'Wild Indian' Narratives

 

So, I just watched 'Wild Indian' and wow!  This deserves some shine of our time and attention, though this exploration of the film's narrative does divulge much of the story - my hope is that nonetheless, this article will encourage more people to watch the film because it's a work of art with a superb script and stunning performances from the cast, and because there comes a time when the world really does need to take stock, pay attention to its foundations in history and to consider what we as a species, most need from law & order; there are lessons to be learned, reparations to be made, and then, hopefully, lasting, positive change:

The intro to the film on C4-TV reads:

'(2021) Emotional thriller following Makwa, a successful Native American businessman whose way of life is threatened by a terrible secret. Starring Michael Greyeyes and Jesse Eisenberg.'

IndieWire's coverage in anticipation of its entrance at the Sundance Film Festival presents an excellent summary of the film, the actors, and also, the exceptionally talented Ojibwe writer-director, Lyle Mitchell L Corbine Jr:

‘Wild Indian’ Was a First for Its Indigenous Actors: Working with an Indigenous Director

“Wild Indian,” which makes its debut in Sundance’s US Dramatic Competition Saturday, stars Greyeyes and Spencer as two Anishinaabe childhood friends [& cousins] whose lives take two very different paths following a horrific act of violence committed by Greyeyes’ character.'

https://www.indiewire.com/video/wild-indian-indigenous-actors-and-director-1234612384/

Basically, I was swept away into a sense of being I almost forgot how deeply I knew - a childhood in deprivation, abuse, neglect, and shame. I am reminded that poverty is not simply life without money, it's what's left for a people systemically and brutally robbed of everything they knew as life; generation after generation subjugated to the joyless, alleged pragmatism of a 'new' world order headed by the dictates passing through 3,000 years of wars, killings, rapes, lootings & taxation via the advancement of 'civilization' i.e. A system in which gold and the promises of plunder will buy you an army and reality is anything they want or say.

The title: 'Wild Indian' - so ingrained are the inherent racial judgements within prevailent colonial-construct-cultures, the words 'wild' and 'Indian' are as synonymous as 'pea' & 'pod' - despite the technocratic progress of this 21st-century world, the antiquated word-spells continue to dominate the collective social psyche that has never truly cleansed itself of an ideological filth that continues unabated, reaping its profits of lies and the crimes after crime it legalised as 'judgement' according to the alleged will of a thoroughly misunderstood and appropriated concept of God.

Yes, the narratives run deep and the juxtaposing realities are sharp as the knife Makwa holds against the throat of a past from which he'd fled - a community crushed under the weight of intergenerational grief, subjugated to the point of psychopathy.

Makwa's family were born into a ravaged culture, their lives & future isolated in an alien world divorced from the soul of indigenous humanity, lost from the joy of knowing respect for a life in Universal Love as the ultimate gift of nature, and re-placed into an emotional & spiritual wilderness where everything revolves around money, and such is the nature of those who profit most from controlling the supplies of it, they make life damned hard for anyone to get by without it. 

Addictions suffice to provide motivation to find money one way or another when the inner pain is too great to get consistently astute enough to hold down a regular job - victims of inherited chronic complex PTSD, weakened with the psycho-disease that is the mainstay of the new world order; social anxiety rooted in a maligned, inner sense of self that battles from within against its latest human hosts - progeny of a conquered people brought down low to kiss the feet of servants to the living-dead as "missionaries of God and Jesus".

Pre-colonial America amounts to a beautiful woman adorned in the colours of a rainbow, pristine in her clarity of conscience - treasured as mother by the father she created on birth of their children.  A genuinely civilized Christian West would have entered those lands with care, caution, compassion, and respect as indeed, it appears many of the first settlers did and they survived with help from the native people who were also helped by the settlers - had that situation remained, the native peoples would not have needed to attend Church or read a Bible to know Jesus.

“A country is considered the more civilized the more the wisdom and efficiency of its laws, hinder a weak man from becoming too weak and a powerful one too powerful.”

― Primo Levi, If This Is a Man • The Truce

As survivors of previous colonisations maintaining the same aspirations for delivering wealth & power to a criminal minority, America's later Western 'immigrants'/invaders, are most accurately mirrored in all of the characters portrayed in 'Wild Indian' both of the past and present - a community of consciousness left clinging to the tatters of humanity they recognised in 'Jesus' as 'Godly' but could no longer sustain within and for themselves; the most terrible assailants are the slaves who think themselves 'free' as they satisfy their programmers dictates in the names of profit, liberty, adventure & fun. Lust to satisfy lust.

