Saturday afternoon I watched one of my favorite movies, "Dances with Wolves". I'm sure you are familiar with the movie with Kevin Costner as Lt. John Dunbar, an American Calvary officer sent to the frontier to locate an abandoned outpost. He finds the outpost and is befriended by a tribe of Sioux Indians.

The movie won an Academy Award and Golden Globe Award for Best Picture in 1990, as well as six other Academy Awards. Kevin Costner, Mary McDonnell, and Graham Greene were nominated for Academy Awards for "Best Actor", "Best Supporting Actress", and "Best Supporting Actor"respectively.

There are a ton on things I enjoy about this movie, but the best I think is that the movie portrays the Sioux Indians as human beings and not as blood thirsty savages. It describes many of their traditions, including how they depend on the buffalo for a great deal of their existence.

The movie brings out the romantic in me as it follows the budding romance between Lt. Dunbar and an Indian woman. We learn that the woman, "Stands with a Fist" , played by Mary McDonnell, was taken by the tribe as a child after her family was slaughtered by Indians. She is found on the prairie by Lt. Dunbar after she tried to commit suicide after loosing her husband. She becomes an interpreter for the other Indians as she struggles to remember English, and of course falls in love with the dashing Lt.

Another great relationship in the movie is between the Lt. and the Sioux "holly man", "Kicking Bird", played by Graham Greene. Initially they struggle to communicate with sign language and later thru "Stands with a Fist". Their relationship becomes quite close and the love between the two men can be plainly seen at the end of the movie when they exchange gifts before the Lt. and his wife leave the tribe.

The chief, "Chief Ten Bears" is played by Floyd Red Crow Westernman. He of course is the wise chief who likes nothing better than sitting by a warm fire smoking a good pipe. There's something to be said about that logic.

In the end, the Lt. and his bride leave the tribe apparently headed for civilization to try and clear the Lt's name after being labeled a traitor.

I'm always left to reflect on the history of the native Americans at the hands of the European invaders. Thousands of Native Americans were slaughtered or enslaved by the western advancement of white settlers, and thousands more were killed by the diseases they contracted from the whites. A sad history to say the least.