Movie took the safe politically correct route...

Excuse me, but you are full of *beep* The Native Americans were portrayed as having no flaws? Were we watching the same film?

Ray is part NA and part European ancestry. His character straddles both, coming from the white world that he respects, and learning to respect his other heritage too. (BTW. Val Kilmer is part Native American himself.)

As for white washing (pardon the pun) of the government's treatment of the Native Americans, you need to pay more attention. The whole world needs to pay more attention to what happens to the powerless. http://www.nirs.org/factsheets/pfsejfactsheet.htm

"I'd never ask you to trust me. It's the cry of a guilty soul."

aGuiltySoul is right. The whole point of the movie is that it was a very complicated issue with a lot of gray area and not like you said. At the very beginning, Frank explains about the way the traditionals and A.R.M. activists fought against the more "modern" tribal leaders who didn't act in the best interests of the people. All of which is real.

Pay attention to the tribal chairman played by Fred Ward -- he was an Indian, yet he and many of the other members of the tribal council were ready to sell out the people and the land to Uranium Mining interests which were already messing up the water supply, and it was when the one tribal council guy objected to the sellout, that he was murdered, and thereby hangs the tale.

This is all based on fact, on things that really happened. Look up Dick Wilson and the GOON Squad, Leonard Peltier, Anna Mae Pictou-Aquash, John Trudell and In The Spirit of Crazy Horse. Watch Incident at Oglala (a documentary). Ask Dejael of this board if you want to know more.

Let's just say that God doesn't believe in me.

Wow, psychotropic drugs have not been very kind to you... 20 minutes in, and I've seen the Native Americans portrayed pretty accurately on the reservation. Where's the "no flaws" part? Is it in the fact that their houses all look like they're going to fall over? The 47 broken down cars in every scene? The mangy dogs wandering the streets, eating whatever crap they find(Literally crap in some cases), and eating it? They may be portrayed as a proud people with a heritage that is very important to them, but it is NOT a "politically correct" portrayal by any means. It's a realistic portrayal. If anything, you may have people saying that they are bagging on the American Indians and making them look exactly like the usual stereotype you see in movies.

I don't think it shows Natives as flawless but one thing thats annoying about the way filmmakers portray Natives is how they make them seem "mystical" and "magical" as if the native religion is based on FACT rather than myth but they never miss a chance to poo poo Christianity. But sure, a lot of films do make whites look like they treated the natives horribly, yet both sides have blood on their hands. The natives killed anyone that traveled through "indian country" even if they had no intention of staying there. Its not that surprising when the war was over, they were made to live on reservations when they were scalping the heads of innocent people for simply travelling west on wagon trains.

Overall, I thought the film was pretty good not great or anything but a pretty good portrayel of reservation life. Their housing is not so good but hey, I guess it's better than living in teepees.

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