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Cruddy
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quote:
Originally posted by Sava
Funny, I thought people thought Nazis were evil because they murdered millions of people... |
That's my point Sava - the common perception of the Nazis as "evil" is justified because they are no longer murdering people.
However, the "common perception" (what people think) has got NOTHING to do with the reality on the ground... it's a more simplified form than getting everybody to contemplate the answer for the themselves.
Anyway, we can't change the past. Why not be optimistic and try for a better future instead?
EDIT: Point taken MtG. I will stop feeding... Very good answer, thanks.
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Albert Speer
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Puerile Polemic
Mar 1999
time: 00:29
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i'm getting even more confused...
quote:
Sure they were. At a certain point, when defeat and annihilation becomes inevitable, the gloves come off and there are no holds barred. |
and yet...
quote:
The Palestinians are facing extinction |
so the Palestinians are not supposed to take off the gloves?
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Albert Speer
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Puerile Polemic
Mar 1999
time: 00:29
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my bad, MtG... i think you know what i was trying to do but fine... i won't mention palestinians again.
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Albert Speer
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Puerile Polemic
Mar 1999
time: 00:29
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We call Deutschland Germany...
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MichaeltheGreat
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Apolyton Grand Executioner
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mooning the house that Ruth built.
Oct 1999
time: 21:29
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quote:
Originally posted by Sava
Bravo! Perhaps that's because America killed off all of the buffalo as well.
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I had some very good buffalo meat a couple of weeks ago. Yum. Good for you, too - more protein and less fat than beef. Too bad they're all killed off, though. BTW, there are at least a couple of isolated areas where herds of them still run wild.
quote:
Yeah, I've been to Native reservations, I've seen the utter poverty they live in.
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Good for you. There are different kinds of poverty, and every group/reservation is different. You're looking at it all from a washichu perspective though, so you still don't know squat.
quote:
So? Funny, can I murder someone and then use the defense, "But there are tens of thousands of other murders so it must be okay."? wake up and smell what you're shoveling mtg. |
I don't see you moving your washichu ass back to Europe. 
So much for action in accordance with your moralizing. Displacing people off land you wanted was historical reality. It happened all over the world. Whether it's "right" or "wrong" is meaningless - right now, it simply "is." Not allowing it from this point forward is a different matter, but carping over conduct from 400 years ago to 120 years ago really doesn't accomplish much. Ennobling the natives as innocent victims is as ridiculous as demonizing them.
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Albert Speer
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Puerile Polemic
Mar 1999
time: 00:29
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i dont know about the plains indians, but weren't many native groups very militant and aggressive? ironic that Sava seems to have this "noble savage" idea that was created back in the 18th and 19th centuries but since disproven.
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MichaeltheGreat
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Apolyton Grand Executioner
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mooning the house that Ruth built.
Oct 1999
time: 21:29
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quote:
Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
Jeez, this thread was just supposed to be about trying to find out what the deal was with a different name. 
I'll try another (nicer) threadjack. If this doesn't work, I'll ask to close it  .
MtG: What did you think of the Lakhota's portrayl in 'Dances with Wolves' and other modern films dealing with Natives? What would you change about their depiction? |
The whole "white" side of DWW was pretty whack, but any time you have a lot of native actors (notice you almost never see them any more, the fad is over), they collectively tend to enforce a resonably accurate view.
Wes Studi (Cherokee), Rodney Grant (Omaha), and Graham Greene (Oneida) are not only actors, but they're fluent native speakers in their own languages and activists, so they tended to pick and choose projects, and impose a lot of requirements for things like native language coaches and native historical consultants.
The biggest problems with DWW and similar films (Last of the Mohicans falls in this category, although I'd hold Walter Hill's Geronimo in a separate category) is that they have to be paced for commercial movie audiences. As such, you can't really let the story follow it's natural pace, it has to be forced along, and you can't look at too much detail.
Lakhota traditional family structure is very complex, so DWW didn't get into that at all. Camps tended to rather less clean and sanitary than was shown - basically, all the garbage was dumped on the landside away from whatever stream you camped at, and you went to do your body functions there too, so eventually, the number of flies and the smell forced you to move. Until you got to that point though, camp was pretty rank, unless you had good steady winds.
The democratic nature (excluding women) of the councils was well shown, but compressed. One thing you learn dealing with tribal councils is not to be in a hurry - they have time schedules, and some try to be "governmental" but when you get to informal meetings, you're on Indian time. And time is something they have a lot of.
For a general telling of the native world view at a more native pace, I like Geronimo (the Walter Hill version with Wes Studi and Rodney Grant). The "feel" is a lot more right than something like Mohicans or DWW, which were told from largely white perspectives.
