Overviews of We Shall Remain

'We Shall Remain':  From Plymouth to Wounded Knee, a Tale of Survival"We Shall Remain," a five-part PBS series that retells American history from the Native American perspective, is a remarkably old-fashioned documentary. It is built up slowly, chronologically, and powerfully from a few basic and familiar elements: talking heads, an authoritative narrator and loving aerial shots of the primordial forest. Even its use of historical reenactments reminds one of the kind of movies screened at National Park Service visitors' centers a generation or two ago.

Executive producer Sharon Grimberg and a team of directors and producers (including Chris Eyre, Ric Burns, Dustinn Craig, Sarah Colt and Stanley Nelson) have committed to telling an alternative history, but they forgo alternative means. Even the events chosen to anchor the individual films are already familiar from history books: The Mayflower, the War of 1812, the Indian wars and Wounded Knee. But slowly, over the course of more than seven hours, one begins to realize the power of this approach. "We Shall Remain" is unapologetically committed to the now suspect idea of Great Man history, the chronicle of charismatic leaders, epic battles and dramatic, decisive events indelibly marked on the calendar and mythologized for centuries after.

It may be old-fashioned, but it radically shifts the sense of agency and psychological complexity from familiar American icons to Native Americans who once played only supporting roles. The effect is rather like the psychological shock one gets when the map of the world is turned upside down. It's still a map and still reliable in every way. It's just disorienting.'American Experience: We Shall Remain'

Five signal moments in Native American history are explored in the new PBS series.Of the many elephants occupying the room that is the history of the United States, none is larger than the official mistreatment of the Native American by the new neighbors from over the water. Like slavery, it is a subject at once much discussed and somehow fundamentally ignored, and because the story has been so sensationalized on the one hand and romanticized on the other, there is a continual desire to tell it right.

Truth being the elusive thing that it is, however, this amounts to an ongoing project rather than a completely achievable end.

The latest attempt is “We Shall Remain,” an ambitious, largely gratifying series of five feature-length documentaries that begins airing weekly tonight on PBS as part of "American Experience."Television Review | 'We Shall Remain'

Centuries of American Indian Valor, Celebrated and RecreatedTo the extent that certain kinds of sweeping historical documentaries on PBS feel like junior-high social studies, “We Shall Remain,” which begins Monday and unfolds over five weeks, is the sort of information-intensive class that lends itself to copious note taking if not enlivened argument. The subject is the history of American Indian resistance over four centuries. Our instructor is Benjamin Bratt, a longtime supporter of Indian causes, who serves as off-camera narrator and never wavers in his tone of earnest contrition. He speaks as if he has been asked to apologize for the sins of white oppression. His effort at an ethnically authentic pronunciation of Lalawethika, a Shawnee leader, is alone an exercise in cultural amends.Comment:  For more on the subject, see Native Documentaries and News.