Sitting Bull, Andy Warhol, 1986

“Reel Injun” is a documentary by the Cree filmmaker Neil Diamond about the on screen history of Native Americans in Hollywood cinema. It is available on Netflix. As a way of telling this history, Mr. Diamond has written his film in the genre of a road trip movie. As he moves from place-to-place in a barely roadworthy “rez car”, his movie also moves the audience through the history of the different Hollywood stereotypes: the noble native, the brutal savage and the groovy wise man that have obscured the real history. One sequence of clips shows many famous white actors in red face. In another, an elderly couple that once worked as extras on John Ford westerns recall that their spoken native dialog, was much different than the scripted dialog and much more obscene too. Activist and actor Russell Means recalls being at the 1973 Wounded Knee stand-off and seeing on TV, Sacheen Littlefeather turn down Marlon Brando’s Oscar, citing “treatment of American Indians by the film industry.” This event revived the spirits of the protesters at a much needed time. As a child Diamond and his friends “cheered for the cowboys, never realizing we were the Indians.” The film covers a hundred years of Westerns, from Thomas Edison’s first movie to modern independent cinema. I just wish that “Reel Injun” could have been longer.