respects, he finds nearly every aspect of life among the Algonquans awkward at best, but more often painful and terrifying. This makes the presence of Daniel all the more comforting, because the young Daniel takes to life among their new companions like a fish to water. He masters their language, and learns their customs readily. He is a blessing to LaForge on this long and strenuous journey.

Oh wait a minute, no he isn’t!

I’m sorry, what I mean to say is that Daniel WOULD have been a comfort to LaForge were it not for all those facts I just mentioned, …and the fact that Daniel scores up a relationship with Annuka early in the trip. Daniel’s ability to immerse himself in Algonquin culture serves only to intensify LaForge’s loneliness. Because of course if there is anything worse than being alone it is being abandoned, which is exactly how Father LaForge feels watching Daniel carry on with Annuka and move easily among the people with whom they are traveling.

LaForge feels even more alienated when Daniel actually does abandon him. faced with increasing doubts about LaForge’s character, the dangers ahead, and the wisdom of bypassing better hunting grounds, the entire band convinces Chomina to leave Black Robe behind. So, they present Daniel and LaForge with a duck as a farewell gift. There is a brief tense moment where it is unclear what the two of them will do to survive. Daniel quickly resolves this dilemma by taking off after Chomina’s band (and more importantly Annuka), leaving Black Robe alone in the forest with a dead duck. To say that his chances are slim is putting it mildly.

Don’t worry though, Chomina has a change of heart and returns along with a portion of his traveling party, and of course, Daniel. He announces his decision with the words; “I may be stupid, but I promised Champlain I would take the Black Robe to the mission.” Those who evidently thought him stupid exist stage left and make no further appearances in the story.

But Chomina and company, at least do return for black Robe.

Happy ending?

Not a chance.

An Iroquois war party quickly pairs the whole party down to the central characters (LaForge, Chomina, Annuka, Daniel, and one other child). Subjected to torture, the survivors escape (minus the child), though Chomina soon dies of his wounds. In the end, LaForge travels on to the mission while Annuka and Daniel head off into the wilderness.

So, this time the white Indian gets the girl, but the girl loses her whole family in the process. Good fun eh?

***

By the Way, I am skipping a really interesting theme about a prophetic dream and the symbolism of death. Want to know more about it? You know what to do.

***

Chingachgook (Means)

Speaking of Russell Means, he plays a key part in this next story too. Better yet, he carries a really cool weapon, a club-shaped a bit like a rifle-stock, throughout the movie. As I recall, Means maintains that these clubs are actually nutcrackers played up for purposes of Hollywood movies and white fantasies. …but I’m off on a tangent, the point of departure for which is well on down the road. …I just like cool clubs.

Anyway, let’s talk about the LAST OF MOHICANS (1992), a big screen adaptation of the famous novel by James Fennimore Cooper. This film depicts the struggles of Hawkeye (played by Daniel Day Lewis) during the early days of the French and Indian War. Hawkeye is our white Indian. Adopted by a Mohican leader, Chingachgook (Russell Means), Hawkeye’s mastery of Indian customs and hunting techniques is established early in the movie as he hunts with his adopted father and brother, Uncus (played by Eric Schweig).

Last of Mohicans

But let’s skip for a moment to the villain of this story, Magua (played by Wes Studi), or as I like to call him, “the true hero of this terrible tragedy.” You see Magua enters the story as a native scout for British forces on the colonial frontier. He agrees to escort Major Duncan Heyward and two women, Cora and Alice Munro (played by Madaleine Stow and Jodhi May). They are the daughters of Colonel Edmund Monro (played by …oh, who cares?) on a trip to Fort William Henry.

Magua betrays the expedition, leading a Huron attack (which results in the slaughter of countless British soldiers). And with that, the principle villain of the movie is just getting started. He later cuts the heart out of Colonel Monro, but not before promising to kill both of his daughters, thus erasing Monro’s seed from the earth itself. How’s that for a villainous plan?

You see it turns out that Magua’s own village had once been attacked by Moro’s troops, resulting in the deaths of his own children and the capture of his wife.

Did I mention that Magua kicks ass?