Ted-O escaped his community by landing himself in jail - he got clean off the drugs that put him in there alongside the assaults & battery. As Ted-O states - he's "not proud" of his past but he never stole from anyone. His criminal history has left him branded like an animal - crude tattoos marr his hands, neck, and face inviting derision, suspicion, and distrust. 

On release from a decade-long jail sentence, Ted-O arrives at what is now his sister's home, presumably, the house he grew up in. He meets his shy 5-year-old nephew Daniel, for the first time: "I'm not scary. I'm your uncle" he says as the child holds back from entering the sitting room where his uncle has slept the night. Ted-O is acutely conscious that he looks as bad as he's been and feels - his shame as indelible as the bear-paw tattoo on his face - he attempts to hide his hands. Unlike Makwa, Ted-O has no problems relating to a child: "...And he told me that his dad was born in a wigwam", Ted-O explains as he and Daniel examine the family photos together. 

Ted-O's sister Cammy, an empathic even-tempered woman, a single parent who has avoided the pitfalls of drugs, drink & depression and works hard to provide for her son - she towers above her brother & cousin in her quiet strength of love & compassion. She apologises for not visiting Ted-O in prison and he holds no grudges about that - prison was not a place he wanted his sister & nephew to see him in. One of the reasons Ted-O agreed to help bury James and keep secret his murder, was because Makwa reminded him that it was his dad's gun and his mum was pregnant - what would happen to her and the baby if Ted-O's dad got into trouble? 

Would Cammy have turned out so well, had Ted-O chosen to call the cops on Makwa? Given the state of play between authorities & natives, there's little doubt that Ted-O's dad would have been held ultimately responsible for James' murder. How woud Cammy and her child have fared coming from a background of social scandal that included murder of a local child and loss of community respect?

Later, Ted-O learns from Cammy that Makwa, their cousin, did not bother to attend their mother's funeral nor that of his own mother their aunty. It seemed unjust that Makwa has made good while Ted-O and his family are casually brushed aside like dirt and Ted-O knows he certainly looks like dirt - shame & guilt his life-long companions - he fully understands when his new employer explains he will be working out of public sight due to his tattoos, - he tells her "I don't like them either". 

Perhaps it was the fact that Daniel took so well to his uncle, that Ted-O decided it was best his nephew forgets he was ever there - lest in his youth, he might fail to see what others see when confronted with the drug-gang logos and instead, embrace their kind as 'kin'?

"Get in here before more people see you!" demands Makwa on finding Ted-O waiting outside his spacious, upmarket home. 

Burdened with a conscience and a level of guilt he has clearly struggled to live with, Ted-O has shouldered immense emotional trauma, while Makwa, free from care, has focused on realising his ambitions for riches and power, living the beautiful life with his own 'Elise' - the beautiful wife and beautiful child in the beautiful house; an austere success devoid as it was, from delivering the fulfillment of any wholesome sense of satisfaction within i.e. TS Eliot's allegory to the corporate world, 'Hollow Men', comes to mind:

'This is the dead land

This is cactus land

Here the stone images

Are raised, here they receive

The supplication of a dead man's hand

Under the twinkle of a fading star...'

In contrast to Ted-O, Makwa has pride in what he owns and has achieved, and pride is after all, the last refuge for those trapped in the emotional rigor mortis of denial; pride - the sticky-plaster Westerners are covertly conditioned to accept as 'compensation' for loss of satisfaction - they say it comes before a fall and the threat of a fall for Makwa, comes directly from his own Anishinaabe origins - specters of his nightmarish childhood reach out to drag him back into the nothingness and shackle his life to the chains of trial, shame, judgement & condemnation, to remind him and confirm who he is - a wild Indian.

Why does Makwa hold on to the little brass case from the bullet that killed James? A trophy to commemorate the day of his release from the burdens of care & conscience? Certainly not as a reminder that he has a conscience after we witness the young Makwa pissing on the ground where he & Ted-O had buried James. The fact he still toys with it almost lovingly, tells us that Makwa has not run away from his crime, he ran from everything that led to that act - an act that initiated him toward a new sense of self and identity as Michael Peterson, a highly successful businessman - he shows no sign of remorse.

