Guilt: the New White Man's Burden

Robert Taylor as Walt Longmire

Sheriff Walt Longmire is the sort of person who blames himself when bad things happen to others. That’s what makes him an effective sheriff, in his TV series: he takes crimes in semi-rural Durant, Wyoming, personally. So in the season 2 finale, when a hit-and-run accident leaves his daughter maimed and comatose the same day he gets re-elected, he considers it karmic retribution for his willingness to seek office.

Infuriated, Longmire storms into the Red Pony, the largest local tavern, owned by his best (and only) friend, Henry Standing Bear. “I need your permission,” Longmire growls, “to do what no White man should ever do.” Henry, who is Cheyenne Indian, leads Longmire into the wilderness, where Longmire strips to the waist. Henry gives Longmire his blessing, and Longmire engages in what appears to be a Lakota sun dance.

That’s where my suspension of disbelief hit a wall. The sun dance, for those unfamiliar with Native American traditions, is a ritual of self-mortification in which men, and only men, let mentors pierce their skin with large bone needles, and bind those needles to a tree. The sun dancers then pull against the binding, letting the needles dig into their flesh, until they either have an ecstatic vision, can’t stand the pain any longer, or lose consciousness.

I watched this enactment of Native tradition with mingled disbelief and horror. Those who know me, know frequently I balk at accusations of “cultural appropriation,” which I fear forces otherwise well-meaning people into racialized silos. Once upon a time, fascists didn’t want the dominant population sullying themselves with traditions of “lesser” peoples; today, colonized peoples fear their traditions getting polluted by grabby settlers.

Yet even I acknowledge that cultural mis-appropriation happens: blackface minstrel shows come to mind. It’s possible to seize others’ cultural markers in ways that demean and insult the original culture. That, I fear, happens in scenes like Longmire’s sun dance. First, though many Great Plains nations had religious rituals of self-mortification, the sun dance was specifically Lakota, and the Lakota and Cheyenne were traditional rivals.

Worse, though, is the image of the pious, self-sacrificing White man engaging in this specific ritual. At various points throughout the series, Longmire engages in Native spiritual practices; in a very early episode, we witness him having to leave a Cheyenne sweat lodge ritual because a violent crime report came in. As someone who strives to learn from Buddhist, Jewish, and Native religions, I support Longmire’s spiritual eclecticism.

Lou Diamond Phillips as Henry Standing Bear

But why the sun dance?

Students of history already know, but many White Americans don’t, that the U.S. government specifically tried to eradicate the sun dance. Because it could often be bloody, and some Lakota died practicing it, 19th Century Christian missionaries wanted it abolished, at gunpoint if necessary. Because of this history, the Lakota seldom allow White people to witness the sun dance, much less participate; they never allow it to be photographed.

Yet sun dance reenactments have become a staple of Westerns since at least the 1970 movie A Man Called Horse. The myth has arisen, among White people, that outsiders can purchase tribe membership through this and other rituals. Despite being set in present-day America, Longmire is a conventional Western, even down to Longmire’s Stetson and duster. And like many cowboy characters, Longmire yearns for an older, more primal spirituality.

Much frontier mythology dates not to cowboy days, but to 1893, and to Frederick Jackson Turner’s “frontier thesis.” Turner asserted frontier life’s purity of goodness of frontier, letting White people shed civilization’s neutering influence and “live like Indians.” But as Yale historian Greg Grandin has written, Turner’s hypothesis assumes, falsely, that White people crossed the frontier peacefully. Nothing could be further from the truth.

In practice, the American frontier didn’t exist until the U.S. cavalry drove Natives off their lands. Friendships between White settlers and wise Natives, like between Longmire and Henry, have often populated Western stories. But this only happened after the military penned Natives in, squelched their language, and often destroyed their religious gatherings at gunpoint. The Lakota massacred at Wounded Knee were performing the ghost dance, a religious service.

Watching Longmire perform a TV-friendly version of Native religion, therefore, jolted me to my shoes. No matter how well-intentioned or how sanctioned by Native nations, such depictions cannot exist separate from American history. When the descendents of those who killed Indians, attempt to participate in Indian religion, I realize I’m witnessing settler colonialism. How much worse, then, when networks do it to sell ads?

See also:
Innocence, Experience, and Justice on Netflix
Vampire Cowboy Cyborg Racist Firestorm