"Deadwood" is DOA

Yet again we are left to ponder, why the hell big Hollywood studios can't do a better job of including Indigenous People in their projects?
Natives are usually either completely left out or subjected to stereotypical hack-jobs as in HBO's 'Deadwood.' The folks running the studios aren't idiots, many are talented and quite intelligent.

That makes it worse.

Because that means they just don't care. They know it's wrong, but yet they persist in their practices. They think enough of us to rape and pillage our Culture and History for ideas and source material, but don't respect us enough to present us as real, three dimensional characters.

Tantanka cesli!

--ryan



Bury 'Deadwood'


By Lela Schwitzer

There’s nothing like watching a stereotypical portrayal of “Indians” on my TV to get my Menominee blood boiling.

What’s the object of my anger? Well, that would be HBO’s new series, “Deadwood,” created by David Milch of ABC’s “NYPD Blue.”

The show is based on the real Deadwood, a South Dakota squatters’ town in the sacred Black Hills of South Dakota, in summer 1876. The illegal boomtown attracted thousands of fortune hunters in search of the gold that Custer declared was there for the taking.

"I had always wanted to do a series set in some period where it was legitimate to explore the genesis of law,” Milch is quoted on the HBO Web site as saying. “What interested me about Deadwood is that it was an outlaw settlement, on Indian territory, so the American law didn't apply—there were no laws at all.”

Never mind that the Sioux tribes signed the Fort Laramie Treaty with the U.S. government in 1868, promising them this land for “as long as the river shall run.”

The outlaws in this HBO series know the worth of U.S. treaties and insatiably plunder away, while fearing no interference from the government.

In the first minutes, the profanity-riddled premiere episode introduces Native Americans as inconsequential beings who won’t deter the encroaching miners’ quest for gold.

One miner is adamant that no one will stop him from mining the gold from the Black Hills.

“Not the U.S. government saying I’m trespassing. Or the savage f***ing red man himself,” the miner says. Another “Deadwood” example of the cliched Indian is illustrated when a scallywag rides into town and tells of a mining family being hacked up by savages. The Deadwood denizens readily blame the Indians for the brutal massacre and are determined to exact justice.

A search party, headed by Wild Bill Hickok (Keith Carradine) and Seth Bullock (Timothy Olyphant), an ex-sheriff from neighboring Montana Territory, is formed to find a missing child of the murdered family. Once the child is entrusted to Doc Cochran (Brad Dourif), Deadwood’s doctor in residence, the man who reported the murders realizes that he’s in trouble.

Turns out, he did it—and knew exactly who to pin his horrifying crime on. But he made a critical mistake by not using the Indian way of pillaging. See, the scallywag only took money, whereas the Indians would have taken everything of value. This oversight earns him one of Wild Bill’s infamous bullets.

Although I am three-quarters something other than Indian, I am 100 percent pissed off when I see our people continually portrayed as violent beasts preying on civilized innocents, but seldom as families protecting their treaty-ratified resources from thousands of armed looters greedily staking claim to Indian lands.

I am disappointed that Milch, “Deadwood’s” head writer and executive producer, fails to address the blatant racism against people of color in a positive way, as he did so brilliantly at the helm of “NYPD Blue.”

Milch successfully presented the realities of a diverse detective squad room that includes Caucasians, African Americans, Hispanics and gays in the long-running police drama.

So far in “Deadwood,” Milch not only neglects the Native point of view, he doesn’t even represent the often-maligned Indians. They’re never seen, only spoken about.

I am sick of viewing the same garbage in nearly every film based in the 1800s: Godless, rampaging, scalping savages upsetting the lives of the new settlers. Give it a rest. Or at least get an original thought for your “Original Series,” HBO.

Am I wrong for taking aim at Milch’s stereotypical depiction of Indians? Did I jump the gun by judging the series by the first episode? Will “Deadwood” bite the bullet and portray our ancestors from their Native perspective? I hope so, but I doubt it.

If you’re looking for a renaissance in Native American depiction on film, look somewhere else. “Deadwood” is a dead end.


Lela Schwitzer, Menominee, is a student at Silver Lake College in Manitowoc, Wis.

Article Link: http://www.reznetnews.org/voices/040407_deadwood/