Ultimately, James' death represents a form of sacrifice that Makwa's financial success has somehow validated via his worldly transition from rebellious 'wild Indian' to sophisticated, cold, calculating businessman who barely dares touch his own toddler son and has more concern about perfecting his golf-swing than his skills as a parent. 

The only parenting Makwa knew was brutal assault and hateful derision - a childhood where even the church offered no solace of spiritual refuge - the preacher in the Sunday pulpit sermonizes on Cain and Abel; why did God not favour the works of Cain? Surely, it was because Cain was too full of jealousy and hate. God did not like Cain. God knew Cain was evil; like Makwa's parents could barely stand the sight of him - because they knew he was evil?

It made sense to run away and employ one's academic edge coupled with lack of conscience, to amass the kind of wealth that compassionate people rarely aspire to even if they could stomach the ruthless mandates of cut-throat capitalism. In the very process of expanding his business empire, people will suffer & die as a direct result but that's not a crime under the colonist rule: Makwa labels his people "cowards", a weak, sorry remnant after the "worthy" had died fighting for their rights i.e. Makwa was no traitor - the tribe had betrayed him.

Ted-O's sudden intrusion into Michael Peterson's life drives cracks in the walls around Makwa's heart - the wound is reopened leaving him this time, with no choice but to feel and face the pain and then, to commence the task of healing those memories of a life devoid of hope & love, and to placate the terror that previously, only ambition and money could mask. The few moments of happiness Ted-O experiences while playing 'catch' with his nephew, reflect a form of wealth that Makwa's money has been impotent from delivering. 

Happiness for Makwa's persona as 'Michael', is the ability to buy himself permission to "choke" the lap dancer cavorting to his whim. An experiment to see how far he would go even now as Michael Peterson? Did he secretly desire to choke his pregnant wife Greta, and stop the birth of their 2nd child - a desire for absolute control over everyone and everything in his life - to stop the pain from reaching in again?

Greta: "Say hello to your son Michael." - Why did he need to be reminded? Is it because Michael is as alienated from connecting with a child as he is from connecting with his own humanity? "He's so soft - are all babies like that?" He asks of Greta who replies "Yeah - they are" and then, "What's wrong Michael?" when he asks if she thinks their will son grow up strong.

What's 'wrong' is that Michael is going through an identity crisis stirred no doubt, by the news that another child is on the way - another being of self to remind him of his emotional failings as a husband, lover, dad. He desperately fiddles with his rosary beads in an empty church citing Hail Marys after his narrow escape from committing another murder: Michael's indifference to his inner state of being - his inner child, is suddenly under scrutiny as a 'problem' - Makwa is the problem - Makwa is who Michael has run away from. 

As Michael, Makwa has evolved into a man who commands what he values as respect but which is in reality, a foundation of fear - those closest to him exhibit caution in his presence  - his top employee nervously struggles to comment either way when Makwa asks his opinion about the length of his plait; "Is it too long?" He mentions cutting it off but quickly dismisses the idea of losing his indigenous edge which, has clearly contributed to his success. Even his wife, a placid, gentle soul - a former lap-dancer whom Michael has obviously 'rescued' to himself (and precisely because he knows she will comply?), keeps a safe distance from directly confronting her husband's emotional failings. 

The general idea is that Michael must be sated, kept 'happy' via compliance to his wishes i.e. His hair is too long only if he says it is too long because it is he who holds the purse strings, who can make or break whoever stands on his path - his subservients scramble to avoid the hellish realities of life without resource to his indisputable competence and associated opportunities for attaining all that is deemed 'the very best' of what this world can offer.

Makwa is apparently, living the dream, because he chose to step out of the nightmare except, that was not truly his conscious choice, it was a child's response forced by circumstances beyond his control - he wanted to stay at home, watch some TV and do his homework but he is physically thrown out of the family home when his hostile parents want the place to themselves for a while, and in that while, Makwa gains access to Ted-O's father's gun. It was a simple task to point and pull the trigger.

Was the killing of James an act of jealousy because he and not Makwa, won the heart of pretty blonde haired, Elise, or was it that he just needed a reason when suddenly, he has the power to do it - to kill the competition or perhaps more accurately, to kill the unfairness that granted love to one child and hatred to the heart of another? 

