Hollywood et les Indiens

The fatalities at Wounded Knee are described as 300 Sioux. Around 250 Sioux died and about thirty soldiers (many from friendly fire). It was not a deliberate massacre, but the result of a series of mistakes, long and short term, on the part of officers. This is not to minimise what happened. The actions of many of the soldiers would be war crimes today.

Chief Buffalo Child Long Lance's story is tragic, but I have found little evidence his rejection by society was based on racism rather than resentment that he had lied extensively and received a lot of money for his lies. He was, after all, exposed by genuine Indian actors, and the studio to its credit did not publish the findings of the inquiry either for compassionate reasons or to cover up their mistakes. He was the original Pretendian, exposed almost a century before Buffy Sainte-Marie.

We should however, try and understand why a talented black man growing up in segregated North Carolina, who was likely interested in Indian Culture from a young age, and who could pass as Indian, would take an Indian identity which whites would admire more than his true black heritage.

(I originally intended this to be a discussion post, but I figured it was more of a review, so that's why it's here) I came here hoping to see via the MovieConnections which films were referenced, so I could remember to seek out certain ones that intrigued me, particularly from the silent era. However, this film doesn't seem to get many viewers, and that section remains empty so far.

This film can currently be seen on CBC's website for "The Passionate Eye", in the section for viewing online. I'm not sure how long it will be there, but it's been there at least for a week or two. There are some annoying and painfully loud commercials inserted in it (if Dove thinks this will make me their customer, they should be aware it's having the opposite effect on me, and I'm switching to store brands) but if you can ignore those, it's a good way to see it. (EDIT: Actually, this is NOT a good way to see it, if you have any other choice. They seem to have cut about 10-15 minutes from the film, as they appear to have done for most or all films they currently have online. There's no excuse for chopping up someone's work and representing it as the real thing. Shame on them.)

I agree with both of the previous IMDb reviews. I was very surprised to learn about the varied history of native American "Injuns" on screen. But at the same time I felt that the narrator posed questions he didn't answer, and the travelling metaphor simply didn't work. Still, I give it an 8/10 for being crammed with information. I think with some additional work, it could be re-edited and expanded into a new film that could be 9 or 10.

I've seen almost no films prior to late 1960's, having native American characters. But I have seen some of the more recent films they mentioned. I did like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Dances With Wolves, Smoke Signals, and Black Robe, but did not think much of Little Big Man, and I was bored almost to death by Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner). That one is probably loved for historical purposes, and a lack of competition, but it's bad cinema.

Probably the best film I've seen where the main characters are native American would be Ce qu'il faut pour vivre (The Necessities of Life). But maybe it was too recent to be included in Reel Injun.

I was really looking forward to seeing this documentary. In fairness, it does live up to its promise to expose the "Hollywood Indian" as a fabrication. But seriously, who didn't already know that - at least to some degree? What Reel Injun fails to do is offer any substantial new insight into the reality of Aboriginal cultures. There's so much rich diversity, and yet we learn next to nothing about any particular group. There's a place in the documentary where the point is made that relatively few Americans actually know an Aboriginal person. It's unfortunate that Reel Injun doesn't do much to help in that regard. Maybe I was expecting too much from an 86 minute doc. Hopefully there will be a follow up to Reel Injun that focuses more on who Aboriginal people are, as opposed to what they are not.

This native-directed documentary about Hollywood portrayals of First Nations through the years is appealing, good-humored, and watchable, and will be a valuable educational tool. However, it would have been more valuable (and may be yet; this screening was apparently not the final cut) if its various flaws were addressed. There is a sense throughout of the film biting off more than it can chew. The "journey" framing device - in which Diamond heads out on the road to visit various real-life locations of cinematic lore - works case-by-case, but there's no through line and Diamond isn't on screen enough to establish a presence. While one sees the need to address on screen portrayals' relationship to the realities of early colonialism, 70s AIM activism, macho Indian-themed summer camps etc, these byways reduce the space for the central discussion of the movies themselves. Instead things drift toward pat decade-indexed generalizations, so that in the 70s Billy Jack leads directly to Wounded Knee - quite a stretch! While one can readily understand that native viewers don't much like John Ford westerns, presenting the racist cowboy of The Searchers as a direct expression of the filmmakers' attitudes is asking for trouble. And if you're going to show Little Big Man to an elementary school audience to gauge their reaction, then SHOW US the damn reaction! The best talkers of the film are activist John Trudell and comic Charlie Hill, but as insightful as they are, the native stunt man and costume designer do a better service to the movie's themes. (And please spare me the Robbie Robertson star turn!) And in the end everyone lives happily ever after in rose-colored Celluloid Closet style. All that said, though, the film also reveals the existence of a self-portraying Native cinema in the silent era, translates some hilarious Lakota profanity from a vintage western, and highlights the tragedy of the secretly triracial early movie star Buffalo Child Long Lance, among other revelations. Its moments of insight earn it a more than passing grade in spite of its failings.

I am an Ojibwe American Indian. In the first place, including Rusell Means in this film proves how absolutely uninformed the film maker really is. Means has been universally discredited as a gangster and killer by the broad American Indian community...there could be no more offensive presence in a film about American Indians. Otherwise the film is a terribly overworked cliché of itself and shows serious problems that are designed to fit the writer's agenda but does not tell an accurate story. There is so little good and correct information available on American Indians that many film-makers, including this one, just make things up. Modern people often feel so guilty and sympathetic, if they feel anything at all, about the American Indian, that a film like this will get good reviews just because it confirms the paranoid tendencies of the new world order. Had the improperly focused writer and film-maker chosen to tell a more positive and honest story, this film could have had some value. As it is, it tells a somewhat true story in such a paranoid and selective way that it, too, has become another part of the problem.