The Measure of Ourselves in ‘Dances With Wolves’

Psychologists analyze conflicts within people, so it might seem they would not have much to say about the film “Dances With Wolves,” which is about conflicts between people--Indians and U.S. cavalry soldiers.

However, the conflicts between the characters in the film can be viewed, psychologically, as conflicts within those who wrote and made the film, and within those who go to it and are moved by it. And audiences are connecting with and being moved by “Dances With Wolves,” as Michael Wilmington noted in Calendar (“Elegy for a Not-So-New Frontier”).

The film dignifies the Indian, not as warrior (a title granted him even in the last century), but as thinker, philosopher and feeling human being, with soul and exquisite sensitivities.

In “Dances With Wolves,” the Indian view is that a man and a wolf can have a relation and a moment of love and that this moment is worthy of being honored in a new name. The hero, John Dunbar, becomes Dances With Wolves and feels that this new name helps him know himself for the first time. Dances With Wolves has a friend, Smiles a Lot, and these names express a reality that for us is almost completely unconscious.

Psychologically, the point is not whether Indians really did see the world in this way, but that Americans of European descent are beginning to hunger after this way of looking at things. The Indian within us has come alive and is hungry to look around and experience the world. This Indian within each of us is still capable of dancing around a fire, alone, in dead of night, like John Dunbar. It can also look around at what the European-American side of us has done to the landscape, and then it feels pain.

In spite of the attempt of the European within us to dominate the environment and make it safe, clean and orderly, like a Dutch kitchen, we still face much of what faced the Indians. The same breezes and rains and floods and earthquakes that faced the Indians face us. There are still mammals, birds, insects and reptiles with which we must contend. There are giant oaks growing where we want to build houses. There are mountains, rivers and lakes where we want to build resorts. Each American comes up against these realities every day and must relate to them from the Indian within, from the European-American within, or in some new way.

“Dances With Wolves” enshrines, dignifies and ennobles the Indian within us. The Indian in us can rise up, stand tall and feel a respected equal to the other inner selves that make up our whole self.

Every time the American in us proudly gives our children food bought at the supermarket with hard-earned cash, the Indian in us longs for the wild berries of the Sierra and a more natural life. Every time the American in us is captivated by the purring of the motor of our well-tuned car, the Indian in us cries for the once-clean sky.

Every time the American in us turns on the computer and is amazed--truly amazed--by its speed and capabilities, the Indian in us misses the flowers opening in the spring rain and the sound of our babies. Every time the American in us thanks God for the electric street lights that allow us to drive home safely at night, the Indian in us mourns the loss of the vast beds of stars that fill the sky on a dark night. Every time the American in us states our name with pride or shame, the Indian in us wants to know our real name.

The hero’s name, John Dunbar, has its own history. John was often given by parents to honor John the Baptist or John the Evangelist. Further back, John came from the Hebrew meaning “God gives me gifts.” And the Dun in Dunbar is Gaelic--the Irish and Scottish word for hill (a place held particularly sacred by the American Indian). If we trace our ancestry back far enough to the pre-Roman European tribes--the Picts, the Celts, the Franks, the Scots--it can be seen that our ancestors were very much like the Indians.

Studying our own remote pasts is one way to approach ourselves on a deeper level. Deep within ourselves we may find a resolution to the conflict in ourselves that we view on the screen in “Dances With Wolves.”