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Anti-Indigenous Propaganda film airs on Swedish TV
08.02.2008
This past Monday, Swedish Television
aired “Historiens Fångar” (History’s Prisoners) - an anti-indigenous
propaganda film that claims there are no traditional Indigenous
cultures left in the world, and that the only chance of survival for
the remaining ‘drunk and pathetic few’ is through assimilating into
colonial society.
“The most notable voice in the
program,”
Jim Barrett explains, is Keith Windschuttle, author of “the
Fabrication of Aboriginal History, a controversial book that
attempts to resurrect an array of colonial fallacies toward
indigenous people: that colonization was justified, “that Australia
was never truly owned by its original inhabitants, that they were
too savage to understand such a concept as property, too primitive
to organise a war and too vulnerable to survive settlement.”
Another speaker in the film is
David Yeagley, who, according to Wikipedia (once upon a time.
The page has been gutted) is a white supremacist who poses as a
Comanche Indian. He was mistakenly enrolled in the Comanche Nation
because the stepmother who adopted him is Comanche. He falsely
claims descent from the Comanche leader, Bad Eagle (1839-1909).
Comanche elders and members of the tribal government all deny he is
actually Comanche. In 2006 Yeagley, his employer David Horowitz, and
Front Page magazine used legal threats to try to silence Kiowa
activist Cinda Hughes and the Native American Times for revealing
his impersonation.
Apparently, the film also features
someone from “One Nation United,”
a
privately funded, anti-indian lobby group based out of Oklahoma.
The social and political integrity of
these characters speaks directly to the legitimacy of the position
maintained in the film. It’s propaganda - a film drenched in archaic
and biased, insulated opinions that will utterly misinform every
viewer.
But don’t take my word for it. See it
for yourself. “History’s Prisoners” It is
currently available online. (it’s in English). It’s also set to
air on Swedish TV once more, this coming Sunday.
If you would like to express your
outrage abuot this film,
you can write the Director,
Poul
Erik Heilbuth, at
plh@dr.dk
You can also write to the documentary
department of Swedish TV for airing it,
dokumentarfilm@svt.se .
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