This is the true story of the Yankee holocaust of the Native American population. Not how soldiers slaughtered them back in the Indian Wars. Not how we herded them onto remote and barren reservations, then left them to rot.
This is the story of what we did to finish the job. It’s what we did to “civilize” the Native American population. In the name of God no less.
This is a deep, rich movie with superlative acting and a delicate use of subtext. The tragic story is told with the kind of compassion that only Native Americans could conjure. Truly, it is they who are civilized, not us.
The final phase of this American holocaust was carried out by the “men in black who worship the God of death,” as the Indians used to call Catholic missionaries and their savior Jesus.
Indian children on every reservation in the land were forced to attend Catholic boarding schools where they were forbidden all of their traditional ways – their native language, their culture, their music, dance, literature, handcrafts – their life.
These children were brutalized in every way, physically, emotionally, sexually. Those who managed to survive, to this very day, suffer a suicide rate six time greater than any other group.
This is a shameful story that every American should know about.