Makwa wonders what was it about James that made him attractive to an older school pupil? Was it the fact that despite her drunken neglect of him, James nonetheless, expresses love & empathy toward his usually semi-conscious mother - because he's 'soft'? Where did that softness come from? Was it a strength or a weakness? Did Makwa decide James was 'weak' and therefore, killing him established Makwa as 'strong'? And yet, he relied on Ted-O to help conceal his crime albeit through coercion via threat of resulting troubles for Ted-O and his family should the cops get involved.

In a cathartic release of pent-up remorse, adult Ted-O streams bitter tears, as he confesses his part in the disappearance of her son to James' now elderly mother Lisa. His own parents long dead, he now has nothing to fear beyond losing his very soul - now it was his turn to be strong and let the law shoot down Makwa from his place in the sky, to shoot down the American dream that could not be minus the nightmare of life in the aftermath of a genocidal holocaust  - the survivors eeking out an existence among the shadows of their former selves in the ghetto-reserves that passed as 'home', 'family' and 'community' for Makwa & Ted-O's generation - a place Makwa had abandoned and extricated from his life, as like Cain, he casts himself into the wilderness to live within the walls of finance and to survive beyond the walls of a prison cell.

Is it fair to apply the law of the oppressor within that context of child native crime against child native, when they are already compromised as collective victims of crime? Do those children need punishment or help? What good could adult Makwa's incarceration achieve compared to the potential for good that his resulting wealth & power could now afford via the mercy of forgiveness? Especially since Makwa is finally overwhelmed in a kind of baptism through a flood of emotion - his conscience abruptly thawed amid the fire of pain & passion that Ted-O unleashes into Michael's sterile, almost robotic existence.

The gunshot wound, a killing in their home and official investigations into Ted-O's confession after James' body is exhumed, mean Michael is compelled to introduce Greta to Makwa and share with her the truth of his childhood though not the truth of his darkest secret; to spare her that burden of keeping his terrible crime concealed, or was it he felt too vulnerable to give her such power of knowledge over him? 

Greta's visible relief on being informed there were to be no charges following Ted-O's confession, betrays her inner suspicion that her husband was at least capable of murder. Michael shows her the stitched wound on his arm where the bullet from Ted-O's gun had hit, she tenderly touches it in an act of intimacy previously denied. The pair embrace in tears as he crumples around her tiny frame, at last liberated to trust, feel, cry and be loved unconditionally.

In this screwed-up world, the venomous confrontation between Michael & Ted-O, fuelled by the dictates of colonial judgements and beliefs, amounts to a contorted act of love; Ted-O effectively gives to Makwa his soul: Ted-O had twice handed Makwa a gun and gave him a reason to kill; it was Ted-O who told Makwa that James was seeing Elise and it was Ted-O threatening to destroy the life Makwa had worked so hard to build. Was it Makwa's own fault or choice to be robbed of mercy for his fellow man? Was it Ted-O's fault or choice to be made complicit?

The 'pale-skin' world of crime & punishment is too black & white for any true human progress beyond techno advances - there's no taking into account, no efforts to actively address the real issues in real time. The law is as dead as the men who wrote it. Locking up the 'bad' has done nothing at all to help the 'good' except the human condition has worsened alongside the ever-increasing crimes. Truth is, in reality, there's always more good than bad getting shut up & locked up. Most of the very bad get very rich - it's what and who the world of finance thrives on - people who gather to celebrate the "cremation of care" at Bohemian Grove. 

Makwa tells Ted-O that he is no longer the same person that killed their friend - he could easily have choked the lap-dancer to death - it's significant that on returning home after gratification of his horrific request, Michael stands with his hand hovering over his sleeping infant son as if finally, he was finding the courage to touch him because only at that point does he trust in his self-restraint and maybe, it was exactly that capacity for self-restraint he needed to be reassured of, on being informed his wife was carrying another child? He is now Michael, a completely self-made construct, free from the demands of clinging to a long-lost cultural heritage of grief. 

Makwa's secret represents the same threat against Michael as Makwa presented against James until, that point where Michael is compelled to kill Ted-O in an act of what is accepted by authorities, as 'self-defence' - though it was very clear that beyond the realms of blind emotion that fired the first glancing shot, Ted-O had not the ability to look his opponent directly in the eye and shoot him dead in cold blood, whereas Michael seizes the chance, he grabs Ted-O's gun and shoots to kill Ted-O now standing before him as an embodiment of those occupying forces -keen to delight in taking-down a native who had dared rise above his station - to hold him up as an example of proof; you can take the Indian out of the wild but you can't take the wild out the Indian...

