Cigar-store Indian in The Mentalist

I noted the Native subplot in last week's episode of The Mentalist. In the following episode, Red Sails in the Sunset (airdate: 11/18/12), Patrick Jane stops at a souvenir shop in the California desert. We don't get to see any souvenirs, just drugstore-type goods. But it seems like the kind of shop that might have a cigar-store Indian.

And sure enough, it does. As Jane leaves the store, he passes a typical Plains chief carved in wood.

This stereotypical wooden Indian isn't all bad. It subtly reinforces the idea that the desert, like most of America, was formerly Indian land. Indians lived and prospered in the kind of environment we'd call "hostile."

I don't know if the writers called for a cigar-store Indian, or if the set designer included it as a whim. Either way, it shows a vague awareness of America's Native history. Combined with The Mentalist's other Native episodes, that's good. Even if the show doesn't always get it right, it's trying.

For more on The Mentalist, see Treaty Payments in The Mentalist and Maya Artifacts in The Mentalist.

Amazon massacre in The Mentalist

In Sunday's episode of The Mentalist, titled If It Leads, It Bleeds (airdate: 11/11/12), Volker, a wealthy industrialist, may have killed Cassie, an investigative journalist. Cassie's publisher, Berman, explains why to detectives Cho and Rigsby:BERMAN: Volker had a geothermal project in the Amazon rainforest which was going to double his presence in the emerging markets. But when an indigenous tribe claimed the land sacred, it threatened to kill his deal. So...he made them disappear.

CHO: A whole tribe.

BERMAN: A whole village...found in a mass grave. The killing was blamed on fighting between drug traffickers and leftist rebels, a terrible tragedy that just so happened to remove all opposition to Volker's project.

RIGSBY: Come on. Nobody could get away with something like that.

BERMAN: Volker did. Look, he's smart. He does anything possible to keep his hands clean. He'll get other people to do his dirty work. But Cassie, she caught him anyway.Comment:  Funny how movies and TV shows always invent something "exotic" like a geothermal project in these situations. In reality, most Amazon conflicts are likely to be over your basic natural resources: gold, oil, or water.

That aside, this scenario is painfully close to reality. Miners and ranchers are encroaching on Native land. Indians who try to stop them sometimes get killed. The corporate and governmental powers behind the encroachment are rarely held accountable.

Indeed, this storyline probably was inspired by this news story in September:

Venezuela’s tribe massacre mystery

Eighty Yanomami were reportedly killed by Brazilian miners. Evidence suggests this may not be the case

The attack probably didn't occur, but it's still a plausible storyline. Kudos to The Mentalist's writers for using it. It may be the first and last time Amazon land rights get mentioned in a network TV drama.

The Native issue comes up again only peripherally, when Agent Lisbon accuses Volker of the crime. But bringing it up at all puts The Mentalist ahead of other shows.

Recall that one TV show, Off the Map, was set in the Amazon rainforest, possibly Venezuela. Yet I don't think it ever mentioned Indians, much less Amazon land rights. Another show, The River, treated Indians mainly as spooky savages.

I believe this is the fourth time The Mentalist has featured or mentioned indigenous issues. Someone on the staff is thinking about Indians, and that's good.

For more on The Mentalist, see Treaty Payments in The Mentalist and Maya Artifacts in The Mentalist.

Treaty payments in The Mentalist

A recent episode of The Mentalist included a Native reference. Titled So Long, and Thanks for All the Red Snapper (airdate: 5/3/12), the story was about the murder of a surfer. Turns out he was searching for sunken treasure and had a falling out with his partner.

Patrick Jane, the mentalist, learns of the treasure when he interviews an old salt in a bar. The key exchange goes like this:JANE: The Fremont was a treasure ship, the most famous in Santa Marta history.

OLD SALT: Yes, she went down in 1906. She was carrying all the annual treaty payments for the Indian tribes up north.

JANE: Crates of gold coins, and bullion. Sixty million dollars' worth, today's value.Huh? What's that, you say? Treaty payments from the US to tribes? In 1906? Consisting of solid gold?

No gold for Indians

I posted the following on Facebook for my Native friends:

Native history question: The US government sometimes bought Indian land via treaties. My impression is that the government paid for the land with goods and services. Do you know of any case where the government paid cold hard cash for land? You know, like chests full of Treasury bills or gold coins?

Somehow, I don't envision the government giving, or Indians getting, piles of money. What would the Indians do with it: hide it under their blankets? Open a savings account at a local Indian-friendly bank?

Instead, I imagine the government gave the Indians goods and services because it would be easier to cheat them that way. I.e., to provide inferior goods and skimp on the services.

This led to the following discussion with various people:I think Chief Richardville was the only one who recieved money in payment and then kept it to himself. He was the richest Indian ever in Miami territory, Indiana.