Magua (Studi)

Okay, well I suppose we are meant to be rooting for Hawkeye and his adopted family as they rescue Duncan Heyward and the girls during the battle that results from Magua’s most excellent betrayal. When the British and the French make peace, at least for the interim, Magua presses his personal war against the Monro clan by leading an attack on retreating British forces. He and his Huron warriors eventually captures Duncan and the two girls, but his Monrocidal goals are frustrated when Hawkeye arrives to negotiate a deal with the village leader. Cora is to be burned alive, Alice is to be made Magua’s wife (a decision he appears to accept). Hawkeye asks to take Cora’s place, but Duncan tricks the Huron into taking him instead, thus letting Hawkeye and Cora (who are by now a budding love interest) escape to live happily ever after.

…well, except they just can’t let Duncan die like that.

Hawkeye proves his name fitting by shooting Duncan from the edge of the village just before the flames overtake him and then flees with Cora. Magua follows with a number of warriors. Inexplicably they bring Alice along for the chase. In an effort to get Alice, Uncas then proceeds to fight his way through a number of Huron warriors walking single file along a majestic cliff-side. Unfortunately, Uncas proves no match for Magua, and his body soon goes over the cliff-side. Facing Magua’s outstretched hand, Alice instead jumps to her own death.

That’s when Chingachgook steps in and goes head-to-head with Magua making very short work of the villain. This time, it is Magua’s lifeless body that hits the ground.

The movie ends with a final prayer by Chingachgook, who now proclaims himself the last of the Mohicans.

Cora (Stowe)

And Once Again, the white Indian gets the girl, …who has lost her entire family in the process.

Only this time, it isn’t the chief’s daughter.

She isn’t even native!

Wild, isn’t it?

Ten Little White Indians, Volume II (Spoilers Abound!)

21 Saturday Apr 2012

Posted by danielwalldammit in Movies, Native American Themes, White Indians

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

A Man Called Horse, Eskimo, Grey Owl, Hollywood, Indian, Innuit, Native American, Richard Harris, Stereotypes, White Dawn

It is time for another trip through the world of the white Indian. In today’s installment we will meet three very different white Indians with three very different stories and three very different fates.

A Man Called Horse

Let us begin this installment with the quintessential white Indian of the 1970s. In A MAN CALLED HORSE (1970), Richard Harris plays an Englishman named John Morgan. Captured by a Sioux-speaking tribe known as the Yellow Hand, he is humiliated and used as a horse (hence the name). But Morgan proves himself an able warrior, and quickly gains the respect of his captors. More than that, he becomes a war chief, leading them to victory against the Shoshone.

The movie seems to take its portrayal of Native American culture quite seriously, perhaps a little too seriously. The film wants desperately to show us how things really were, but its portrayal is far too filled with sensationalism to provide any real insight into anything Native American customs. In fact, of all the white Indians of movie history, this one seems to irk people the most.

Initiation

In the most striking scene of the movie, Morgan is initiated into the Yellow Hand by means of a sun-vow. His chest is pierced, talons are fastened to the wounds, and he is suspended from the top of a Medicine Lodge. Upon waking, Morgan will soon make-love to the daughter of the chief (thus playing out yet another cliché – Pocahontas anybody?).

Loosely based on a Mandan variant of the Sun Dance ceremony, this scene was sufficiently close to home that many found its portrayal on the big screen quite offensive. In A man Called Horse, the logic of the ritual does less to tell us about the lives of the people with whom Morgan is living than it does to signal his great triumph, his transition from a mere beast of burden to a full member of the community (…one who is eligible to make love to the beautiful Indian princess. …yes, I said ‘princess,’ …and yes, I know how ridiculous that is.)

But wait!

Seriously, wait!

Return of a Man Called Horse

We must also account for THE RETURN OF A MAN CALLED HORSE (1976). Yes, that’s right. This movie has a sequel (two of them in fact, but I will spare you an account of the third; it isn’t even interesting in a disgusting way). In The Return of a Man Called Horse we find Morgan back at home in England, …and hating it. Surrounded by artifacts of his time among the Sioux, Morgan longs to rejoin the Yellow Hand.

When Morgan does return to his adopted people, he quickly discovers that they have fallen on hard times. Under attack from white trappers with Indian allies of their own, the Yellow hand are in sore need of great leadership. Luckily, Morgan is there to aid them. With their very own great white Indian now back among them, Morgan’s friends now find their courage. Naturally, the revival begins with a sun dance.

I have to confess that when I first saw these movies I enjoyed them a great deal. Mind you, I was a teenager. It took a few years before the arrogance of the message sunk in. Unable to fend for themselves, the Yellow Hand must have a white man come and rally them to perform one of the most sacred of their own ceremonies. That’s right; in this movie Lakota need a white guy to perform their own sacred rituals. I would say that it gets worse from there, but ‘pathetic’ is probably a better word for it.

