THE DIFFERENT FORMS OF GENOCIDE, SOME CREATED OUT OF GOOD INTENTIONS: JOHNS SAYLES TO SAVE THE MAN

An example of the sad state of the film industry today is John Sayles has difficulty in getting his his movies made. The silver lining is that he has lately spent part of his time going back to prose, often turning in books that were planned as motion pictures. His latest in this practice, To Save The Man, looks at an ugly part of our history.

As with a a lot of his writing, the story is an ensemble piece that explores a specific culture and setting. The Carlisle Indian Industrial School established itself in the late nineteenth century, where children from different indian tribes were sent to be schooled in a way that would integrate them into mainstream American society by grinding out the ways of their own culture. Students who resisted were often sent to sweat shop work or contract labor where the school took most of their money. Part of the focus is on two boys who attend Carlisle, one being Antoine, a part Ojibwe boy who is the hope for his family. He is introduced to the school by his braids being cut. The other, more colorful one is Trouble-In-Front, the son of a war chief who has not been expelled for his behavior for political reasons.

We also follow those who work at the school, including the real life Captain Richard henry Pratt, who ran the school and feels he is going good for the indigenous. The books title comes from his saying, "To Save The Man, We Must Kill The Indian." One character remarks how he is not sure how much he practices the first part.

Lady Redbird, the Lakota music teacher, deals with some of the bigger moral struggles. She works to help the students make best of their bad situations She also has an uphill battle of educating her white co-workers as much as the kids.

The story takes place during the fall semester of 1990 as one of the last last, and heartbreaking, situations in the Indian Wars. A medicine man on a Lakota reservation brings back the practice of The Ghost Dance that he preaches will bring back the buffalo and allow their people to flourish again. This stirs the fears of many whites and the army, especially when Chief Sitting Bull becomes involved, escalating toward the The wounded Knee Massacre. Sayles depicts these events in a sharp, poetic style of few words and details that expresses the way national news integrates into the daily lives of people, as those at the school react in ways they will deal with the situation each of them is inl.

Even when dealing with such a dark part of our history, Sayles doesn't define the characters as simply oppressor and oppressed. The boys fight with one another, something exacerbated from benign different tribes), joke, and fall in love. They are more than victims. Pratt considers himself progressive in his thoughts and he often has superior and nuanced thought on the indian situation than those in the Army he classes with. Miss Red Bird tries to navigate her position, often going along with policies she knows are harmful. I couldn't help but think of those in the first Trump administration who said they stayed to make sure things didn't go off the rails.

Sayles uses his sense of detail and research to tie these events to the cycle of other genocidal tragedies. He is less interested in expressing the harm done as exploring the human element that plays int how they are institutionalized. Pratt's last line in the book is a chilling example of how little we, left or right, really learn.