Little Hawk, you're correct. Indians are a very touchy crowd in many contexts, and are depending on the reason, more or less entitled to be so. I'm not going to pick up this discussion beyond this point because enough has been said. And if you read the Cynthia Ann Parker history you'll see in a nutshell what the major complaint is about Dances With Wolves--it goes through all of the sympathetic stuff but still has a very traditionally white ending. Indian people had a lot to say about the "feel good" quality of it film, that made only colonizers feel better.

I agree entirely about the remark that you can't ever make everyone happy in Indian Country--there is so much infighting that it gets pretty damned depressing if you consider yourself a scholar in that field. I regularly see people ganged up on for some discussion list remark or published essay or other on the scholarly lists--there are some who follow the teachings of this native leader, others who follow that native scholar--and heaven help the mixedblood scholar who chooses to favor their Indian upbringing or try to bring in at least dual perspectives. With mixedblood kids myself, the best thing I can do for them is try to offer some perspective and tell them it's okay to say "screw it all" if the fighting gets to be too bad to take the pleasure out of life. More than one scholar has sadly set aside a lifetime of work and gone on to study other things because the contentious nature of the field got to be more than they could tolerate.

A film that will definitely make you squirm on the subject is Black Robe. And Sherman Alexie has been making films that bring humor but also an Indian perspective to things. Smoke Signals has been around for a while now.

SRS