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Grey Owl

Back when I was teaching in Navajo country, one of my classes swore up and down that GREY OWL (1998) was a good movie. I went to a video store (yes kids, that’s how we used to do it) and looked at this, and looked at it some more, and …just couldn’t bring myself to do it. I mean Pierce Brosnan as an Indian? I just could not wrap my mind around it. But my dear reader, I realized as soon as I started this blog series that I would have to venture onto that dangerous terrain. And last night, I finally watched this movie.

Just for you.

Okay, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. I really should have trusted my students. It was at least entertaining. I must give it that much.

This movie is about a real historical personage, Archie Grey Owl (1888-1938). When we first meet him, Grey Owl is entertaining tourists with Indian dances and serving as a hunting guide in the Canadian wilderness. His skills in trapping and hunting are unmatched, and his presentation of Indian customs comes across as both authentic and entertaining.

The Real Grey Owl

When Archie falls for a young Mohawk woman named Pony, his life begins to change dramatically. He gives up trapping after she adopts two beaver orphaned by his own traps and the tough old trapper finds himself unable to resist their charms. Facing ruin, Archie opts to write a book about the forests and the need for conservation. This becomes the first of many publications and speaking engagements. All seems to be going well.

…except that Grey Owl seems a little testy at times. He is nervous when told that newspaper reporters are looking to write stories about him, and inconsistencies begin to creep into his story. Why does he dye his hair? And was it his father that was Scottish and his mother Apache, or was it the reverse? Pressed on details, he becomes angry. No-one questions his adoption by a local Ojibwa community, but it becomes increasingly clear that something is wrong when Grey Owl reluctantly sets out for a 3 month tour of England. It is the chance of a lifetime. Why the hesitation?

We soon learn the answer.

While in England, amidst all the hoopla of a speaking tour which includes a performance for the King, Archie Grey Owl takes a small side-trip to a residential neighborhood he seems to know well. It turns out that he is actually Archibald Belaney, an Englishman himself. …a full-blooded Englishman, as it were, with no Apache relatives at all. Archie has a tense but pleasant meeting with the two aunts that raised him and takes a quick look in his old room where it immediately becomes apparent that his love of all things Indian had been well established as a young child.

When Archie returns home, he is invited to a great powwow where he is asked to meet with a gathering of chiefs. Only then does he confess his origins to Pony. Naturally, she forgives him.

Which leaves the gathering of chiefs…

Unable to back out of meeting them, Grey Owl enters the gathering of chiefs to a rather awkward and tense moment. Can he fool them? Well it turns out the answer is ‘no’. Everybody in the whole lodge laughs at Grey Owl’s deception. But all is not lost, and a Sioux chief finally explains; “Men become what they dream. You have dreamed well.”

And so the white Indian of this story receives the ultimate stamp of native approval. Even his fraudulence is blessed by the old Sioux chief.

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White dawn

And then of course there are white Eskimos, even black ones. WHITE DAWN (1974) begins with a maritime disaster leaving a whaling crew stranded on the ice flows off Eastern Canada. Three survivors (Louis Gosset Jr. as ‘Portagee’, Timothy Bottoms as ‘Daggett’, and Warren Oates as ‘Billy’) will eventually be rescued by Inuit who take them in, nurture them, feed them, and accept them as part of the community.

One might expect people in such a position to show gratitude. Well they don’t, at least not all of them. Billy (Warrent Oates) is particularly contemptuous of his benefactors, insulting and exploiting them at every opportunity. Daggett (Timothy Bottoms) appears to accept his new community. In time, he has essentially gone native, or at least he tries to. If there is a definite white Indian in his story, it is Daggett. Portagee (Louis Gossett Jr.) seems content to follow the path of least resistance, and given Billy’s aggressiveness, that means Portagee will often serve as an accomplice in destructive activities. Daggett may mean well, but he simply does not put up enough of a fight to reign in his companions.

The generosity of the Inuit people plays a key role in this movie. Not only do the Inuit share their food and lodging with these desperate strangers, the men also share their wives. This allusion to yet another cliché (“Eskimo hospitality”) receives a lot of screen time in the movie. I would hardly suggest that the movie portrays the actual customs of spousal exchange accurately (it doesn’t), but for purposes of plot development it is perhaps more important to note that the three castaways misinterpret the custom as it is understood by the Inuit characters of the movie.

