Film Seeks Middle Ground For Native Americans in History - Neither hapless victims nor warriors

[Bobbieo]

and it's about time!!!!

'We Shall Remain', a 7½-hour, five-part look at pivotal moments in Native American history, premiered on Monday. April 13.

The series stretches from the 1600s with the Wampanoag, a tribe that befriended struggling English settlers, to the 1970s with the armed leaders of the American Indian Movement defying U.S. Marshals. "The history of America is normally told by the point of view of Europeans looking West, 'Let's reverse the lens, and look from the point of view of Native Americans.' "
http://nativeunity.blogspot.com

[paulsby]

1. not to mention that

"native americans" as a generic term doesn't acknowledge that there were RADICALLY different strategies and philosophies amongst different tribes. some were bloodthirsty, warlike, and rapacious towards other tribes, others were more agrarian etc.

[TexasObserver]

3. True. Many tribes, with great diversity among them.

Some were very warring, while some worked hard to avoid war.

Some welcomed strangers. Some didn't.

Anything that attempts to group Karakawas, Caribs, Comanches, and Tejas - to name four - would fail miserably. Each tribe is a study, a culture.

I do like the notion of a film that shows Indians aka Native Americans as neither the most noble or the most savage. They were humans, with human cultures, with human flaws and prejudices, with human moments of goodness and heroism.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

4. Yes, decades of "cowboy and Indian" movies have obscured the fact

that there was more difference in both culture and language among the Native American tribes (even if we limit ourselves to North America) than there was among the nations of Europe. One hundred and fifty different languages were spoken in North America alone.

The stereotype of the warrior wearing feathers, riding an Appaloosa, and living in a tepee is based on the Plain tribes who clashed with the settlers from the East in the mid to late 19th century. The tribes of the Northeast, the Southeast, the Southwest, California, and the Pacific Northwest lived very differently.

[and-justice-for-all]

2. I hope they dont leave out "the xtian love" part.