No, when a treaty called for a money payment, they would usually put money on account in the Treasury for the tribe's use. The government would tend the money and make the purchases the tribe requested.That sounds right. With an occasional exception such as Chief Richardville, if that story is correct.

I ask because the sunken treasure in last week's Mentalist was supposedly gold being shipped for Indian treaty rights in 1906. Every part of that claim sounded false. Gold paid directly to Indians in the 20th century, after the treaty era ended? I don't think so.Not!In fact, that has to be one of the least likely uses of gold currency in 1906. Almost anything the writers could've come up with would've been more plausible.Nope, didn't happen.

Sounds fishy to me also.Now I wonder if the Indians ever received money. As in cash in the hand, not in a ledger somewhere. Maybe in the early days when it was only hundreds or thousands of dollars?

No one had an answer for that.

Conclusion: Once again, The Mentalist includes Native culture or history (good) and does a mediocre job of it (bad). Oh, well.

For more on The Mentalist, see Maya Artifacts in The Mentalist and Aingavite Baa in The Mentalist.

Maya artifacts in The Mentalist

Last week's episode of The Mentalist, titled Red Queen (airdate: 2/24/11), had a Native-themed subplot. Here's the story:

The Mentalist--Recap & Review--Red Queen

By LizAt the Northern California Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Manuel Montero is dead from multiple stab wounds and a Mayan pendant worth $200,000 is missing. Jane observes a rib on a dinosaur skeleton has been broken off, either for cloning or breaking thick glass.

Rigsby speaks with a heavily accented man from the museum, who speaks glowingly about Montero as an honest antiquities dealer. He traveled a lot to South America, and had a key and security codes to the museum in order to show private buyers artifacts. Examining the body, Montero is wearing a calculator watch which reads ’6078′—or, upside down, it reads ‘blog.’

Grace found Montero’s blog, “I Dig Dead People” (get it, ’cause he’s an archaeologist?) and finds that he blogged about the pendant three weeks ago which came back with him on his most recent trip. An anonymous e-mailer had contacted him to set up a viewing. More bad news follows when there are multiple partial prints on the triceratops rib, and while more intriguing than bad, the news that Montero’s business had flourished while other antiquities dealers were shutting down or losing money is certainly of note.

Rigsby and Cho have been sent to check out Montero’s warehouse. While Rigsby is more excited about the taco truck just off the highway at first, that changes quickly as they check out the back and people are working there, loading things into a truck. A good old fashioned shoot out ensues, but they get one of the guys and find out that guns are their cargo, not precious antiques.

The man they have in custody, Salvador, reveals Montero was trafficking guns for cartels, gangs, private armies, in exchange black market antiquities. Lisbon and Jane are listening in, but he’s not fooled and knows they are being led to believe one way. He slides in to the interrogation and about the location of the body, asks if someone who was in trouble with a cartel would be found stabbed in a public museum. Salvador answers of course not, it’s too high risk.Comment:  The story goes in another direction after the police rule out arms smuggling as the motive for Montero's murder. So we're dealing with half an episode.

A few minor problems with the museum scenario:

The Northern California Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology is fictitious. In reality, the location is the Museum of Natural History here in Los Angeles, a few miles from my home.

I presume the show called it a museum of archaeology and anthropology to explain the presence of Mesoamerican artifacts. That doesn't work because we see tyrannosaurus and triceratops skeletons and a hall of animals with stuffed African elephants at the end. Archaeology and anthropology aren't the same as paleontology and zoology.

The LA museum does have a hall of Mesoamerican artifacts, for which I've criticized it. As many have noted, museums shouldn't lump indigenous people with lions and tigers and bears as part of the natural world. For more on the subject, see "Native American Dioramas in Transition" and Indians in Natural History Museums.

So the show tries to correct the problem by renaming the museum, then undoes the effort by displaying dead animal bodies. Nice try, but no cigar.

I guess a part-time professor could work in a museum rather than a university. I doubt he'd also be an antiquities dealer. My impression is that the Indiana Jones day of museum officials wheeling and dealing for artifacts is long over. There are too many laws and too much potential for conflict of interest.

These days, I think most museums acquire artifacts from other museums, private collectors, or estates. They don't dig them up themselves and steal take them from their home countries.

The gold pendant is a winged figure about six inches wide. I don't think such a pendant exists. If it did, I bet it would be worth more than $200,000. And it certainly would have more protection than an unguarded glass case at night.

The show's best point was claiming that the antiquities market has dried up because of repatriation laws. I don't know if that's true; returning old artifacts and acquiring new ones aren't necessarily connected. Yale has agreed to return its Machu Picchu artifacts to Peru, but I doubt Yale is actively seeking items from Inca ruins.

Anyway, no one on the show explained what repatriation meant. It was just good to hear it on network TV in a somewhat correct context.

