By Calvin PeatOne of the most interesting parts of the MCM Expo last weekend was the X-Men: First Class panel with two of the screenwriters, Zack Stentz & Ashley Miller (Thor, Fringe, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles), where they answered questions from the audience, taking in a wide variety of topics surrounding the movie, X-Men, and the writing process, among other things.The key bit:Someone then asked who we can expect to see in future X-Men movies that we haven’t seen yet in the movies.
They don’t want to ruin it, but admitted that there is the potential for some familiar faces to show up in future movies.
As a final question, they were asked which were their favourite X-Men.
Ashley Miller said that he’d always been fascinated by Thunderbird: the first X-Man to die, and stay dead. Also, treating mutants as metaphor, Thunderbird is a Native American. He then said that he wants to do a Cable/Deadpool crossover, finishing with “Cable is awesome.”Comment: The Terminator TV show had at least half a dozen Native references in its two seasons. Perhaps Ashley Miller was responsible for them.
To the Lighthouse, the 3/27/09 episode of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, opens with another Native-themed voiceover:
Episode RecapAs Sarah continues packing to leave their temporary home, she begins to reminisce about John's early years, when the legends of the jungle were his fairy tales. His favorite story was about El Viejo del Monte, The Old Man of the Forest, a merciless killer of animals, who left them to rot in the soil. The Gods turned him into a half-animal-half-man, condemned to defend the jungle for all eternity. In her memory, she recalls a trek through a Central American jungle with John, part of his training. El Viejo's curse, his punishment, was to be forever vigilant, to forever protect, a role Sarah, too, has for her son.Apparently Sarah and John were in Nicaragua at the time, because that's where the legend originated:
More Fairy TalesYour last bedtime story is El Viejo del Monte. This story originated in the Solentiname Archipelago in Lake Colcibolca (Lake Nicaragua). There was a hunter who mercilessly killed any animal that crossed his path. Worse, he didn't eat these animals and just left their carcasses to rot. Because of this disrespect, the gods decided to teach him a lesson and turned him into an half man/half ape creature and made him keeper of the wildlife. He protects the birds, reptiles, and mammals of the islands from poachers and disrespectful hunters.I couldn't find much information on this legend. I presume it's mostly indigenous, although it may be partly Spanish.
Another "indigenous" bit
Soon we see John Henry, the reconstituted Terminator robot, building an island out of Lego toys. "Engaging in imaginative play helps my development," he says. "This is Mount Valmai, hiding place of the Mask of Life. The Toa protect the Mask from the Dark Hunters."
This sounds like something out of the South Seas--maybe New Zealand or Fiji or Easter Island. But no--it comes from the pseudo-Polynesian legends of the Bionicle set of toys.
Anyway, with the 2008-2009 television season almost over, Terminator has taken the lead in terms of including indigenous content. At this point it'll be tough for another show to catch it.
In Last Voyage of the Jimmy Carter, the 3/20/09 episode of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, a "flash forward" shows a submarine in the year 2027. The crew is human but the captain is a robot reprogrammed to help them.
As the sub heads through robot-controlled waters to pick up a package, crewman Dietz objects to taking orders from "metal":You think those things work for us? Look around you. We work for them.
Hauling ass through the worst of Indian country? And for what? To take a damn box back to Serrano?Referring to enemies as Indians is stereotypical, of course. And an American Indian crew member might well object: "As far as I'm concerned, Indian country is the only place that isn't enemy territory."
But the crew members are mainly Euro-American soldiers. And the term accurately reflects a US military mentality. By showing that some soldiers think stereotypically, at least it's honest.
True, it would be better if someone had contradicted this politically incorrect usage. Leaving the notion that Indians = robots unchallenged isn't nice. But at least Terminator's writers are still thinking of Indians.
The 3/2/09 episode of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles is all about dreams vs. reality. It's titled Some Must Watch While Some Must Sleep and it has a couple of Native references.
One recap summarizes how the episode begins:Midnight is the witching hour, when we’re visited by dark spirits, as Sarah narrates at episode’s outset. Lives, love, sanity, sleep are stolen by faceless demons in the still of night. “If you believe in that kind of thing,” she adds.With references to "incubus" and "sucubus," Sarah's narration is rooted in Western rather than Native lore. But as another recap explains, the story shifts to Native references:Sarah faces a thread of linear nightmares about seeing a coyote before being tazed, kidnapped, and held in the back of a truck to be interrogated and injected with something by Ed Winston, the man who shot her at the mysterious Skynet plant.
Sarah meets a suspicious nurse at the sleep clinic who she believes is doing harm to the other patients, such as her roommate Dana, who shares some of Sarah's past bad habits. Here is where the dreamcatcher appears, apparently made by a janitor named Hector with a technological coyote tattoo on the back of his neck. Is he possibly part Native? Is he the Trickster Coyote trying the subtly help Sarah cope with her situation?The coyote appears again at the end as Sarah talks about a "demon woman" who may represent her dark side. But who knows? The episode is too complex to summarize or grasp easily. Read the recaps if you want to find out more.
Hector the "coyote" doesn't do much more than his one scene, in which he explains about the dreamcatcher and his tattoo. So again the Native influence is subtle. But looking at the whole season, it seems the writers are trying to give Terminator a mystical Native vibe.
P.S. The second summary was written by Beth Aileen Lameman (Anishinaabe, Metis, Irish), who co-created the webcomics THE WEST WAS LOST and FALA. I guess she'd know more about Coyote than most reviewers. Interesting to see another connection between Natives, comics, and television.
