Do Indians Lose Again in ‘Black Robe’? : They Assail New Film While Writer and Director Defend It

“Black Robe,” director Bruce Beresford’s new film about a 17th-Century Jesuit priest determined to foist Catholicism on American Indians, is worlds apart from “Dances With Wolves.”

Whereas Orion’s 1990 epic painted the Indian population in reverential tones, the Samuel Goldwyn release--which opened in Los Angeles last Wednesday--is packed with images of a fierce and proud people’s inter-tribal warfare and brutal torture of their enemies.

It’s a portrait some American Indians have found objectionable. “This movie shows savage hostility--not our culture,” charged Bonnie Paradise, executive director of the American Indian Registry for the Performing Arts, during a recent panel discussion organized by Goldwyn.

Added one member of the Shawnee nation: “This is the second time I’ve seen the film and I’m still cold. In ‘Dances With Wolves,’ everything and everyone was presented as warm and fine in the world of Native Americans. This one gets caught up in the evil. There’s still no balance in the portrayal of indigenous people--and there won’t be until we hire people, actors, writers, directors, who know where we came from.”

The group of three American Indian actors featured in the film agreed with this assessment, as well as with the contention that “Black Robe” portrayed their people as one-dimensional primitive characters seen through the eyes of a white man. “If the movie offended you, don’t read the book,” noted August Schellenberg, a half-Mohawk, half-Swiss actor who played the central role of Chief Chomina.

His position and that of his colleagues took both the filmmakers and the distributor by surprise. “Bruce’s intent . . . and mine,” insisted screenwriter Brian Moore, on whose 1985 book the movie was based, “was to be deeply sympathetic to the Indians--people who believed in their world of nights and the power of dreams--and critical of the Jesuits who were arrogant and ruthless about baptizing them. If anyone should protest, it should be the Jesuits . . . but they haven’t said a word.”

Moore admits that his book, which received England’s Royal Society of Literature Award, was drawn primarily on the perceptions of Jesuits--17 volumes of letters, in fact, which appeared in a collection called “Relations.” Because American Indian history was passed along orally, he says, it is the only written documentation of their society at the time. “In the New Hollywood, it’s fashionable to suggest that the Indians had no problems until the white man arrived, but the truth is that there were incredible difficulties . . . tough winters, not enough food. The Hurons, particularly, were warlike and cannibalistic, people who respected nature and shared everything but who subjected their enemies to unbearable torture. We actually toned down the violence from the book. Not because of protests but because film is so vivid and Bruce didn’t want to make a horror film. If we had wanted to make a really ‘Hollywood movie,’ we would have made our Jesuit a nice fellow, not a bearded, self-righteous chap.”

Beresford, reached by telephone on the North Carolina set of MGM’s “Rich in Love,” was equally baffled by the flap.

“And here I was terrified of painting far too rosy a picture of the Indians vis-a-vis the French!” he exclaimed. ‘The reason I made the film is because I saw the Indians as such heroes. When we went over the script for a week before the shoot, the Indian actors said they wanted to be portrayed as complex as the white men--not all model saints or ‘baddies.’ And I do think we presented a cross section. The Algonquin chief Chomina is a raving intellectual compared to the Jesuits who, basically, lived in cuckoo-land. If I were an Indian, I’d be proud my ancestors fought the Europeans with such passion. I wouldn’t like to think I was descended from a bunch of wusses.”

Since opening in Canada on Oct. 4, “Black Robe” has taken in more at the box office in its first five weeks than any other film in Canadian history. (The previous record-holder: “Porky’s,” Canada’s top-grossing film ever.) The movie, which was featured in both the Toronto Film Festival earlier this year and the Annual American Indian Film Festival in San Francisco this past week, is scheduled to branch out from 17 theaters nationwide to 600 screens at Thanksgiving.

Samuel Goldwyn, Jr., chairman of the Samuel Goldwyn Co., says he stands firmly behind the picture. “This isn’t a contemporary picture about 20th-Century Indians, so you can’t apply modern-day standards.

“I come from a tradition of Polish Jews who I’d like to think were proud and noble. More probably, they were poor people scrambling for their existence in czarist society. I don’t blame any culture for wanting their people to be presented in an idealistic light, but it’s dangerous when ‘political correctness’ intrudes on artistic freedom. What was ‘right’ in the Soviet Union two years ago is considered wrong now. I’m opposed to anything that censors the right of the artist to present their work.”

The actors, pointing to certain changes that were made, acknowledged that the picture would have been worse were Beresford not at the helm. “Though (Australian-born) Beresford does come from a colonialist, paternalist society, I’m not hanging him in effigy,” explains Tantoo Cardinal, an American Indian actress living in Sierra Madre. “To focus on him and Brian is to get sidetracked. This stuff isn’t out of the blue. I’m just tired of it. All this rabble-rousing is actually exciting. Friction is necessary for change.”

Mohawk chief Billy Two Rivers, a Quebec native who was not only the film’s dialogue coach but played a couple of roles as well, agrees. “The distortion began in the ‘20s,” he states. “The film industry has always been cruel to the Indian people. Hollywood is very much of a propaganda machine which justifies the seizing of our land under the guise of patriotism. There has been evolution, though. We’re getting closer to the truth.”

And the reaction among Indians in Quebec to this story of Jesuit domination? “That we should have kicked ass even more,” Two Rivers quipped. “Or at least been stricter in our immigration laws.”