All in all, Red Queen was another average attempt to portray Native issues. It didn't include any Indians on-screen. But at least The Mentalist is trying. Last spring it gave us the Aingavite Baa story featuring Indians.

For a similar TV episode, see Maya Mummy in Castle.

Aingavite Baa in The Mentalist

Last week's episode of The Mentalist, Aingavite Baa (airdate: 4/8/10), featured Gil Birmingham and Wes Studi in a Native plot. You can check out the full recap, but here's the story:

Three murder victims and a fourth victim with amnesia lead the investigators to a crime on an Indian reservation.

One of the murder victims is Leonard Railton, a troubled young Shoshone man. He's been living on the Storm River Reservation with his people to straighten out his life.

The investigators talk to his parole office, Dolores Brinton, who's also from this reservation. They head to the rez where they meet Joseph Silverwing (Wes Studi), a tribal leader, and Markham Willis (Gil Birmingham), a businessman who runs a store.

Aingavite Baa is a curious case in the annals of TV Indians. As we'll see, the setup is good, the execution is bad, and the overall tone is ugly. There are no serious cultural mistakes or stereotypes, yet the result is negative.

The good

The fictional Storm River Reservation is in Northern California somewhere, perhaps in the Sierra Nevada mountains. I believe some Shoshone people live there. This is a good way to do Indian tribes in fiction. You invent a tribe but give it a name that sounds real. You place it in a specific location (within driving distance of Sacramento, although the show could've been more precise). And you attach a real culture (Shoshone) to it. Without offending any existing tribes (one hopes), you've created a tribe that clearly resembles a real tribe.

The show addresses the conflict between state and tribal police jurisdictions with this tense exchange:BRINTON:  Will the tribal police be with you?

LISBON:  They're aware of the investigation. We'll keep them in the loop.

BRINTON:  I should go with you.

LISBON:  That's not necessary.

BRINTON:  As far as some of them are concerned, you're foreigners. Foreigners with badges. You won't get anything. I'll get my coat.

JANE:  Excellent. Well, we've got ourselves a Native guide.This reflects a commonplace conflict between state and tribal authorities. Often the states are as dismissive as Lisbon is here.

In some states I believe the state police can't go onto reservations to investigate crimes. In California, because of Public Law 280, I believe they can. Since the bodies were found off the rez, the responsibility rightly belongs to the state, not the tribe.

The Storm River setting feels suitably down-home. The vibe is pickup trucks and country clothes. The buildings we see include a recreation center (pool hall), meeting room, and general store.

Native actors obviously play the two main characters, Silverwing and Willis. Rosa Arredondo plays Dolores Brinton; I presume she's Latino. Railton, who's seen only in photos, looks Latino. The boys who get screen time in the rec center could be Indian, Latino, white, or some mix. Mylo Ironbear is uncredited as a tribal elder.

The extras in the rec center and meeting room look like they could be Indian (see photos). They're not on screen long enough to be sure, but at least they're not the Hollywood pretty people you see in most TV settings. They're as ordinary as real people usually are.

Patrick Jane tries on a chief's headdress in the store. That's okay, since tourist shops usually sell Plains Indian kitsch. When Jane asks about the headdress, Willis correctly says it's not Shoshone.

But then he says it's Laguna. I guess an artist in the Laguna Pueblo of New Mexico could've made a Plains headdress, but this is an odd note. Why not pick a Plains tribe instead?

The memorial service for Railton takes place in a modest meeting room with folding chairs. Silverwing doesn't offer any mystical talk about spirits or ancestors. He doesn't say anything religious; he talks about how Railton was trying to change. This is consistent with the fact that a small California reservation might have a mix of traditional and Christian beliefs.

There's no talk of the things you usually hear about Indians in TV shows--e.g., gaming, corruption, or poverty. The show treats these people as no different from any other small rural community.

The characters' names are suitably mundane. Only Silverwing has an "Indian name." In California a lot of Indians have Latino names, but these names are okay. At least they don't fall into the clichéd wolf/bear/eagle/hawk category.

According to one website, "The name of the episode means Red Water (Aingavite--Red, Baa--Water) in Shoshone language (Native American tribe)." As it turns out, that's a fitting title, and it's a nice touch.

Of course, I hope the producers got this from a Shoshone speaker and not just a dictionary somewhere. In many languages you can't put two words together and form a legitimate phrase. For instance, in Spanish, "red water" is agua roja, not rojo agua.

Also, I don't think aingavite baa comes up in the episode. And only one website had a translation for the phrase. So it's kind of a wasted effort.



The bad  [**spoiler alert**]

Jane deduces from two clues--a baby's rash and dying marijuana plants--that someone has been dumping toxic waste in a mountain lake.

