Arts & Entertainment | Opinion

Letter: HBO fails to deliver 'Wounded Knee' truth

Monday, June 4, 2007

"In the wake of HBO' s disappointing and history-deranging adaptation of "Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee" ["The Last Stand," May 27], American Indian actors, writers, aspiring directors and producers arrive at the end of the trail after their decades-long struggle to gain a footing in Hollywood: Our cause is lost in the American film and television industry.

With this film, the power brokers of the industry have demonstrated that their entertainment values and demands prevail over anything we say or do, write or create; that our history is for them to tell, to fictionalize, to distort with false love stories and character portrayals; and to trivialize all that is complex and tragic. HBO did not ask for or seek the guidance of any of the experienced American Indian creative professionals who might have helped steer them away from this debacle. Yes, Indian actors played the Indians, but that was all.

With breathtaking arrogance, this narrative forcibly inducts American Indians into the brotherhood of savagery as a way of universalizing them.

Genocide is dramatized as just as much the result of the mean-spirited and brutal behavior of American Indians, who were fighting for their very survival, as it was of the inhumanity of the American armies.

The last shreds of Indian nobility are eliminated once and for all."

Get the Story:
Hanay Geiogamah: Thanks, HBO, for burying his cause (The Los Angeles Times 6/3)
pwday

Relevant Links:
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, HBO - http://www.hbo.com/films/burymyheart
Adam Beach, official message board - http://www.adam-beach.com/beach_talk