A Little Wrestling Match

The Inuit men of this movie share their wives as a gesture of hospitality; they do not mean to give their wives up. In time, Billy and Portagee come to see the women as theirs for the taking. For his own part, Daggett falls in love with a beautiful young wife of community elder (yes, there is that Pocahontas theme again). As the story unfolds, each of the three men becomes more presumptuous in their approach to the women of the community.

And I suppose I should say here that the movie does very little to shed any light on the motives of the women themselves for having sex with any of thee men. Daggett’s love interest appears responsive. The women are otherwise little more than pawns in a game that takes little notice of their own preferences.

Billy is the driving force for much of the movie’s action, initiating one after another disruptive scheme. He is greedy, malicious, and completely unprincipled. Most importantly, Billy convinces both Daggett and Portagee to steal the community stores of fish and set sail in a small native boat. When this attempt to get home ends in yet another crash, the Inuit will once again come to the rescue. And all three must now live with the community made hungry by their theft of food supplies.

When Billy’s shenanigans finally result in the accidental death of a young woman, the community takes action. Tricked into accepting mittens with no thumbs from the remaining young women of the village, Billy and Portagee are unable to defend themselves when attacked by the men of the village. There is a moment when it seems that Daggett will be spared, but that ends abruptly with an arrow to the belly.

And of course it is the death of Daggett which is most interesting here. He is the white Indian of the bunch. …or the white Eskimo as the case may be. It would be easy to think the Inuit had killed him unnecessarily. After all, he was a decent guy. Absent Billy and Portagee, one cannot help but to hope that Daggett would immerse himself in the community and live as they do. Who knows? perhaps he would even get the girl!

White Dawn

But of course that girl is why Daggett must die. Where Billy and Portagee use the Inuit women in the cheapest sense of the word, Daggett has claimed the love of another man’s wife. For all its sincerity, Daggett’s presumption reaches a scale well beyond that of his companions. He wants to keep the girl, but of course she is not his for the taking.

And thus ends the white Indian of White Dawn!

Ten Little White Indians: Reflections on a Hollywood Cliché

18 Wednesday Apr 2012

Posted by danielwalldammit in History, Movies, Native American Themes, White Indians

≈ 24 Comments

Tags

Dance Me Outside, Film, History, Holywood, Hombre, Indian, Little Big Man, Movies, Native American, Stereotypes, White Indians

Let’s talk about American Indians!

Better yet, let’s talk about Indians in the movies!

You ever notice how many movies about Indians are really movies about white people? More specifically, many stories about Indians are actually about white people who live among them. Such characters are often called “white Indians” in the literature. They are certainly a worthy subject in their own right, but Hollywood seems quite dependent on these characters in its treatment of Native American subjects. The white character provides a lens through which non-natives can observe native culture. It is a role that we can identify with, even as we are shown a world perhaps foreign to us (assuming the film actually does attempt to show us something about the lives of Native Americans, which is not always the case).

It’s an old cliché, often tiresome, and in some respects outright pernicious, but I must admit that a couple of these characters actually resonate for me. At other times, it tempts my lunch to return to the free air about me. At the very least, I think one ought to be clear about the subject matter. All too often these films about non-natives are pitched to the public as films about the lives and customs of Native Americans. Even if this is just a difference in emphasis, the emphasis is often highly significant.

So, let’s see a few examples, shall we?

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Little Big Man

We shall begin with an old favorite of mine, LITTLE BIG MAN. This is the story of Jack Crabb, supposedly the sole white survivor of the Battle of Little Bighorn. We meet jack in an old folks home as a man well over a hundred years old. Visited by an anthropologist, Jack is angered at the suggestion that was an old Indian fighter and proceeds to tell his life story with a tape recorder rolling.

It turns out that Jack had been adopted by Cheyenne (whom he refers to as “Human Beings” throughout the narrative) after his family was slaughtered by Pawnee. During the course of his life, Jack returns to white society for a time and experiences life as a religious youth, a con artist, a “gun fighter,” a drunkard, and even a mule skinner. But Jack returns to the Human Beings several times during the course of the movie, even taking a wife (eventually four) and living among them. Jack explains that he reckoned he would stay there and live among Human Beings for the rest of his life, right there on the Washita River.

And for those that know a little about the history of Indian-white relations, the appearance of Custer will be no surprise. For me at least, the scenes that follow are quite difficult to watch. It is in revenge for this attack, that Jack Crabb ultimately plots to lead Custer into a trap, tricking him as it were into attacking the Indian village at Little Bighorn.

