It’s been a long winter in South Dakota. Mini-glaciers have blown into every low spot and the ice has leveled the earth. We live a long way out of town, on the edge of the Pine Ridge Reservation, within sight of Stronghold Table where the Lakota went to mount their last stand after the massacre at Wounded Knee Creek. The landscape is starkly beautiful but, in the depth of winter, it can be gloomy, indeed. The landscape is starkly beautiful but, in the depth of winter, it can be gloomy, indeed. This February brought an epidemic of cabin fever that forced Jill and me to drive the forty-two miles into the town of Rapid City on a Sunday afternoon. We treated ourselves to Chinese food and went to the first movie we had seen in a very long time.
AVATAR is not going to change the world but even a curmudgeon like me has to admit to being beguiled and a little thrilled at the same time. Of course it was the first 3D movie I had seen in over fifty years but still, I don’t remember that technological trick being half so impressive. I’ll bet the reviews rave about the animation and the special effects, but the script is familiar. DANCES WITH WOLVES on a distant moon. It is an old, sentimental, and simplistic story about how reconnection to the rest of creation is our only chance for redemption. It is a little sappy, but it has been repeated throughout much of human history because it is a hopeful tale, usually laid over apocalyptic scenarios that we all fear may well be true. It is the idea that man is basically good and it is the runaway trappings of civilization that are evil. It is a story that is regularly scoffed at by popular tough guys who claim to have the courage to embrace life as it “really is”.
Those are the kinds of things that snow-bound South Dakotans think about when they finally get to town. The morning after we saw AVATAR, I sat listening to the news in my special chair and watched the sun come up over Stronghold Table. I thought about how the grand battle scene in the movie was fought over a place – The Tree of Souls – that could easily have been modeled on Stronghold. There was finally no battle at Stronghold Table and the “noble savages” that were surrounded there were not as perfect as Avatar’s gentle, blue guys with tails. But the parallels are obvious.
I was peeling the onion skins off that metaphor when the radio told me that the South Dakota legislature had passed a resolution designed to encourage public-school, science teachers to hold back on telling kids about global warming. I was not surprised. It had been a long, cold winter, a time when our goblins of denial are emboldened and our better angles fly off to Phoenix. I went to the internet and found a copy of the resolution. With sophomoric cleverness it seeks to somehow equate global warming with cosmology and the pseudo-sciences of astrology. You would think, in these hard times, that our legislature could have been too busy for such a resolution. It is hard to say what they were thinking, perhaps that this bitter-cold winter proves something about climate change. Or, more likely, it is more denial, an expression of childish defiance in the face of the unknown future.
I chuckled to recognize the same tone in the resolution as the makers of Avatar gave to the evil, consumptive industrialists. Reading that resolution, I was reminded of the similar denial I witnessed as a kid: the cruel and foolish comments of my father’s friends as they watched on television as civil rights were won by black men in America’s streets, the insanity of chemical industry executives demonstrating the benign nature of DDT by drinking it. Even as a kid, I knew that all that bazaar behavior was driven not by courage and belief in what was right, as the practitioners claimed, but by bravado that struggled to cover a deep-seated fear of change.
Of course the world has changed anyway. People don’t read as much as they did back in the fifties and sixties. Huge blockbuster movies can enter popular culture by virtue of their price tag alone. Few people now-a-days remember Soul on Ice, Silent Spring, or Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. I’d be surprised if many of the legislators that voted for our State’s latest resolution have read any of those books. But they might have gone to see AVATAR and that is probably good. My fear is that they will somehow miss the story that has been told and retold in hopes that someone with power will understand it, if only as metaphor. My fear is that the great movie of 2010 will be remembered solely for the animation, special effects, and the fact that it made a huge pile of money.
Comments 19
You really got this one… I took my afterschool program to see Avatar over the Christmas vacation. Everyone of my students came out of the movie feeling good about who they were. They connected on so many levels with characters in this movie. For many of them their Tree of Souls is the Black Hills.
When it cones to the SD Legislature you put it well: “Bravado covering the deep seated fear of change”. I know one legislator who is a creationist, believes the earth was created 6,000 years ago. To think this individual is part of the law making process give me a “deep seated fear”!! 🙁
I, too, recognized many of the parallels with “Dances with Wolves” when I saw “Avatar.” You can add corporate greed to the list of things that can go badly for the many locals who may be adversely affected when money is at stake – “you have something I want, and I will take it at any cost.”
As to global warming, no one seems to be paying attention to the communities in the northern tundra or in vicinity of the North Pole, as the ice is melting, ports are accessible for a longer time than they used to be, and polar bears have to search farther and farther into the ice for food to survive. If we get a dry, hot summer, then what will the doubters think?
Right on the mark. I’m the pastor of a local church and have been trying to connect ecological justice and spirituality for twenty-five years and still, denial is the most subtle, powerful and persistent way the truth gets shoved aside. Denial is so persistent, and it is the tactic that is finally “working” for those with extreme vested interests in keeping the status quo when it comes to western industrialization civilization because to accept the truth that our way of life is the reason we’re in the mess we’re in is too painful to deal with. And when we can’t deal with the truth, we shove it aside, deny it, but the truth is the truth and the truth will always, ultimately, prevail.
And so, hold on to hope. Thank you, Wild Idea Buffalo. Keep working at it, doing the good work in which you are engaged on the Great Plains. The seemingly small things do, indeed, make a great difference.
THANK YOU!
Some how, I always think the Indians will win! I haven’t seen Avatar (although our son wanted us to go with him to see it) I still think in the long road — we should listen to the Indians.