Really? The waste caused those two effects but no others? No other people, animals, or plants got sick? And none of the agencies responsible for monitoring the water and the environment noticed?

It turns out the dumpers hired Willis and Railton to dump the waste. Railton got cold feet and contacted a journalist (the amnesia victim). To cover up the crime, Willis killed Railton and two witnesses and thought he killed the journalist.

From the dumpers' standpoint, the plan is stupid. There's a reason most waste dumps and landfills are in the desert, not the mountains. Easy access via roads, sparsely populated, not a lot of rain or snow, no water supply to contaminate, etc.

The dumpers are driving trucks through the mountains at night. They're relying on an unscrupulous Indian and his young assistant. The canisters are flimsy enough to start leaking.

This is the opposite of a foolproof plan. It could go wrong in so many ways that it's not funny. If you wanted a toxic-waste plan guaranteed to fail in a few months, this is it.

Willis's attempted coverup is also stupid. Once Railton contacts the journalist, it's a little late to kill them. What about their notes, computer files, e-mails, phone records, interviews, etc.? What if they've talked to scientists, the media, or government officials? You don't think they've already created a paper trail about the toxic-waste problem?

Willis shoots four people and kills three. He transports the bodies from the mountain lake to a barn somewhere in the suburbs. Why...to make them easier to find? Why not dump them in the lake with the toxic waste?

He's supposedly too rattled to notice one victim is alive. Really? He loaded the bodies into a truck, drove them out of the mountains, and hauled them into a barn, but didn't check them carefully?

A criminal mastermind would've chopped off their hands (and fingerprints) or incinerated the bodies, but not Willis. He's content to gift-wrap them for the police.

The ugly

Despite the apparent effort to create a reasonable set of Indians free of mistakes and stereotypes, the show's tone is negative. The show--particularly Patrick Jane, the audience stand-in--mocks or offends Indians several times.

Jane notes that parole officer Brinton has a bit of a New York accent. As if what...she isn't a real Indian? Perhaps she's a Shoshone Indian who was raised in New York City. Perhaps she's half Shoshone and half Jew, Italian, or Puerto Rican. So the hell what? Since when do you comment on the ethnicity of a fellow law enforcement official?

Jane makes the crack about a "Native guide" (above). When Silverwing gives them brief but truthful answers, Jane belittles Brinton's usefulness as an intermediary.

Jane interrupts the memorial service to ask if anyone knows the amnesia victim. He could've waited until it was almost done, but instead he turns it into a spectacle.

Perhaps worse, he questions Silverwing's honesty in front of his people. Before correcting himself, he implies Silverwing is a liar and a crook.

Jane has violated many social conventions before. But the people being violated are almost always the rich and powerful--i.e., stuffed shirts and elitists--or suspects with secrets. I don't recall his having offended a roomful of humble, honest people before.

There's a whiff of anti-Indian bias here. If the Indians were rich casino operators, or if two political factions were fighting for control, I could see a reason for Jane's attitude. But that isn't the case here. Jane appears to be prejudiced against Indians for no good reason.

Then we come to the penultimate scene of the show. Silverwing has protested because the investigators violated the memorial service. Madeleine Hightower, their superior officer, responds:HIGHTOWER:  You solved the triple, right?

LISBON:  Yeah.

HIGHTOWER:  Nobody got hurt?

JANE:  No!

HIGHTOWER:  Then to hell with him. Got justice done.

HIGHTOWER:  Keep up the good work.Really? The show treats the violation of an Indian ceremony as a joke? To hell with a tribal official with Wes Studi's quiet dignity?

Alas, Hightower's voice seems to be the producers' voice. "We did an episode about Indians, but who really cares about them? Someone forced us to take out all the mistakes and stereotypes, but we showed 'em what we really think."

In reality, this incident probably would make it into the newspapers. If pro-Indian politicians--and there are many--heard about it, they'd turn it into a cause celebre. If no one in the state police was fired, someone would be forced to apologize, at least.

Conclusion

Aingavite Baa started off well. It had the ingredients for a better-than-average Indian episode. The ending was weak, but that wasn't enough to sink the show.

The show failed because of its inexplicable contempt for Indians. Mistakes and stereotypes hurt the recent episode of Castle, but I never thought that show looked down on Indians. Despite the lack of mistakes and stereotypes, this one did.

For more on the subject, see Birmingham and Studi in The Mentalist and TV Shows Featuring Indians.

Birmingham and Studi in The Mentalist

Pictures of Gil Birmingham and Wes Studi on the set of The Mentalist. The episode supposedly will air April 8.

Gil Birmingham's Photos--The Mentalist (ABC)

Comment:  I sure hope this isn't some stereotypical story about crime at an Indian casino.

For more on the subject, see TV Shows Featuring Indians.

Below:  Tim Kang, Simon Baker, Gil Birmingham, Robin Tunney.