3D Indians in We Shall Remain

PBS series tells 300 years of native historyNative American filmmaker Chris Eyre--whose credits include "Smoke Signals," "Skins" and "Edge of America"--directed the first three.

"This is not about nobles and this is not about savages. It's about Native American leaders that need to be recognized in the pantheon of American Indian heroes. If we're a collective of a melting pot we need to recognize leaders of different complexions that are also part of the American pantheon of heroes," he said.

"I normally see Indians in loincloths running from tree to tree and rock to rock. In this case we've created Indians into people."

Eyre said it's the first project he has done that's a period piece, and it allowed him to expand on people's understanding of historical figures such as Tecumseh and Major Ridge.

For example, Major Ridge led the Cherokee Nation and "has always been the villain who signed away the homeland," for moving his people out of Georgia to Oklahoma, but he did so to keep the tribe alive, he said.

"There was no good choice. When you think about women and children and grandparents, it's romantic to fight until everybody's been annihilated. But as a leader you have to ask yourself if that's the best way to preserve your way of life," Eyre said.

"I wanted to create three-dimensional characters who were flawed but were put into extraordinary circumstances and had to make decisions for their people that made them people who should be acknowledged as Native American heroes."'We Shall Remain' Tells Native American History, with Native Americans at the HelmFor actor Marcos Akiaten, of Chokonen, Chiricahua and Apache ancestry, who has portrayed Native Americans in a number of previous films before taking on the role of Massasoit, the production was quite a change.

"It was a great delight to be directed by an Indian director and an executive producer who made a tremendous amount of compromises in order to make this as authentic as possible," Akiaten says. "I've been in many of these large Indian productions that have been directed basically by Caucasians, and [this] was an opportunity for me to actually work with an Indian director. And it was through his eyes that helped bring my part and the other parts and the other factions of this movie all together as one."

Cassius Spears of Ashaway, R.I., a Narrangansett and former educator and cultural adviser at the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center, has a bit part in the film. He says the efforts to get it right paid off.

"As a cultural adviser, I noticed that they put extreme effort into looking at the details," Spears says. "From the tattooing, from the dress, from language, all the material that they put together, and then again paying very close detail—I have to say it was awesome, awesome."Comment:  I wouldn't say Natives were at the helm unless they did most of the writing, directing, and producing. The only "helming" I see here are Natives directing or co-directing episodes.

I must've missed all the modern-day movies with Indians running from tree to tree and rock to rock. Chris Eyre alone has worked on several movies about today's Indians. And that doesn't include such major efforts as Dreamkeeper, Into the West, and Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.

Fact is, people have been trying to portray Indians realistically in movies for at least 30-40 years. Sure, they often haven't done a good job of it. But let's not pretend that every movie portrays Indians as skulking savages.

I guess this is part of the marketing process. In almost every Native movie since Dances with Wolves, the creators have claimed that previous movies were bad but theirs will be good. They alone have realized the hidden truth: that Indians are three-dimensional people. Yeah, right.

For more on the subject, see We Shall Remain vs. Stereotypes and Wampanoag POV We Shall Remain.