Who else but a cold-hearted killer could most succeed in the post-colonial world minus the family backgrounds of intergenerational crime, wealth & privilege that bequeathed their own progeny a 'clean start'? 

This uncomfortable reckoning nonetheless, gives way to recognition of an integral strength to Michael-Makwa as he actualises into a more fully integrated emotional self. Makwa became a father first to himself, and later, for sake of his wife and children to have a life worth living in defiance of that chilling image of a lonely coffin, standing bereft of mourners at an open grave; James' reclaimed remains, or his mother Lisa - Makwa's final murder? 

Meeting with the investigators, Makwa registers surprise on being informed that the mother is still "insisting" Ted-O told the truth. Makwa's efforts to silence her were clearly to no avail and in the end, it was the official judgements against Ted-O as an unreliable and mentally compromised witness - an ex-convict who had tried to kill his successful cousin, that got the investigation closed. 

Is it likely Lisa would be left at liberty to spread Ted-O's "lies"? Did Makwa go through with his threat - "you know what happens if I come back here" as she lay sick in hospital - his steel blade pressing hard against her neck? Comments from nurses as Makwa requests the way to her room, assured us that Lisa was expected to make a full recovery.

Makwa discards the bullet case - no longer a symbol of freedom but evidence to end his freedom and cast his life and family into the dirt.

Makwa's 18-year-old dad and 13-year-old mother had no idea about the concept of 'parent' beyond surviving long enough to spawn the next generation, merely, as something that happened in life rather than as a conscientious choice. James' life only registered as important to his family and community when he'd gone missing and was later confirmed dead - had he lived, his chances of avoiding a similar fate to Ted-O, were acutely slim. Effectively, the tables were turned against them - it was that native community now living like immigrants arriving with no roots into an alien landscape.

Michael wants his child to grow up 'good' - it wasn't that his own mother & father had barely held down a job, it was that what should have been his parents' traditional 'job' of living out their native community life, was no longer recognised as 'work'.  Michael was now part of a new community within the top 10% where the 'tradition' is to preserve and increase one's wealth & power. His children will have a 'good' education and step into 'good' jobs but they will likely be far removed from their father's native origins, indifferent to the ongoing pain inflicted through loss of wealth in culture & conscience - noticeably, the only reference to his heritage in Michael's minimalist style home, is an abstract painting of a native feathered head-dress; Chief Makwa. 

America is a nation accustomed to indifference - it's very profitable and any challenges to the established norms of indifference aka 'cognitive-dissonance' are branded 'socialist' or 'communist' i.e. Can any diabetic struggling to buy their vital supplies of insulin, really claim to have any true friends or family when all such wider social circles are generally committed to silence on the issue of universal healthcare and will continue to vote for any one of the usual array of corporate puppets stepping forward to oversee the next line of wage-cuts & price hikes? Is it lack of insulin that kills the impoverished diabetic or is it lack of a righteous, caring society that values every individual's right to e.g. Affordable healthcare & medicines?

Who placed Makwa's conscience in the deep freeze?

The final shots of Makwa weeping on the shores of the Pacific Ocean as he realigns with his native ancestry, attest to the immense depth of emotional pain his child self had not the capacity to carry. Perhaps, he finally realised that true strength was in the ability just to survive regardless of what that entailed - to find faith enough to support hope for a brighter day - to learn to live better and to successfully pass it on?

We, the audience, are left with a profound sense of forgiveness as we recognise the patterns as an imprint on the protagonists, who are powerless to resist them because they're too blinded to their existence because forgiveness has no place in the 'new world' law because the new law is designed to punish & attack more than it defends & protects.

Besides ensuring regular supplies of fresh water to every citizen, one of the other most amazing achievements of Prophet Mohammed was to include forgiveness in what is now referred to as 'Sharia Law' - considered to be Muslim law, even though the same law was operating in Israel/Palestine during time of Jesus. None of the terrible punishments need to happen if the victims choose to forgive on strength of justification for that i.e. The wicked cannot be forgiven and remain at large because they will regardless, continue to be wicked - a danger to themselves & others, they need incarceration for intensive psychotherapy and no sentence can be delivered because no one can say how long their rehabilitation might be.

