Shocking documentary about Native Americans

[Freija]

I think I just head a small heart attack!

I got quite happy noticing there would be a Danish documentary about Indigenous peoples on TV tonight. That film had got sponsormoney from just about all Scandinavian countries and from institutes and funds that we had applied to, but had been denied money from. So it might be interesting to see what kind of film we SHOULD have made to get that money.....

It all starts with a white history professor saying: "There are no traditional cultures left, they are all in museums!(Oh, geez, this doesn´t start well, I thought).  It got worse. Much worse. The film might have been called Ten reasons to dislike indigenous peoples. It showed nothing but drunks and criminals. When they finally got to American Indians, after aborigines and innuits, all they showed were the casinos. The footage from the reservations was filmed with hidden cameras to show the ongoing arguments between tribal members. And because they were not welcomed to film on the reservations, they said....

AND the spokesperson for Indians was David Yeagley!!!

The conclusion of the film was that all indians should assimilate, the reservations should close down and the professor finished by repeating that no traditional cultures were left. The success for native people was how modern they were living, not how traditionally they were living!! Noone bothered to ask any traditionalists what they thought, though.....

Oh My God! I suddenly saw the light....why Swedish TV broke the contract with us. Why we did not get any funding from anywhere. This was so racist and awful....just AWFUL!

[educatedindian]

I'm not too surprised that Yeagley was in the film. What was the film's name? And who made it? I'd like to write the media telling them they had a film made using a racist imposter as a "spokesman". Yeagley doesn't represent anyone except the John Birch Society. (An infamous bunch of bigoted conspiracy nutjobs.)

[Freija]

Well, the Danish/Swedish title was "Prisoners of the past". Don´t know if it has an English title.....
It was made and produced by Danish National TV. The gist of the film was that Native people have been fooled by the leaders to think they need to keep old traditions, languages and ceremonies instead of assimilating - hence the title....

Interesting - Swedish TV said they could not show our film without a studio discussion afterwards. That´s why they said no to it. But THIS film....no discussion needed obviously. It is sad!

[earthw7]

Oh My Yeagley is at it again.

[Freija]

Heyyy, the film is on the Internet! See if this works:

http://svt.se/svt/road/Classic/shared/mediacenter/index.jsp?&d=13276&lid=puff_492362&lpos=extra_0

Just pick Windows Media Player or Real Player Format up to the left. The short introduction is in Swedish, but the film is in English. It´s one hour. Hope you can watch it, it would be interesting to hear your opinions.

[frederica]

Well, it's definately anti-sovereignty. Not only do you have Yeagley, but I see they dragged Barbara Lindsley out from under her rock. She is "One Nation United". They have tiies to gas, oil, and convenience stores.

[Moma_porcupine]

That film sounds absolutely horrible. Whatever Yeagley's family
background may be, I don't see why Yeagley or anyone else imagines he has a right to speak for Native people.

Even if his Mom is Comanche as he claims, that doesn't mean he automatically has a right to speak for all Comanches, much less for all Native people. How would Denmark like it if any Danish person, no matter what their position in Danish society, could be selected by a foriegn power as a spokesperson on Danish policy ?

Whover made that documentry should be ashamed of themselves for
promoting social policies which enable genocide.

[Ingeborg]

The name of the 'historian' shown is Keith Windschuttle, an Australian. From what I found, he seems to have started off on the left, then wandered off to the extremist right and is a holocaust denier.

Here's some sites:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_Windschuttle
http://www.mail-archive.com/cypherpunks@minder.net/msg46187.html
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/10/24/1066631621572.html
melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2005/03/89907.php
http://webdiary.com.au/cms/?q=node/1036      (scroll down)

I did a google search on Windschuttle, and had a look at the first four pages of results - on two, google dropped a result due to its extremist right nature.

Yes, the film unites Australias and America's 'finest', like Yeagley, Lindsay, and Windschuttle.

Fwiw, my man who watches a lot of Danish and some Swedish TV (via internet) says the 'documentary' probably never got shown by Danish TV, because most of the stuff having been aired in Denmark first and then in Sweden has both Danish and Swedish subtitles. To have an English commentary according to him indicates the 'documentary' was done for an international market, not just for the Danish audience.

