Indigenous People month

Technically Indigenous People Day was just October 9th this year, but it's looking to be a whole month.

With the new Ken Burns documentary on The American Buffalo, PBS has been highlighting Native American history and culture lately. There was also an 18 minute companion film called Homecoming, showing some bison returning to a couple of lands thanks to the InterTribal Buffalo Council. The Ken Burns film is a very moving documentary about the near extinction of animal as well as the suffering of the native people; they touch briefly on boarding schools and the Wounded Knee massacre for example. There are many indigenous experts weighing in on the history, and the film points out that some white conservationists valued the bison more than the humans. Some members of the American Bison Society were racists who believed in eugenics, for example, and didn't care about the native culture being eradicated. Thankfully, today, attitudes are better and the US is now including tribes in land and ecology policy; it matters that the Secretary of the Interior is Deb Haaland. On October 24th, PBS will air season 2 of their Native America series, but you can watch season 1 now if you have PBS Passport. (You just have to pledge a minimum amount, then they email you the info to sign up for Passport. If you have a smart TV or TV dongle that streams stuff, you can see Passport content on your TV, not just on a browser.)

Meanwhile Apple has their new Scorsese film Killers of the Flower Moon out. The press has talked up the tragic history of the Osage Nation, but the film itself looks to be from the perspective of the white character played by Leonardo DiCaprio. That might be okay as long as it showcases real history. It might be as good as Wind River was, but at 3 hours long, I'd rather watch it on Apple TV at my leisure.

Speaking of Native Americans, I continued with book 2 of the Cash Blackbear mysteries, and was glad to finally get more info about Cash's lost family, and backstory on Sheriff Wheaton. He too was adopted into a white family, but when he came back from the Korean War, the family disowned him and gave the farmland to their "real" biological children instead. How cold.