In contrast, what good do harsh punishments achieve? It is precisely because of the harsh punishments and lack of empathy & forgiveness that the innocent will protect and harbour the criminal because they don't want their loved ones to suffer or they don't want that horror on their conscience. It was for exactly that reason, Ted-O reluctantly agrees to help Makwa keep his secret.

Makwa and his Michael Peterson persona, are both easily judged wicked - wicked enough to succeed through intense competition - wicked enough to pay to hurt someone - wicked enough to kill. And yet, that judgement would be incorrect because Makwa-Michael is not happy about his state of being, it is not a naturally innate feature of his own self, rather, centuries of wickedness were forced onto his parents who then dumped it onto him - his 'inheritance'. One might surmise that the same reasoning applies to the wicked of every culture, and generally, it does, except for those who delight in their wickedness, who love to hate and hate to love.

Through exploring the narratives threaded through Wild Indian, the global audience and most particularly, Americans & Europeans, are invited to reconnect with a state of being that for centuries, was known only to their most distant ancestors; knowing how it feels to be disinherited, robbed of rights & culture, brutalised into submission, witnessing one's family & community being savagely attacked & killed: Palestinian people are living the reality of it to this very day - 70 years it has taken to reduce what was left of Palestine into a series of heavily guarded, rapidly shrinking ghetto-islands i.e. Exactly what the Western world is becoming today, as a handful of multi-billionaires take control and their corporate mercenaries ever ready to batter down any who dare to resist.

Michael Peterson became a 'norm' in Western society through generations of lives and Makwa, he was unfortunately destined to experience that transition from oppressed native to successful psychopath in a single lifetime. It is hard to imagine the strength of mind required to live with those stark juxtapositions within oneself - is it a strength or weakness though? In a wicked world won't weak be respected as strong and the strong scorned as weak?

Reality is as it is - the world is upside-down. We see the proof of it as Ted-O's sister Cammy, turns to look directly into the audience - her gaze is on Makwa as they pass on the street. Cammy's strength of heart has not granted her wealth and high social status, she is alone in the world to raise her child with love, while Makwa's weakness of heart has given him everything to raise his child in luxury but without any strength of a father's love; we cannot give true strength of human love from a heart we have only a weak connection with.

"Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do." - Jesus understood his people - they too in his era, were suffering under occupation of a brutal empire and its savage laws deployed to 'keep the peace' while the occupiers set out the edicts to collect their plunder i.e. Taxes from every individual because armies cost money and their owners must maintain the standards of living they were accustomed to; their census to account for every taxable native is why Jesus was born in a barn. Jesus understood the people had lost sight of their culture & heritage, they were losing their grasp on the concept of God and the law that upheld their humanity. Jesus knew it's not just the land that gets occupied but equally, the human mind.

Life has forgiven every party in Makwa's childhood circles, including Makwa, and in the context of American Law this seems wrong - the kid got away with murder and even profited from his freedom from justice! But the parents got away with abuse & neglect of their children, Ted-O's dad got away with leaving his gun around for children to play with and Ted-O's mum and the baby in her belly got away from a whole heap of social negativity, and, the whole of the Western world got away with genocide. 

A battle between brothers enforced by a world of indifference to the impoverished child's needs; someone did deliberately engineer that situation for the native people - it's not a natural development - it's a frame:  Them 'wild Indians' need taming see? And how else can they learn if not from the errors of their ways? 

Except, who was it decided the Native Americans' ways were 'wrong' in the first place? Who was it made poverty a reality of childhood - will they stand trial? Who among the pale-skin culture, has any right to punish, or judge disinherited, abused & neglected native children like Makwa & Ted-O? 

"Let he who is without sin cast the first stone." - As we judge, so shall we be judged - are any of us this day, truly innocent? Do we not need forgiveness? Was it not once an intrinsic feature of our culture?

The pale-skin version of God and his laws, equate to meaningless nuances of history straggling into the present day as some kind of justification for what America and the world that created it, has become i.e. The 'greatest nation on Earth' but in fact, a cesspit of political filth breeding hypocrisy, narcissism, greed, jealousy and psychopathy: It's fine for a government and its corporate investors to kill millions with cruel economy and criminal military ambition - they take no responsibility for the victims of their progressions through time (as if progress is ONLY an atomic bomb, a skyscraper, a mansion, computer or car). They celebrate their wealth and pour scorn on the masses whose blood, sweat & tears have earned them every dime.

