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We Shall Remain - Interview with Ric Burns and Chris EyreBy Jay Wertz | American History | Single Page | one comment | Print This Post | Email This Post HN: Given the incursions of civilization on Indian Country over many years, how hard was it to find these pristine vistas and natural settings? Subscribe Today
RB: That's such a brilliant point, especially (for scenes) east of the Mississippi. In every conceivable way, real and metaphorical, the culture of the United States clear-cut the geography east of the Mississippi. What it must have been like to be in those old growth forests in the early 19th century! But down they came and by the mid-19th century they were gone. We weren't able to find anything but memories of that geography in the first three episodes because that's all that's left. When we found a haunted piece of land north of Lafayette, Indiana, along the Wabash (River) where the Battle of Tippecanoe was fought in the fall of 1811 – once we found that, it became our holy ground. Even though you could look off to the edge and see cornrows, that land has a feel. CE: I remember standing in a field in Indiana and at the same time Ric and I spotted a tree that was probably 200 years old and we said, that's some of the ground of the history that we're telling. We literally had to go and find elements of memory that were still around. We shot at the actual physical location of where Prophetstown was and that was a tree that was probably there at that time. HN: This was a five-year project. What were the most difficult aspects of preparation, production and editing, and what took the most time to accomplish? RB: For me I think it was finding our way to a filming style that didn't push people away but drew them in. And that was a process that began before any real footage was shot. It began with the conviction that Mark and Sharon had, that led to Skip bleaching the negative so that it had that muted look that you were talking about, Jay. From wardrobe to make-up we were absolutely committed to making everything as anthropologically and historically accurate as possible. At every level, the desire was to create high impact, and that took a long time, a lot of research, a lot of commitment, and some fits and starts. Every movie is really made in the editing room – that's where ultimately it always feels like the high-wire act of filmmaking takes place – and once we got great material then it was a really humbling process going over the same ground again and again and again in the editing room, to try to make it work. This is not something that you'll see anywhere else, a seven-and-a-half hour film with this kind of commitment to the complexity of the story, to getting it right, off-camera as well as on, to get a full buy-in and participation of Native American groups from all across the country. What I think you can feel in every frame of this film is the commitment to try to get it right. HN: You don't distinguish in subtitle between Native and non-Native scholars. Was this intentional? RB: Yes. I'm a firm believer that the human imagination is such that we can reach out and understand each other. And that's why John Sugden, a Yorkshire lad now in his sixties from the north of England with an accent that sounds like he's the fifth Beatle, turns out to be the greatest biographer Tecumseh ever had. And when he talks, you want to be sure he's being identified by his vocation and not his nationality. CE: There's this curious notion that there should be this utopian movie where it's all Native: the historians are Native and the crew's Native and the actors are Native and somehow that would make it a better movie. But then you get people like John Sugden. You would never expect he would be the expert. But it takes that kind of people. That's the utopia, putting all those people together and shaking it up and out comes this great movie. HN: There are other historic periods, tribes and personalities among Native Americans with stories just as important as these. Do you think the proper and sensitive telling of these stories will be achievable on television or film based on the trail forged by We Shall Remain? Pages: 1 2 3 4Help HistoryNet by bookmarking to
            Tags: interview, Movies, Native American History
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One Comment to “We Shall Remain - Interview with Ric Burns and Chris Eyre”
I wrote (in my poor English) to the Pres. Barack Obama about a new interpretation to give to Tecumseh's history and his Correspondence Team answered appreciating hearing from me. "The Pres. has promised the most transparent administration in history, and we are committed to listening to and responding you…so we encourage you to resubmit your message" to a new link they gave me because the former receives "millions of electronic messages". The matter of my work is: "Why did not USA recognize Tecumseh's right to form a native, independent nation ?" He said to Harrison that "the US had set him the example of forming a strict union amongst all the fires that compose their confederacy…the Indians did not complain of it – nor should his white brothers complain of him doing the same with regard to the Indian tribes…they really meant nothing but peace"
He alone had expanded a political program upon two simple principles which were very baneful for Jefferson, Madison, Harrison, Jackson…Reagan, Bush: 1) He wanted all the Indian tribes join together in order to form their confederation and to stop the American encroachments 2) the Indian land was not to be owned by a single tribe but it could be sold to USA only if all the tribes agreed: that is never more.
If US had peaceflly agreed, recognized Indians' rights and stop any more invasion or encroachment upon their land, was there any reason to a war between them? Harrison said: "(The Indians) will never have recourse to arms unless riven to it by a series of injustice and oppression."
But he after having drawn Tecumseh as "One of the uncommon geniouses which springs up occasionally to produce revolutions and overturn the established order of things" (the order of things the US wanted establish on the Indians, like as the Relocation west of Mississipi – to be read 'an Ethnic Cleansing') he wrote also the next words to the War Department.
"If it not were for the vicinity of the US he would perhaps be the founder of an empire that rival in glory Mexico and Peru…He is now upon the last round to put a finishing stroke to his work. I hope however before his return that that part of work which he considered complete will be demolished and even its founadtion rooted up."
"Before his return". Harrison knew very well that Tecumseh alone was and had the political structure of Tippecanoe: the Governor crossed up the line North of which the Indians owned their legal land just because he relied on the provoked honor of the tribesmen to obtain on Nov. 11, 1811 the kind of answer the Shawnee chief had strongly forbidden them from giving.
Why a sculptured portrait of Tecumseh is among other portraits of men who made great the US in one of the Power Palaces in Washington D.C.? Why the brochure given at the Tippecanoe Memorial says of him "as both a great Indian and a great American"? Not only he fought the US all over his life for the Indian freedom, but the US fought him and his free, united native Nation till to their death. The brochure: "The Americans fought for a dream…of a great land of free men. The Indian fought for the same land, his happy hunting ground on earth'…'Tippecanoe Monument…righty honors the brave soldiers and Indians that died here. Today freedom prevails in America…the heritage of all that fought here'…'Jefferson wanted the Indian lands for America, he planned to buy land from whichever tribe owned it…he would train the braves to farm and be content without the vast land they had neede as hunters."
So the Indians were so savages that were not able to fight for their freedom: only the Americans could do it; and the freedom for the Indians was to be deported more and more to West: Alexis de Tocqueville (an admirer of the newborn Republic) nevertheless wrote that the Americans would have joined the Indians where they be gone into 'ten years'.
But did not the Declaration of Independence proclaim these words which are immortal and applicable to each man, to each people: "We hold these truths to be self evident, that all the men are created equal…endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights…Life, Liberty, pursuit of Happiness…"?
Words written a few years before Tippecanoe…
By Antonio Pantanelli on May 24, 2009 at 6:22 am