The "Dances With Wolves" Syndrome

Dances With Wolves

​Nancy Kendall did what Nancy Kendall did, and my beloved grandfather loved her, and her life, and he loved me enough to give me the gift of her words.  Telling her story and those of the enslaved people her family assisted can't help but bring to mind racial injustices and the unrest that is happening today.
 
One of my concerns in talking about racism here is that my voice will seem like just another ingratiating, limiting sympathetic view from an "understanding" white person. I cannot change the experiences of my life to be something else.  I hope I have a contribution to make, however.
 
As a white woman, I taught school on the Navajo Reservation for 11 years. I also taught school in a bilingual school in Honduras for a year. These facts do not qualify me to believe I am more understanding about racial differences, injustices and inhumanity. But it does give me something of a perspective, within my cultural limitations, to have a better understanding of racial differences than I had before.

Chinle, AZ, Navajo Nation

​When the movie “Dances with Wolves” came out, I was entranced. The film, flawed as it was, moved me and gave me a better sympathy for the Native American experience. I was not alone in that. If nothing else, the film opened the eyes of many white Americans. I call it the "Dances With Wolves" syndrome.
 
When I taught on the Reservation, a beautiful children’s book series, written by a white man, about Native American people had a place in the library. It was well-written and well-intentioned.
 
One day, I asked a close friend and fellow teacher, Mae, why the Navajo teachers so often checked that series of books out for their classes. I mean, the girl is Little Flower, and a boy is Running Bear, not Darren or Jane, two actual names our students had. 
 
Mae explained: 
 
“Well, Nancy, as you know, there haven’t been many books about young Navajo people, fiction or otherwise, written down by Navajo people. It was white people who wrote things down. Our culture is an oral one. There have been some, and there are more and more, but this is the reality. That bestselling Anglo author’s books about Navajo characters isn’t Navajo. But he writes superbly, and he researches quite well, and he tells some of our stories in a lovely, complementary way. And, he sells books.”
 
So yes, I am much more interested in reading a former slave accounting of his or her escape experiences. Yes, I am much more interested in learning an account of Custer’s Last Stand that is written by a native American bystander who saw it. But, we can also talk about these things across racial lines. That is what I hope we can do.
 
Let’s try.

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