Little Big man was the first major motion picture in decades to take an explicitly pro-Indian stance on the history of the west. It is almost too late to capture the full shock value of its portrayal. The movie and television audiences of the 1970s had seen many depictions of Indian savagery. To see the U.S. cavalry shooting women and children in cold blood was a straight-forward reversal of the prevailing expectations of the time.

More than that, Little Big Man is filled with vibrant Cheyenne characters, not least of them being Old Medicine Lodge (played by chief Dan George). The characters are even allowed to occupy social roles defined at least partly by Cheyenne cultural patterns. (We are for example introduced to a contrary and a hee-man-eh.) Crabb himself manages to occupy the role of the White Indian without crowding the Native American characters into the background. He is accepted among the Human Beings, not because he is a great warrior (not really, at any rate), but because he has a knack for survival. Crabb bumbles his way through life, understanding a lot about what goes on around him, but without ever really taking control of his own fate.

Chief Dan George

But what has always struck me as the true genius of this movie is that having done far more than normal for the times, it makes no real claims to historical accuracy. Jack Crabb is essentially telling us a tall tale, and his own biases provide the filter through which each event is portrayed. One gets the impression that Crabb’s story must approximate the actual truth (he simply knows too much to have made everything up), but if we believe him a number of the particulars, we have certainly gone well beyond the boundaries of fact when he takes credit for the slaughter of Custer.

But who could fault Crabb for stretching the truth. We can only love him for somehow surviving the real events of his life whatever they may have been, and for sharing a perspective on events which was at that time completely novel to the motion picture industry of that day.

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Hombre

Did you know that Paul Newman once played an Apache? …well, sort of. In HOMBRE, Newman plays John Russell, a white man raised among the Apache. Old pictures of Apaches fill the screen during the opening credits, and soon we are treated to an image of Newman dressed as an Apache.

Hombre

Russel and two Apache companions have been earning a living by capturing wild horses to be sold to the stage-coach line. They learn that a railroad will soon replace the stage-coach line, and horses will no longer be needed.

Russell learns that he has inherited a boarding house from his original family. He returns to civilization and sells the house before heading back west aboard a stage-coach.

Newman in Hombre

When the stage-coach is robbed, it is Russell (with his superior survival instincts) who keeps the other passengers alive, their prejudice against him notwithstanding. In time, Russell learns that the robbers are after money meant for the San Carlos Apache reservation. It had been stolen by a fellow passenger. Russell’s treatment of his companions is harsh, bordering on cruel, which seems fitting enough given their own attitudes towards him. In the end, Russell will sacrifice himself to save a woman who would not share the stage-coach with him. He asks only that the money should be taken to the people for whom it was intended.

The movie ends with a vintage photograph. It contains the image of a white boy surrounded by Apache children of his own age.

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Dance Me Outside

DANCE ME OUTSIDE: This movie is not on the whole about a white Indian. I include it in this list, because it has an absolutely wonderful scene which serves to comment on the whole phenomenon. For reasons which we need not get into here, the main characters, Silas crow and Frank Fencepost (both Anishinabe), are asked to keep Robert McVey, a white in-law, busy while his wife is off doing something important. Unable to think of anything else to do, and really unhappy about spending the night in his rather lame company, Silas and Frank decide to initiate him into the tribe. What follows is a hilariously improvised ceremony. The scene could easily have been painful to watch, but there is something about the way the white character embraces the ceremony which comes across as endearing. It is as though he has simply chosen to accept the ritual for whatever it is. The man commits so completely to the absurd little made-up ritual that his own sincerity (absurd as it is) seems to redeem the whole event. In the end, he earns a grudging respect from Silas and Frank, not for being a properly initiated member of the tribe, but for simply being human, foibles and all.

Silas and Frank

What I particularly like about this scene is the sense of compassion behind the treatment of this subject. This movie takes the piss out the old white Indian cliché as well as anyone has, but it does it without rancor. The white character is mocked, yes, but he is mocked with a gentle touch. Dance me outside is an obscure movie, and I must say that it has a kind of after-school special quality to it. Still it’s a wonderful tale well told.

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That’s it for now. There will be two more volumes in this one.

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Okay, no I can’t let my readers off that easy. These movies are actually pretty good, so I’m afraid you haven’t got the full cringe-worthyness of this subject. So, let’s have a listen shall we?