A 1992 BBC play called A
Frozen Stream Called Wounded Knee really took me by surprise. I don’t normally review my BBC plays here
because I keep a separate log with very short reviews due to the volume of
plays I listen to. However, I felt this
one deserved special attention.
Written by John Pilkington, I felt this play’s unusual
subject matter, as well as the way in which it was treated, was highly unusual
for BBC Radio and one of the most moving and emotional plays I have ever heard
(and calculating that, roughly, I have listened to between 300 and 400
audio/radio plays in the past 6 years, that is a statement with some weight
behind it).
The title refers to the 1890 Massacre at Wounded Knee, South
Dakota (which I suggest you look up if you don’t know about it already). Rather than a straight retelling of this
heartbreaking story (which is what I expected when I saw the title in a Radio Times listing for 1992),
Pilkington much more masterfully has woven in a great deal more, giving it a
perspective, richness, and depth seldom encountered even in the best of BBC
radio drama.
What makes A Frozen
Stream Called Wounded Knee really relevant is that it embodies the spirit
of the modern Indian by exposing the almost impossible necessity of living with
split identities, as does Luta, aka William (Kerry Shale), a middle-aged
Lakota schoolteacher living on the reservation.
He may not be the bad-ass that Dash Bad Horse is in Vertigo Comics’
superb title Scalped, but they share
many of the same character traits and face many of the same challenges. As white nurse Amy says in A Frozen Stream, the modern day battle on
reservations is between the traditionalists and the progressives—“the
reservation needs a few more tribal festivals, bingo parlors . . . the same old
story.” I won’t spoil too much of Scalped though I do recommend you read
it immediately, but it, too, is set in South Dakota and though the setting is
contemporary (2007), a large strand of the plot is concerned with events during
the early 1970s in the middle of the American Indian Movement.
A Frozen Stream is
also set in near-contemporary South Dakota (1990) but also hearkens back to the
AIM, which is explained and described when Cutter (William Hope), a young
University graduate filmmaker (and Mohawk from St Regis) visits Luta to try to
get his take on the events of 1973 that got him arrested—framed for killing a
cop. He’s in search of “an authentic
political voice.” A Frozen Stream doesn’t talk down to its listeners but it gives
them access to Luta’s inner monologue, which is quite a privilege given his
taciturn sarcasm and detachment. “I’m an
Indian—a Native American. I’m a
Lakota. Sioux—everyone’s heard of the
Sioux. But nobody realizes that, in old
times, calling some a Sioux was like calling him a nigger or a wop. It’s Chippewa for ‘snake.’ . . . I’m Luta, it
means Red. My skin is luta. Red was a dirty word long before there was
communism.” I’m normally not a big fan
of narration in radio drama, but I think Luta’s narration is necessary on two
counts, partly because it grounds listeners who may not have a background like
mine in the American West, and partly because we do get to know Luta that much
better.
I think generally British people of a certain age remember
Westerns fondly—I still hear people use the term “Red Indian” which to me is a
bit insulting—but they are not fashionable because they’re embarrassing and
people aren’t keen to examine reservation life—examined critically in
everything from Tony Hillerman to Sherman Alexie—which is highlighted memorably
in A Frozen Stream, where
“unemployment is at 70%.” Not only that,
the verbal and physical abuse Luta suffers walking to the reservation at night
along a deserted road makes a listener physically sick—the intervention of the
state highway patrol is patronizing at best.
I’ve been told before that fiction is a great way to inspire people to
social change, and I’d like to think that’s what works of art like A Frozen Stream do. I’d also like to think things have changed
for the better since 1990, but the evidence presented in Scalped suggests otherwise.
If A Frozen Stream is
giving us a glimpse of life for Luta in 1990 and 1973, it’s also got a
mysterious thread running through it linking him to his ancestor Winona at
Wounded Knee in 1890. Luta has a
photograph from the 1880s showing his ancestor.
Luta has a sort of vision while passed out from his beating, and this is
to see the Ghost Dance, the cult that arose in defiance of the last days of the
Indian wars, in which the medicine men endowed shirts to withstand
bullets. Later he can imagine the last
few days of the Lakota before the massacre at Wounded Knee. The combination of his narration and the
sound effects makes for a combination that pulls the listener irresistibly
along.
Luta has a problematic relationship with Amy, the white
nurse on the reservation. It also
becomes clear that there is a clear generational gap with his father, Joseph
Thunder (Harry Towb), which is not just due to the fact Joseph is a devout
Christian. “I was the bright one, went
to college. . . . After I got divorced,
I lived as a Washishu [white] for awhile.
. . . My father likes to talk to the old-time warriors, he’s a World War
II veteran. It was one way of getting
off the reservation.” As Luta’s conflict
with his father comes to a head, as Amy announces she’s leaving the reservation
for a job in Denver, as Luta keeps brushing off Cutter, and as the narrative
builds up for the massacre happening, also, real-time on December 28th,
1890, Luta passes an old man (Lee Montague) walking up a mountain in a blizzard. Even though I’ve never been to South Dakota,
there is a certain mountain road up Sandia Peak and this is the one I pictured
for the old man to be climbing. “One
genuine Lakota holy man going out in the wilderness to die.”
Cutter has a bit of an episode in which he rants about all
the injustices done to the natives of America for 400 years. It could be a tirade that burns itself out,
but the actor really gives it his all.
It’s also a whistle-stop tour of many of the lowlights of the 400-year
interaction. In the end, Cutter and Luta
go back up the mountain to try to rescue the holy man from certain death. At the same time, Luta has a vision of the
massacre in 1890 itself. This horrible
event is a perfect one for radio adaptation, the same way Journey was during Life and
Fate: as Tom Meltzer wrote in
regards to that play, “The sound effects are unpleasantly perfect, from the
claustrophobia of the carriage—all coughs and shallow breathing—to the horror
of the gas chambers evoked with unspecified crunches and cracks.” Cutter and Luta find the old man (alive) and
are reconciled to each other. I thought
the play would end there.
Instead, Luta has to resolve his conflict with his father,
which comes to a head because the holy man is living with them and aggravating
Joseph’s religious faith. “Washishu god
has always seemed strange to me. They
only talk to him on Sunday, where is he the rest of the week?” Also, Luta has to resolve his issues of
identity in an impossible situation. “I’m
afraid, I don’t know how to act truly. .
. . Maybe I should write about it.” Can
writing really change the world? A cynic
would say not, but I think the more people who know about all of the issues
contained in A Frozen Stream Called
Wounded Knee, the more there is the possibility for change in the
world.
