Mother Jones bericht:'Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
HBO Films. 212 minutes.
Exterminate Them: The California Story
Exterminate Them: The California Story
Eyapaha Institute. 82 minutes.
Read Dee Brown's Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee and you will feel palpably that your ancestors brutally murdered Indians so you could live on that happy little plot of land where you sit reading. Don't expect it to feel good. In fact, it feels so bad that Americans have repressed, suppressed, and finessed the truth about our nation's founding for more than 200 years. It's hard to retrieve a truth so manhandled even when you want to: Native American History Month, which is this May, comes and goes each year with none of the educational earnestness of Black History Month.
When it comes to making movies about Native Americans, even solid filmmakers can look like drama teachers putting on a Thanksgiving play. HBO has fallen into this cultural trap with director Yves Simoneau's eponymous docudrama based on Dee Brown's book, which premiered May 27. The film focuses on the struggles of the Sioux, from the Oglala destruction of General Custer's forces at Little Big Horn to the massacre of 300 unarmed Lakota at Wounded Knee—the butchery that effectively ended Native American resistance.
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee introduces a range of characters, unsettling the simple innocent/guilty pairing that often stands in for intelligent discussion of Native American history. Senator Henry Dawes's character appears genuine in his desire to "civilize" and protect the Indians—insofar as his efforts do not hinder whites' settlement of the land. The Sioux protagonist, Dr. Charles Eastman, is initially repelled by his father's belief that "The Earth belongs to the white man; there is no future outside his world." But the white world treats Eastman well, lavishing him with scholarships and awards, and he becomes the native spokesman for Senator Dawes' plan to set the nomadic Sioux up as small farmers. But when Eastman takes his Harvard medical training back to the Sioux reservation, he has second thoughts. He writes to Dawes, "Measles, influenza, and whooping cough have ascended from hell all at once…Of equal consequence is the epidemic of hopelessness that has overtaken the reservation." Eastman ultimately rebels against Dawes's push for assimilation at the cost of his newfound identity as an assimilated Indian, but he remains happily married to a white woman who supports the native cause.'
When it comes to making movies about Native Americans, even solid filmmakers can look like drama teachers putting on a Thanksgiving play. HBO has fallen into this cultural trap with director Yves Simoneau's eponymous docudrama based on Dee Brown's book, which premiered May 27. The film focuses on the struggles of the Sioux, from the Oglala destruction of General Custer's forces at Little Big Horn to the massacre of 300 unarmed Lakota at Wounded Knee—the butchery that effectively ended Native American resistance.
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee introduces a range of characters, unsettling the simple innocent/guilty pairing that often stands in for intelligent discussion of Native American history. Senator Henry Dawes's character appears genuine in his desire to "civilize" and protect the Indians—insofar as his efforts do not hinder whites' settlement of the land. The Sioux protagonist, Dr. Charles Eastman, is initially repelled by his father's belief that "The Earth belongs to the white man; there is no future outside his world." But the white world treats Eastman well, lavishing him with scholarships and awards, and he becomes the native spokesman for Senator Dawes' plan to set the nomadic Sioux up as small farmers. But when Eastman takes his Harvard medical training back to the Sioux reservation, he has second thoughts. He writes to Dawes, "Measles, influenza, and whooping cough have ascended from hell all at once…Of equal consequence is the epidemic of hopelessness that has overtaken the reservation." Eastman ultimately rebels against Dawes's push for assimilation at the cost of his newfound identity as an assimilated Indian, but he remains happily married to a white woman who supports the native cause.'
Geen opmerkingen:
Een reactie posten