'They' are like Makwa, and for all the same reasons but the rot's been set-in for longer - too far back for them to remember - fortunately for Makwa, his ancestors are close, only a few hundred years away - he can hear and see them - dethroned from their splendour - succumbed to the pale-skin sickness and still, gloriously and most nobly human - they knew faith and they placed it in the children, like Moses in his basket, floating among the reeds - if just one could break through...

Such progress as the Native peoples had made by time of their colonisation, was never recognised - one has only to examine the photographic history to witness the riches of the "wild Indian" life - the intricate detail of every aspect of their lives, from the clothes they wore to the tools and utensils they relied on, to the knowledge, rites and traditions within each respective tribe. All of that creativity and learning did not happen without successful, hard-won battles, in favour of cooperation for sake of peace & diplomacy within a structure of law & rights and which in turn, require an affinity with Universal Law/God that governs the natural world - and humanity recognised as an integral feature of that world, created for life to rejoice in abundance and give thanks and find strength to thrive. 

In contrast, the invading 'missionaries' & 'speculators' arrived from a culture based on the idea that humanity has been cast out of nature because humanity is fundamentally bad and nature is a hostile force - a thing to be strictly oppressed & controlled:

"...you don't know what you've got till it's gone. They paved paradise. And put up a parking lot...."  

Joni Mitchell 'Big Yellow Taxi'.

The people arriving from the West were so long subjugated to the whims of their social 'superiors', they were and largely remain to this day, in a state of collective, social amnesia - centuries had passed since they were savagely evicted from their natural lives in the natural world and incarcerated into a life branded 'worthless' under rule of dictates from a man who commanded the men with swords. 

Is it any wonder they were fleeing their lands in droves? What they were running from is exactly what they were to magnify via the United States of America and precisely because they never knew what they lost to realise it was gone - if they had, those people could have recognised a genuine civilization and joined the natives to embrace a return to life in the garden - there would have been no 'states' to unite.

Makwa & Ted-O expose the knots in the ropes that bind our thoughts to mental slavery on the neural pathways of crime & punishment: Ted-O sees only Makwa's wealth and worldly success and he is filled with disgust - revulsion because he shares the secret and he knows how hard it's been to live with and Makwa obviously just could not give a damn, not even to pay his respects at his mother's & aunty's graves. Ted-O sees he has enabled a monster and he is enraged that instead, it is himself who looks like the monster, who has carried the weight of guilt & shame in his heart. Where is the justice?

Lack of justice is a key theme in the narrative - a central pillar of civilization is absent from the so-called civilized world? Can that make sense? 

Ages of precious human development - a unique civilization erased and replaced with a mocked-up structure of spirit calling itself 'civilized' & 'superior' built on vanity, pride, myth, lies, crime & mystery - a pretense of faith in a pretend God and its alleged law entombed in the crime of 'might = right to do as thy will' - the law of the devil and every rapist's mantra because at heart, they are simply, hungry eyes - something rotten infects their minds. No matter how hard they try, nothing can change except for the worse, in their fantasy universe.

Ted-O did not see the man behind the mask of wealth & power just as Makwa did not see beyond the mask of poverty and a bear-paw tattoo - they each saw what the world had made of what the world wanted them to be & see: division - competition - opposition - war.

In light of truth, Ted-O could have seen Daniel and Cammy needed him - he might have cast out the judgements and made peace with himself - accepted he was a wise and good man, caring, compassionate - a positive role model for Daniel - he could have accepted that bad things happen in bad situations and James bore the brunt of them with his life. Did James' mother even deserve to know what had happened to her son? Not according to Makwa though perhaps his disappearance had contributed to her sobriety and brought to her door empathy and support from the community?

Would accepting this reasoning be to condone a murder or would it more accurately be, to arrive at a fair conclusion on balance of law & rights and after taking everything into account - most especially, the fact they were abused children? Had he thought so, Ted-O might have arrived at Makwa's door to ask for help - to get the tattoos removed - to train and learn a skill - the process of Michael's realignment with Makwa could have been a much gentler process that involved reuniting with the remnant of his external family. The wrong could have been made right minus any more killings, to make the best of a bad situation because regardless, James was dead and Ted-O, Makwa & Lisa had to live with that fact.

