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⡘ 253 The Native Screen American Indians in Contemporary Southern Film Melanie R. Benson To understand the various ways Americans have contested and constructed national identities, we must constantly return to the original mysteries of Indianness. —Philip J. Deloria, Playing Indian To understand the South and southerners, we need to understand southern representations of Indians. —Joel Martin, “My Grandmother Was a Cherokee Princess” One of the greatest literary hoaxes of all time occurred when Forrest Carter successfully passed off as autobiography his charming little book The Education of Little Tree (1976).1 The purported memoir tells the story of a young boy orphaned at the age of five and sent to live with his grandparents in the Smokey Mountains of Tennessee. His grandmother is Cherokee and his grandfather, while white, is well tutored in the “Native Way.” Young Forrest is thus introduced to his heritage, aided by a shamanlike Cherokee called John Willow. Heartwarming episodes ensue. The novel enjoyed modest but steady success until, in 1991, it gained the top spot on the New York Times bestseller list and won the American Booksellers Book of the Year award. That’s when the quiet rumblings, stifled since 1976, erupted and scandal hit the airwaves: Carter was not a Cherokee orphan but an alcoholic Klan member from Alabama whom Dan T. Carter (no relation) describes as “a kind of psychopath” with no trace of Cherokee ancestry in his family tree.2 Born Asa Earl, Carter changed his first name to Forrest in honor of the Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest. Although he later denied it, as “Asa,” Carter had served as a speechwriter for Alabama’s prosegregationist governor 254 Melanie R. Benson George Wallace, penning some of the most indelible racist rhetoric in U.S. memory.3 He cofounded the Southerner, a white supremacist rag; formed a White Citizens Council but disbanded it to avoid communing with Jews, even segregationist ones; started his own “new and improved” branch of the kkk when he decided the original organization had grown “soft”; and had a cohort who was linked in 1957 to the brutal mutilation of an African American maintenance worker who had reportedly talked too cavalierly about the prospect of integration.4 How, many wondered, could this endearing, sympathetic portrait of Native American culture emerge from a man with such brutish, intolerant views?5 Many dismissed the incongruity as irrelevant; certainly, the controversy did not block subsequent republications of the book (stripped of its autobiographical label), which continues to be taught routinely in grade school classrooms across the United States. Even Henry Louis Gates Jr. defended Little Tree’s literary merits as separable from the author’s less than savory biography.6 Objections from actual Indians such as Sherman Alexie (Spokane/Coeur d’Alene) went virtually unheard: “Little Tree is a lovely little book,” he commented, “and I sometimes wonder if it is an act of romantic atonement by a guilt-ridden white supremacist, but ultimately I think it is the racial hypocrisy of a white supremacist.”7 Alexie’s view was not shared by most of mainstream America, for whom Little Tree represented an act of spiritual “redemption” rather than a racist outrage on par with his past offenses.8 This outlook became even more obvious when in 1997 director Richard Friedenberg adapted the book for the big screen, creating a sentimental smash hit that was nominated the next year for the prestigious Humanitas Prize—an award recognizing “stories that affirm the human person, probe the meaning of life, and enlighten the use of human freedom. The stories reveal common humanity, so that love may come to permeate the human family and help liberate, enrich, and unify society.”9 While Friedenberg’s film did not take home the top honor (losing out to Good Will Hunting), his was one of only three features nominated, and the glowing recognition of the Humanitas Foundation coincided with the overwhelmingly positive reception of the moviegoing public. Viewers easily detached the film version of Little Tree from the controversial book; even though the adaptation was largely faithful, most urged that the film be “taken on its own terms.”10 Consequently, the U.S. public indulged guiltlessly in a sentimental, stereotypical tale of wise, mystical, resilient Indians and Appalachians coexisting harmoniously in the southern hills, where “Indians are no longer the continent’s indigenous people, they are . . . just like the rest of us. They like to hunt, make moonshine, gather wild herbs in season , and have a...

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