[Freija]

I got a call from a Sami woman today, she said they were so upset about this film, too. Even though the Samiis were used as an example of "nice intelligent indigenous people who know how to assimilate"  Also got a groupmail urging people to call Swedish TV to let them know that this is totally unacceptable and at least let the other side be heard.

I totally understand that TV is supposed to show all kind of films ....but you cannot show just one side of the coin!! How can they call themselves neutral....where are the voices of the traditionalists??

So people are really upset over here...good!!

Wonder if they would have aired a hate-documentary about muslims? Or jews?

[Laurel]

Ye gods, this is awful.  "Assimilate or colonialism is all your fault!" 

[frederica]

The ones here have motives, their ties to big companies.  Windschuttle is just a racist, I kept waiting in the film for him to bring up eugenics, he never did, but some of the articles hint at it.

[Barnaby_McEwan]

Annika, if there is an email address people can send polite protests to, let us know.

Nothing like some artificial controversy to sell a programme: that's the most charitable reason I can think of for a director to feature fixtures of the loony right like Windschuttle and Yeagley.

From the Sydney Morning Herald

In his 2002 book The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, Volume One: Van Diemen's Land 1803-1847, Keith Windschuttle resurrected the notions that originally justified colonisation - that Australia was never truly owned by its original inhabitants, that they were too savage to understand such a concept as property, too primitive to organise a war and too vulnerable to survive settlement. He offered not only a colonial frontier without warfare, but asserted that it was an academic conspiracy that portrayed it as such...

...He counts the dead but is unmoved by their passing. He concludes that 118 Aborigines were killed on the Tasmanian frontier. Mark Finnane, employing standard social science methodologies, concludes this death rate was proportionally three times higher than that of Australian soldiers in World War I. He wonders why Windschuttle, whose work demonstrates the violence of the colonial frontier, "evades his own conclusions"...

...Australians have remembered Tasmania as the bloodiest chapter in their colonial past. My research has unearthed stories told in Tasmania of a horrific frontier. One person, in 1908, described the island as a "land soaked in blood". But Windschuttle continues an Australian tradition of justifying and silencing colonial injustices. This tradition runs deep only because there is so much to justify, and so many voices to silence.

One of the best things to do with racists is mock them, of course. Here's a reaction to the news of Windschuttle's appointment to the board of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation:

Controversial historian Keith Windschuttle has dealt with the storm over his appointment to the ABC Board in his customary fashion, publishing an article in Quadrant denying its existence. "I have seen no proof of any outrage and can only conclude it does not exist," he said. "And I reject the suggestion by lesser, evidence-based historians that I should try reading newspapers, listening to the radio or checking my email."

[Freija]

dokumentarfilm@svt.se - that´s to the documentary department.

The head of the dept. is Ingemar Persson. 

I got this info from a groupmail, I haven´t checked it out but apparantly some people have even phoned TV today. So if anyone asks how you found out about the film, just say that there are all these emails from Sweden circulating.....I must say that I am glad that it took a life of its own over here and that I wasn´t the only one who got upset. 

[Kantuta]

Freija, I've been discussing this documentary with everyone the last days. Me and my husband were shocked to see it and as soon as it was finished we wrote letters to the swedish television to complain.

The worst thing is that I am now reading articles in newspapers about how good and interesting the film was because it showed what it's really like in the reservations and how horrible indigenous people are. (example: http://www.expressen.se/ledare/1.1034804/080206-radda-barnen#comments )

[Freija]

Oh my God, it gets worse and worse! I read that article....weeewh.... She compares the way Natives live in the reservations with Muslims in Sweden killing their daughters when they date the wrong man. What has THAT gotto do with anything??!!! Seems like she implies the same thing is happening on the rez. Huh?!!

People "think" a lot and discuss these things, yet have probably never been to a Native community. And if so, just as tourists going to a pow wow or something. I don´t even know what to say any more.....I didn´t expect this to happen in Scandinavia.