HBO has an upcoming film based on the book, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West.
Dee Brown wrote this in the early 1970’s and it is the history of Native Americans – starting with the Long Walk of the Navajos in 1860 and ending in South Dakota at Wounded Knee . Brown showed a different version than the Hollywood often told of the Indians and how the white man settled the ‘new’ land it found.
The show which according to Ed Wyatt in New York Times is based on the book. Of course something was needed and like most ‘books to movies’ they felt they needed to add a lil something to make it marketable.
A new character was added. A man who is part Sioux, an Ivy League educated man who of course marries a white woman. A film writer said the character was needed “to carry a contemporary white audience through this project.”
I find that amazingly sad. Is that just me? Oh guess not…
Brown’s grandson, who said the estate has no control over the film’s content–near the end of his life, Brown optioned the rights to the current producers–expressed unhappiness, to put it mildly.
via Shelf-Awareness:
Yeah, it’s sad. I’m sorry, but I don’t need some new character added to make the story worthwhile. It’s an amazing, and sad, story all on its own.
hollywood. geez
Very sad but not surprising. A few years ago Hollywood made a film about the Navajo code talkers during WW II. The film starred Nicholas Cage and was about him guarding one of the Navajos. Geez.
Many moons ago the Romance Writers Report (RWA magazine) published a column I wrote on the inherent racism in historical romances about Native Americans. My point was that no amount of professed respect for N.A. culture changes the fact that white publishers, white authors and white readers had co-opted that culture to make money off it. Not to mention filling the stories with faulty history and cheesy stereotypes, including the oft-used half-breed hero who basically serves to shuck and jive as a “good” Indian who makes white women readers feel more comfortable.
When the column ran you’d have thought I set a whole bunch of white historical authors on fire. I was called names. I was told by lily white blondes that they were part N.A. on their great great granny’s side and so it was okay for them to write about the tribes. (So what? I’m part Cherokee, like virtually every white Southerner from a pioneer heritage.)
RWA never asked me to write another column.
BUT I got tons of letters and emails from readers –many of them with true N.A. heritage — who thanked me for stating the obvious.
Ah, yes. Well there’s not we can do. Hollywood takes poetic license to a whole new level, and history takes the punches for it.
My problem with the whole thing is why the producers think the need something the public can relate to. The public obviously related to the original books well enough not to need that character in there, so why put it in there now?
Sadly, I’m not surprised. Producers don’t seem to care about history, but reaching the broadest common denominator, even if that means making changes that fundamentally change the events they’re portraying. Insert rant about Showtime’s “The Tudors” here.
The difference between “The Tudors” and what HBO appears to be doing with “Wounded Knee” is that the people behind “The Tudors” are simply going for as much sex and scandal as they can shove into every episode with only a vague nod to history (there was this guy named Henry), while HBO seems to be saying that this story is not compelling or accessible on its own to today’s audience. The first is annoying; the second is insulting on so many levels.
Deborah Smith wrote:
I wrote on the inherent racism in historical romances about Native Americans.
I remember that column. You captured the very reasons why I don’t read NA romances.
Well, I just found another reason to love Deborah Smith. I know and like a few NA authors, but I’m very unlikely to read an NA romance because I can’t stand how lame it is as a genre. And it does suck that virtually no actual NA authors exist.
I am totally tired of the half-breed. First of all, practically no one is full blooded these days anyway. That’s why we Cali Indians get uppity about our blood quotients. And I’m definitely annoyed that they’d mess with Wounded Knee of all places. Why not go back to saying we had it coming? I could almost swallow that better than the slow erosion of the truth until it’s unrecognizable.
Sigh.
Dee
Ohhh that is before my time deb… have a copy of it still? I do guest posts you know *g*
Dee it stucks that virtually no NA exist – period.
Everyone should read Ride the Fire by Pamela Claire. Sez I.
If you’ve ever read this book, you know that it is a very complete account of the systematic genocide that was perpetrated on Indians on this continent. I don’t know, perhaps HBO decided that to portray the book’s content in full would be too mind-numbing for its audience. It’s not necessarily a bad thing to create a character to represent the story of a group, which in this case would be the Indians who were forced to go to boarding schools. These individuals were forcibly removed from their families and sent to schools in the Eastern US, where the goal from to remove their “Indianness” and make them into darker White people. It’s a story largely untold and if this gets it aired, I’m all for it. BTW, I am White but have family who are tribal members with CDIB (certificate of degree of Indian blood) cards.
true emdee… it all depends on the show itself and how it all comes across.