Bridging Gaps and Tempering Negativity: A Response to Ward Churchill and Kristof Haavik

By Kim Weber

[1] After reading Ward Churchill and Kristof Haavik’s heated debate over the film Black Robe in their published articles, it is hard not to feel jaded. After my positive experience viewing the film, Churchill’s harsh critique of the negative portrayal of Native American voices got me thinking. Was my positive experience with the film shaped in any way by my own personal culture? Would I have been more offended if I were a part of the group that Churchill feels has been so slighted through Beresford’s film? Kristof Haavik’s well-thought out response uses historical sources to try to address many of the issues Churchill raises. Yet, after reading Churchill, I also wondered if I sided with Haavik’s retort for the very same reasons I wasn’t offended by the film initially. Although I feel like both authors bring up some valid points (some undoubtedly more scholarly than others), I have tried to address issues I think they have both missed or shorted in their respective analyses and to analyze things that the film does do well, which transcend cultural limitations.

[2] Ward Churchill is no doubt an inflammatory author, and it is fairly clear he intends his work to be understood as controversially as many readers take it. However, he has been excessive and overstressed a connection between the colonists and Nazis (Indians 121). He is purposely touching on an issue that is sensitive to many people, and he is trying to activate strong emotions. Yet, I do not agree with Churchill’s assertion that “with only a minor shift in the frame-of-reference that same ‘logic’ might be applied” to the colonists and Nazis (Indians 121). While the colonists certainly had a strong desire to Christianize the Native Americans, there was not an intention to kill. The Nazis had a clear, mechanized plan to dehumanize and wipe out an entire population of people. Surely, if the colonists intended to kill the Native Americans, they would not have bothered to travel west to preach to them, and they certainly would not have risked their lives and limbs to do so. The difference between the colonists and the Nazis is not merely the “minor shift” Churchill makes it out to be.

[3] Additionally, Churchill’s refusal to acknowledge that Daniel and Annuka’s relationship could have been meaningful and could have been love is short-sighted. This is a point that Haavik addresses in his response when he notes that the sequence of events throughout the film “suggests a real intimacy between them” (Haavik 100). I am not arguing to what extent this relationship was real, but it was certainly not the use-and-abuse scenario that Churchill creates for readers when he claims that Annuka has three or four sexual partners throughout the film. The fact that the couple had sex more than once, paired with the fact that they stay together throughout the entire film, demonstrates to me that they shared something real. Daniel is willing to leave the Europeans to stay with Annuka, and he cannot bear the thought of being left by the Native Americans in a scene when they try to take off in their boats without him. I would even go so far as to argue that many of Daniel’s motivations for staying with the tribe and learning about their culture were an attempt to be closer to Annuka. The relationship does not seem one sided, either. Annuka, a woman who proves herself assertive and strong in other parts of the film, seems to willingly accept Daniel’s advances, and the two make eyes at each other in one of their first scenes together in the beginning of the film. The extent of the relationship seems to me to be a matter of opinion and perception of the viewer; however, it is short-sighted and inaccurate to claim that nothing real was going on between Daniel and Annuka.

[4] Further, Churchill, the champion of the Native Americans, seems to completely devalue Annuka’s contribution to freeing the group when they are taken hostage by the Mohawks. Churchill completely closes himself off to the point Haavik makes that Annuka’s motivations for seducing the Mohawk guard were to free herself and her companions. When Churchill responds by saying that “Annuka’s ‘motivation’ was and remains quite simply irrelevant,” he does an even greater disservice to her than he argues the film has (“Reasserting” 124). Haavik tries to open the audience up to the fact that Annuka’s actions could have been motivated by a desire to help the group; yet, Churchill’s response closes this possibility entirely. Now, the audience is forced to take a polarized and negative view of Annuka, which runs counter to her personality throughout the rest of the film. Annuka yells at the Europeans at the end of the film in order to protect her dying father’s wishes. She leads Daniel and Laforgue to safety. It is not outlandish to think that she would have the foresight and intelligence to seduce her captor. The only person Churchill hurts in his refusal to see Annuka’s actions as beneficial and resourceful is Annuka.

[5] However, Haavik is not entirely innocent in his response to Churchill, either. He should have at a minimum mentioned the Native American source, Barbara Mann, that Churchill berates him for overlooking (“Reasserting” 126). This would have only made Haavik’s argument stronger, and it would have been one less thing for Churchill to overreact about. I don’t agree with Churchill’s claim that this oversight was intentional. Haavik seems committed to scholarly work throughout the rest of his piece, and he gives credit where credit is due, even if it runs counter to the point he is trying to make. If he had known this source existed before he published his work, there would not have been reason for him to ignore it.

[6] Additionally, Haavik makes the mistake of grouping Daniel in with his generalizations about other Europeans. He notes that “Laforgue and his contemporaries are unable to see these parallels that are all around them” (114). Although Haavik is kind to Daniel in other parts of his work, he could have strengthened and nuanced his argument if he pointed out the fact that Daniel did do these things that other Europeans would or could not. Daniel wanted to know about the significance of dreams in Annuka’s culture. His dress also progresses throughout the film and begins to look more like that of the Native Americans by the end. He also tells Laforgue how the Native Americans “have an afterworld of their own” (43:07). At another point in the film he also asserts to Laforgue that the Native Americans “share everything without question” (22:30). He seems to represent the understanding, or at least willingness to understand, that there is value in the Native American’s differences, and he is even willing to stand up to Laforgue, a leader in the church, in order to assert this. It would have been beneficial to point this out during this section in Haavik’s argument.

[7] Despite the differences that Churchill and Haavik have, there is value in both of their works. It is hard to respect Churchill’s evaluation when he is so blatantly disrespectful of Haavik, especially when this disrespect is juxtaposed with Haavik’s subsequent respect. Yet, I think Churchill does have some important contributions to the conversation about the representation of Native Americans throughout our history. He would be well served by tempering his response and making a more earnest attempt to add value to this debate, as opposed to adding value that is bogged down by insults and scoffs at the good points made by other scholars like Haavik.

[8] I do not think Beresford has attempted to glorify or crucify either culture. Father Jerome provides a complication to the benevolent motivations of the Europeans at the end of Black Robe. He seems to have given up and does not care about the well-being of the Native Americans anymore. On the other hand, Daniel seems extremely open to the value in the culture of the Native Americans, and he takes up a potentially loving relationship with Annuka. For the Native Americans, Annuka provides a wonderful example of a strong and assertive woman, and she is the reason some of the Europeans survived. On the other hand, the violence of groups like the Mohawks is also portrayed.

[9] Issues of representation will always be debated. Keeping an ongoing conversation about these sorts of issues throughout history is what will ensure that both sides of any story are told, and this allows audiences to contemplate an issue from multiple perspectives. Churchill has done a service to viewers just by casting a shadow of doubt on a passive and tacit acceptance of stereotypes of the tyrannical and evil Europeans and the uncivilized and passive Native Americans. Further, Churchill and Haavik have done a service to audiences by providing them with multiple ways to view the film and asking them to contemplate further issues that the film glosses over or does not raise. Even if one agrees with and lauds Beresford’s portrayal of Black Robe, it is important to know about these views that complicate issues and provide layers to our understandings of history.