How timely… I am currently reading Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, (catching up on all of the pertinent western history related to land management that I didn’t learn in college and grad school). I work for a local government Open Space program, and have set my life’s work on the course of repairing many of the 19th century era land management disasters, and to help a new thinking of land management in the Western U.S. As I have been reading this book, I have been really struggling with the actions of people in our society that have not evolved from the days of “manifest destiny” over 100 years ago. Whether talking about the wolf fights in Montana and Idaho, the mainstream ranching and farming philosophies or the global climate change deniers, these people have not evolved their thinking from those that stole the native tribes’ land on the Plains, and committed what was tantamount to government-sanctioned genocide in the late 1800s.
I agree that a lack of reading is a largely to blame for the mass ignorance many in our society seem to exhibit in contemporary society. Instead of careful thought and study of issues, people regurgitate talking points from their chosen media outlet, and rather than have an open dialogue about an issue where the best idea wins, we shout talking points until someone gives.
But as you mentioned Dan, change does not stop because of those that are afraid of change. And people like us can help facilitate that change. Thanks to you for doing your part.
I am very excited to be traveling to Rapid City in a couple weeks, and hope to visit Wounded Knee and see a bit of your country that I so enjoyed reading about in Buffalo for the Broken Heart!
AGW/Climate Change is to put the fruits of our labor into the hands of plutocrats via Carbon Credits (you might get a few dollars for grass reserve rights), and to fill the coffers of our broke governments, nothing else. In fact the developing world wanted their cut of the loot so they could develop, and by development I mean energy use, hence carbon. Kudos for your work on the conservation, thumbs down for the sanctimony.
Dan and Jill,
Suggest you see The Blind Side. Great movie. About some fine people in Memphis Tennessee.
By the way, look at my latest publications on Kindle(Amazon.com), including “Understanding Granddad through his Poetry.”
Still remember my visit to the River Ranch. Great time. You were great hosts.
Howard Ray White,
Historian and Writer,
Charlotte, NC
Simmons — Climate change is real. How much change, whose fault and why exactly seems the smallest of the questions. Who is going to make money off it? All the wrong people if we don’t admit it’s happening, in the natural course of things or not. Carbon credits, really? I didn’t read any sanctimony regarding climate change, but what I did read wass a knee jerk reaction from you.
If no one will acknowledge that the weather patterns are changing, then NGOs will never be able to get the funding they need to do what is perhaps the most important thing, pay for the research and do what science says must be done to protect or evolve the work that has already been put in place to preserve habitat, whether that is pursuing easements for land that will lost with sea level rise or mitigating the effects of water innundation followed by drought.
I do hope Avatar inspires the youth. I hope they take away a desire to engage instead of just an awe of the product. Don’t forget Dan, that before there were books there was storytelling. And those with oral traditions are perhaps the only cultures that truly looked back into their history and saw the big picture. Maybe movies bring us closer to that…
Dan,
It concerns me when our legislators have such a limited understanding of science or, worse yet, believe that the world was created in a week about 6000 years ago. How can such people possibly understand the complexities of a prairie ecosystem, let alone the long-term impact of human activity on any variety of natural processes?
The global warming deniers were out in force when we had a couple of big winter storms. Yesterday it was almost 80 degrees in NE Ohio — and all you could hear was the birds chirping.
Keep up the great work out there in the Badlands.
I have watched the manipulation of “the fear of change” and “social cloning” to create various hoped for political and socio-economic results through my lifetime and still can’t figure out why so many people don’t even see how they are “used”…… I agree/realize it IS our parents generation that embedded it into our society (raised same time and place as Dan). Some tried to break the syndrome to some degree in the 60’s/70’s with our “rebellion” against Nam and support of civil rights as teenagers, but it seems that drove some to even more distant right thinking.
It seems a great majority today think in terms of “get what I need today and who cares about the future…. somebody else can deal with it in the future. Pathetically sad.
What do people like us, who care about the wild places, the flora and fauna supposed to do? I hope we will all keep talking and feeling from our hearts and remain courageous in the face of ignorance.
Hi Dan, just finished Buffalo For The Broken Heart. Enjoyed it very much. David Thorsen, our minister, mentioned it in a sermon. Thanks for what you do.
Bob Fritz
I miss sitting on your deck. Sipping on a cocktail. Looking out over the river valley. The smell of Jill’s kitchen & the wonderful loving conversation & inquisitions of friends. Can we have enough of them? I am honored to know the Heart of the man in these writings. And Blessed to know you as my friend. Aloha nui loa…Hope to see you soon…We’ll “Talk Story” as they say on da island. And maybe…some music too!
Bobby
Just returned from the Conference on World Affairs in Boulder, CO. “Buffalo for the Broken Heart” was my companion during breaks and while traveling. My heart is still at the ranch. You are a precious soul.
Thank you for that beautiful book.
Kathleen
So Winter Strongholds will for sure hold during the winter time…and if there was ever a stronghold, then South Dakota is it. A winter stronghold – especially for the buffalo, if you get my drift…..
But anyhow, I don’t ascribe much these days to sentimental attachments or emotional increments of humanity.
Because the reality is, life is about survival. And, the other reality is, the buffalo (American Bison if you prefer) were meant to survive is the Dakatos, and this is obvious.
So obvious it is not even funny.
So anyhow, as a chemical engineer let me clost by saying: “animation and special effects” have not real impact upon humanity, because humanity, like thw wolves, if of the earth, and this lasts forever!
Peace from me to you and from my family to yours.
Ken
ps – sorry for any typos in advance…
Gracious – sorry for all of the typos. Let me retry.
“….effects” have NO real impact upon humanity, because humanity, like THE wolves, IS of the earth, and this lasts forever!…..”
Long live the Lakota!
A young friend brought a paper for me to critique. It was based on Buffalo for Broken Heart… His professor made it required reading at Iowa State. I just finished reading it and enjoyed every page. Thank you for putting words out there for everyone to understand.