Even though Geronimo is nominally told around the perspective of Lt. Charles Gatewood, Gatewood himself had practically "gone native" in his view and mannerisms, although he was an excellent officer and extremely well-respected cavalry leader.
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MichaeltheGreat
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Apolyton Grand Executioner
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mooning the house that Ruth built.
Oct 1999
time: 21:29
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quote:
Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
MtG: What did you think of the Lakhota's portrayl in 'Dances with Wolves' and other modern films dealing with Natives? What would you change about their depiction? |
Here's another direction - to give you an idea of (some of) the native mindset. Of course they're different from group to group, and some have become more white (apples if you want to be nasty) in their way of dealing at least with the outside world, but I've had a few "interesting" experiences.
Once, with the Fort Mojave Indian Tribe, I was working as a consultant evaluating development proposals. The Fort Mojave straddle the Colorado river, on the Cali, Arizona and Nevada sides, and due to their treaty status, they have relatively large riparian water rights from the Colorado, which supersede state riparian rights. That means their land is prime development country.
They had three different developer groups wanting to do a Lake Havasu style resort/golf course/boating development. Get a tribal council meeting, and you've got all these developers in their suits, etc. So the meeting site gets moved, to this tribal government branch office (trailers), in the middle of the dustiest-assed cornfields you've ever seen. No air conditioning, of course. The yuppie developers go on about all the great things they're going to do for the Indians, and how great and harmonious and blah blah blah their development is going to be. One at a time, one for each state side of the reservation. Naturally, they ignore the tribe's desires for potential development, and want to sell their own version.
Finally, the tribal chairman asks if he can ask them something jointly. They all say yes, so he says in this totally deadpan voice "I understand golf is a game of 18 holes. Why don't the three of you get together and build six holes on each side of the river?"
They just sat there looking stunned. He was ****ing with them, of course, but it was his way of saying "we're not interested in your overdevelopment and ignoring our own plans."
Another one was out in the Tohono O'Odham Nation (you don't call them Papagos, you don't call them a tribe, although you can slide by calling them Indians), where one Indian named Bernard had a little restaurant, doing Indian chile, fry bread, etc. Bernard's brother worked for the Nation utility authority, so naturally, the outdoor tables were electric cable spools, and lot of other things at the restaurant were from the utility authority yard or warehouse. The guys who ran the utility authority (a couple of white guys) ate lunch there all the time, as did members of the National police, legislature, and council.
There was no "theft" - it was just putting stuff that was lying around to use.
The reason they hired white guys to run the utility authority was simple - if anything screwed up, they could blame the white guys, rather than each other, and everyone was somehow collaterally related by marriage within the last million generations or so, so personal relationships were more important - too important to risk getting into a dispute because of a screwup in the utility authority. Another reason to have white guys run it is because the Indians didn't want to be supervisors. If a white guy told them what to do, they'd complain about the damned pushy white guy and do what they're told. A Tohono O'Odham wouldn't want to tell another one what to do, and the other guy would say "why should I do what you tell me, you're no better than me, and besides, we're fifth cousins 13 times removed, so that's no way to treat family.
One time, the air conditioner at Bernard's restaurant broke down, in the middle of July, when it was about 115 degrees in the shade. It was a hell of a lot hotter on that asphalt shingled roof, especially when you got the side panels of that air conditioner lowered so they made nice reflectors.
So five of them go up to look at it. Then they discuss what they think is wrong with it and the best way to fix it. Up there, where the asphalt tiles and sheet metal reflectors in the sun must make it 150 degrees. For a couple of hours, because nobody's in a hurry. everybody gets their say, and everyone waits and thinks about what the other guy has said. Time and efficiency, as we see them, are non-issues. The desert will still be there, and so will the air conditioner.
Eventually, Bernard closed his restaurant. Not because it was doing badly, but he showed up when he felt like it. Sometimes he wanted to work on his ranch. Sometimes he wanted to hunt. But everyone showed up at his restaurant and expected someone to be there. He didn't want to disappoint them, so he closed it.
When I was there, there was a really bad drought, and I saw the most emaciated cattle I've ever seen alive (barely). They could have brought in water, but there was a drought. Bringing in water wasn't natural. When the drought ended, they'd get more cattle.
So it's just a completely different way of looking at things, and that's very hard to portray in a movie, or book. You have to live it for a while, and a lot of non-natives are so hung up in their world views they can never begin to understand the native ones.
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29-06-2003 06:44
Because it isn't historical fact that we call them Sioux because they aren't around to correct us anymore. Like Speer said, we call Deutschland Germany, also Mumbai Bombay, Nippon Japan, etc, even though they are all around to correct us.
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