In Desert Cantos, the 2/20/09 episode of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, the following exchange takes place:CAMERON: Native Americans believe that when their pictures are taken, their souls are stolen and locked in a photograph forever.
JOHN: I think you're safe.
[Because Cameron is a robot who doesn't have a soul.]I think this soul-stealing thing is more of a myth than an actual belief. Many Indians posed voluntarily for photographers such as Edward Curtis.
And Cameron phrased her claim in the present tense. I'm guessing the vast majority of today's Indians don't worry about losing their souls in photographs.
Still, this is the third time Terminator has mentioned Indians this season. (The first two references were to the Modoc War and Cabeza de Vaca.) As with Ugly Betty, it seems clear that someone on the writing staff favors Indians. No way do this many mentions happen by chance.
But wait, there's more
Later in the episode, Cameron inspects a dead cow and says there are no bullet wounds. A girl named Zoe responds, "What are you...Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman?"
This isn't exactly a Native reference, but it's unusual. It would've made more sense to compare Cameron to Sherlock Holmes...Kojak...Hawaii Five-0...or Quincy, M.E. You know, someone who actually might apply detective skills to a dead body?
So it was a gratuitous Western reference, which shows the writers are thinking of cowboys and Indians. Which bolsters the point I made above.
Recently, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles gave us a reference to the Modoc War. Now it's come up with another Native-themed reference.
In the Dec. 15 episode titled Earthlings Welcome Here, Sarah opens with this portentous monologue:In 1490, the Spanish explorer Cabeza de Vaca landed on the shores of the new world, seeking power and fortune. He was immediately attacked and captured. Almost all of his traveling companions murdered.
Enslaved, de Vaca chose to embrace his captors' beliefs and learn their ways. He became a healer. Over time, he was freed. And de Vaca attracted his own following. He believed he had the power over life and death. The desert had transformed him.
He was not the first. And he would not be the last.Comment: People discussed this opening bit online. For instance, in Re: Terminator-213 "Earthlings Welcome Here"--Discuss/Grade, they noted that Cabeza de Vaca couldn't have come to America in 1490 because Columbus "discovered" it in 1492. They surmised that the writers mixed up his birthdate and his arrival date. Or that Sarah Connor lives in an alternate timeline where Cabeza de Vaca actually did arrive in 1490.
I'm betting it was an unintentional mistake, not an intentional clue. No doubt the writers knew when Columbus sailed the ocean blue but didn't make the connection. At that moment, it meant "a long time ago" to them, not "two years before Columbus."
More boo-boos
The narration includes a few other mistakes.
The unnamed captors were Indians, of course. Given that Cabeza de Vaca adopted their beliefs, it would've been nice to give them credit.
The Indians did not capture the men of the Narváez expedition immediately. Actually, Cabeza de Vaca was shipwrecked on the coast of Texas some six months later with eighty men. That was the beginning of his eight-year trek through the Southwest, which left him with only three companions.
Calling the Indians' actions "murder" is unfair. Soon after the Europeans arrived, Wikipedia tells what happened:[T]he royal officials assembled ashore and performed the highly ritualized formal declaration and authentication of Narváez as royal governor of La Florida. He then read the Requerimiento that explained to any natives listening that their land belonged to Charles V by order of the pope. He also explained that they had the choice of converting to Christianity. If they chose to convert, they would be loved and welcomed with open arms. If they chose not to, war would be made upon them. Pleas and threats by a party of natives the next day were ignored.If that's not a declaration of war, it's close to it. Knowing the Spaniards' genocidal intent, the Indians had a right to fight in self-defense. Letting the self-proclaimed conquerors go unchecked would've been disastrous.
Finally, the explorer's full name was Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca. His full last name was Cabeza de Vaca. Sarah was wrong to call him "de Vaca" ("of a cow"), a fragment of a name.
Conclusion
Overall, this bit is another case of two steps forward, one step back. The first step was mentioning Indians in the first place. Kudos to Terminator's writers for including another Native-themed reference.
The second step forward was crediting the Indians for having values superior to the Europeans'. The step back was implying the Indians were slavers and murderers--i.e., savages--without providing any context. Oh, well...can't win 'em all.
P.S. I sense a trend forming: a groundswell of support for Cabeza de Vaca in the media. Has his time finally arrived?
In the December 1 episode of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles--titled Self Made Man--Cameron the good robot (Summer Glau) is doing research in a library. She's making small talk with the librarian, a guy in a wheelchair, when she abrupt says this:CAMERON: Do you have a history of California field artillery?
CAMERON: I'm interested in the ancient muzzle-loading rifles used during the Modoc Indian War.
LIBRARIAN: Uh, in the California room.Hmm. The Modoc War occurred in 1872–73. I'm pretty sure "ancient muzzle-loading rifles" were ancient history by then. I'm less sure--but still willing to guess--that "field artillery" wasn't a big part of the weaponry used. This war consisted of skirmishes, attacks on camps, and pursuits on horseback. It wasn't like the Civil War where each sides lined up against the other and fired their cannons.
It seems this exchange was just an excuse to move the characters into a room with old Los Angeles photographs. Which the creators could've done in a million different ways. But still, they chose this way.
People have claimed that Summer Glau is part Native. Did the writers include the Modoc line as a sly wink to Summer Glau's fraction of Native blood? Did she come up with this line, perhaps ad-lib it, because of her Native awareness? I don't know, but it would be nice to think so.