Ted-O's pride was his strength in honesty of being and it was for that he fell - not just that he was too proud to ask Makwa for help as once, Makwa had asked him, it was Ted-O's authentic self, his genuine, emotional sincerity that Makwa knew he could not compete with in Court before a jury. Once again, Makwa shot down the competition. 

Native law said Makwa owed a debt to Ted-O and they both owed a debt to Lisa James' mum - there did not need to be a confession beyond honouring the life and memory of their friend James, by caring for his mum and by furthering advancement in life for the next generation - fewer downtrodden parents spitting out their downtrodden children to hate and hurt each other.

When everything is taken into account, there's very little room for error - law can be trusted to maintain the balance when it is established on a solid, accurately fair foundation of thought, understanding and perception. It is this the Christian church is supposed to represent of God on Earth. 

Religion looms between the scenes - an elephant in the room - dispenser of the judgements infecting the minds of men with its twisted, misinterpretations of ancient texts. But there's a method to the madness; the easiest way to rob people of true faith and genuine culture is to set up a bastardised alternative and kill people if they fail to follow it while granting favours to those who do and expand control from thereon in. A religion to teach the children about how they are born in crime/'sin' and need regular beatings to grow up 'good' to do as they're told. Again, the complete opposite of native understanding.

Michael Peterson appears distant toward his son - the most he knew of how to love? - Restraint born of the fear that Makwa within, might break his son's bones and bruise his "soft skin", as if that propensity to abuse his own is hard-wired into his psyche - an alien implant pushing a perverse form of duty as 'father'? 

Did Makwa believe his dad could not forgive him for being born? He bit his father's hand, tore at the flesh with his teeth - the hand that fed him violence, hate, and judgement through a body usurped - a host enslaved to serving the Will of the wounded invader whose prime objective is to keep the children down - train them to justify the label 'Wild Indian'. 

Michael hopes his child will be different to himself i.e. "Normal" though the privileges afforded by the kind of wealth he has amassed, are anything but 'normal' because normal is now abnormal in a world where the joys of parenthood are generally denied. Normal needs money and all of the interest it brings to those who have it i.e. The social acceptance and communal interest that was once every native's human right of being.

America is not interested in men like Ted-O except, to profit from locking them up for turning to substances that 'normal' has established as "criminal" in a nation devoted to maintaining profitable prohibition as an incubator for keeping the many of a 'good man' down, and far from pursuing justice for the fatherless children (as God requests through Prophet Isaiah): Ted-O - a good man painted 'bad' - Makwa, a bad man painted 'good'.

Michael strives to be a 'good man' only in the sense of freedom from public scandal & suspicion - the kind of good man who will hold a knife to the throat of a woman who threatens to deny his family the heritage that is his life's work - a "worthless" woman born to raise a worthless child. He tells her Ted-O murdered James, and Ted-O is now dead - an easy frame for culprit:'Wild Indian' is essentially, a metaphor exposing the depths of inner conflict and the stark contrasts between what people project of themselves and what they think and do in secret - secrets to be held in silence on pain of death - a perfect allegory to the silent scream - the collective open secret of raw, naked grief.

"I'm here - we are the last ones - we have come a long way - Mother..."

This world has to admit, there are gaps in the narratives - pages of history are absent from our book of life  - humanity is missing important information, knowledge, experience & wisdom, and humanity is at risk because humanity continues to suffer under rule of the same twisted, arrogant fools, granting themselves the rights of Gods - but unlike God, they have absolutely and ignorantly failed to take everything into account because they are an impaired, crippled consciousness blinded in the doom of gloomy revelations that judged America's native people "heathen" and presented them to the world as "Wild Indians".

And while the global audience may cast their judgements onto the character of Makwa-Michael i.e. "He's a piece of shit", that same audience will continue to vote for and obey the dictates of the shit that dumped on the world "Corporate America" - this heart of darkness - land of the hollow-men - freedom to be wild as wolves in pursuing the dream to buy oneself some peace in hell and stick one's flag on the Moon.

...Between the idea

And the reality

Between the motion

And the act

Falls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception

And the creation

Between the emotion

And the response

Falls the Shadow

Life is very long

Between the desire

And the spasm

Between the potency

And the existence

Between the essence

And the descent

Falls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is

Life is

For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.

The Hollow Men: 

https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/poetry/hollow-men/poem-text