It's a complicated story and isn't liable to get any easier as years pass. Indians are now writing their own stories, but many recognize that the filter--the language they are using to tell their stories--makes a big difference in who reads them. In their own languages stories are passed down to native speakers. To write in English is the way to reach a larger audience, but in using the "enemies language" provides some hurdles that various writers have approached in interesting ways.

Many people have read the heart-pounding Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown and Black Elk Speaks (transcribed and interpreted by John Niehardt). If you look at this territory of the story of white/Indian battles and in particular Little Big Horn like a large circle and slice it into perspectives and read lots of stories, with each a slightly different take on the battle at the middle of the pie, then you begin to understand those perspectives. Read Mari Sandoz' Crazy Horse and Standing Bear's My People the Sioux then read Erdoe's Lame Deer Seeker of Visions and move forward to the late Vine Deloria's Custer Died for Your Sins. Shift locations a bit to the Black Hills and look at how others have viewed the Ghost Dance and Wounded Knee (first and second) and see how authors like Gerald Vizenor and Gordon Henry and Louise Erdrich and many others view their past and their present.

What an oddly serious discussion to evolve out of speculation about Errol Flynn's dick. But the tricksters among the Indians writers could turn this into a witty and biting essay, I'm sure of it. I know a few who've written similar things about the movies and how they reflect [not] Indian life and history.

SRS (English Major, MA 1999, emphasis Am. Indian Lit--can you tell?)