Very few things get me riled up so I seldom respond to anything in
e-mail, but Conquest of My Brothers has finally put a light under my
fire. It is one of the worst examples of paternalistic,opportunistic
and imperalistic pieces I have ever seen, and I want to share with you
why I feel this way. First of all, it's pretty dull. Secondly, there
is a history to this play that needs finally to be shared, and I might
as well do it now.
This play originated on my campus, written by Ed Emanuael of our Drama
Department. As you may or may not know, I am a Professor of American
Indian Studies, within the Department of Ethnic Studies, and in (if memory
serves me correctly) l988 I happened to be at a party where I met the
Dean of Arts and Humanities who mentioned to me that one of his
faculty had written a play about American Indians and that this play
was scheduled to be taken to China. I told him I knew nothing about it
and he asked to read the script. I phoned Ed Emanual and requested a
copy. He apparently thought I would be elated, but instead I was
horrified. The campaign to discredit me and the Indian community
began with Deans, Vice Presidents and everyone getting into squashing
our combined (me, the Indian students, the Indian community here at
Fresno) efforts to replace this play with something more credible.
Historically, the play was inaccurate on many different counts. Then
we were informed that Ed Emanual was taking the play to China without
a single Indian in the cast. The upshot of the trip to China is that
he ignored all of our concerns and included one Indian who was a
member of our Indian students club, one Indian whose claim to fame is
that he Indian danced at Disneyland, and one wannebe Indian. It was
interesting to us that the preview of this play which was supposed to
take place on campus and the Indian community invited to, was shown
about ninty miles away in Bakersfield.
Everything went back to normal, and we promptly forgot about it, when
I and other Indians received a call from PBS inviting us to preview a
movie of Conquest to be shown on our local station. I refused to go,
but an Indian faculty member at Fresno City College went and talked to
me about this movie. Consequently we wrote a letter to the Fresno Bee
(our local newspaper) detailing exactly the historic inaccuracies,.
and followed up with letters to PBS.
It appears that PBS had intended to use this film in the California
classrooms and that is when two individuals involved with
multi-cultural materials got in touch with me as a liason between the
producer and the agencies who would be involved in California
education systems. They asked me to preview this film because they
noticed at least a dozen inaccuracies, and I told them I'd look at it
at home. I also informed them of our original concerns with the play.
This was reported back to our local PBS station, and the upshot was
that the person who was trying to instill some credibility in this
film was told not to darken the doors of PBS-Fresno again.
I've already written too long a message, but suffice to say there will
be a PBS Board meeting, where the Indian community and the person who
brought this all to the attention of both the station and the Board
will meet and it seems that the Board had no idea of the background of
this video. I have also written our local PBS suggesting that they
may have had good intentions ... but they should have consulted some
of the Indian academics in this area before going ahead with the
project. At this juncture many assertions have been made, and it
promises to be one of the stormy issues coming up in this area.
For my money, I can't see why in the world our local station can
support a program that is dull, badly written and inaccurate except
they wanted to get on the Quincentenial bandwagon. But the least, the
very least that can be expected of our public television is that they
produce Indian programming that portrays some integrity, some truth,
and include some Indians who know what they are talking about. "enuf
said.
Delores J. Huff, Ed.D.
Professor, American Indian Studies
delores_huff@csufresno. edu