In 1970, a more realistic and empathetic view of Indigenous Americans began to be portrayed on the big screen, in part because they were involved in the filmmaking process.
That year, Soldier Blue, billed by the studio as “the Most Savage Film in History!,” put forth an allegory of the Vietnam War, as a soldier enlisted to slaughter Native Americans realizes the true horror of an invader army killing people on the very land they are from. Much like the contemporary opposition to the Vietnam War, the fictional soldier’s rebellion and protest based on his firsthand experience is complex and met with resistance. The film starred Candice Bergen as a white woman who lived among the Cheyenne and Peter Strauss as the soldier who becomes involved with Bergen (in an uncomfortable romance) and then horrified as he begins to see the Army’s atrocities through Bergen’s eyes.
Director Ralph Nelson reached new levels of horror in his realistic depiction of war, and, as such, his film was edited and banned in some countries. The New York Times said that Soldier Blue “must be numbered among the most significant, the most brutal and liberating, the most honest American films ever made.”
Plains Cree activist Buffy Sainte-Marie, who was blacklisted for her Native rights activism, wrote the movie’s title track and later said sardonically, “No one knows Soldier Blue in North America. I can guarantee you won’t find three people in the U.S. who know it. It was taken out of the theaters after a few days. … Why? What year did Soldier Blue come out? 1970? Oh, that'll be Richard Nixon.”
Also released in 1970, Little Big Man features Dustin Hoffman, fresh off his star-making turns in The Graduate and Midnight Cowboy, as Jack Crabb, a white orphan raised by the Cheyenne in the late 19th century. Similar to Soldier Blue, it’s a revisionist perspective on the Plains Indians.
Crabb marries a Cheyenne woman, only to witness her brutal murder by Custer’s Seventh Cavalry. When he later becomes a scout for Custer, he sees the Cheyenne and Sioux exact their revenge at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. The film starred notable Native actor Chief Dan George and is strangely played as a black comedy. Reception to the film was positive, due to the likeability of Hoffman and the story told as the uneven memories of a 121-year-old man. Realistic battle scenes were still in short supply in mainstream cinema, so graphic scenes added to the sympathy and empathy for Native Americans. It also began to make film stars of Native actors.
