The theme of Natives being removed from their lands also hangs over the 1998 film Star Trek: Insurrection. Captain Picard and his crew discover that Starfleet leaders have been conspiring with a group of aliens to steal the planet of a peaceful species known as the Ba’ku. The Ba’ku are not human, much less Native American, but metaphorically speaking they are the epitome of the noble savage stereotype: living close to nature, unimpressed with technology, even possessed of a veritable fountain of youth (“metaphasic particles” that render them nearly immortal, the reason behind the plot against them). What is more, Picard draws an explicit comparison between the dispossession planned for the Ba’ku and similar outrages in Earth’s history, including, viewers may assume, the Trail of Tears and other Native removals. He says, “But some of the darkest chapters in the history of my world involve the forced relocation of a small group of people to satisfy the demands of a large one. I’d hoped we had learned from our mistakes, but it seems that some of us haven’t.” In the end, the insurrection of Picard and his crew breaks the cycle of history and saves the Ba’ku.
As a statement of Native self-determination, even metaphorically speaking, the film is weak. The “Native” life is as two-dimensional and idyllic as that depicted in the original series episode “The Paradise Syndrome,” and the villagers are just as ineffective; a heroic white man must come in and save the day. Nevertheless, the film is significant for casting Starfleet in the role of the aggressor and struggling with the ethics of the situation. When told that only six hundred people need to be removed, Picard responds with a challenging question: “How many people does it take, Admiral, before it becomes wrong? A thousand? Fifty thousand? A million? How many people does it take, Admiral?” It seems the jury is still out. Film critic Roger Ebert, for example, protested the film’s message in his review: “It would be difficult, indeed, to fashion a philosophical objection to such a move, which would result in the greatest good for the greatest number of people.”10
Even at their most sophisticated, however, these incarnations of Star Trek continue to use a future history to comment on Native Americans’ past, not their present. Looking to the twenty-fourth century, viewers are met with nineteenth-century issues. It’s worth noting that many events took place in Native American life during the decades when these later Star Trek series and movies were produced. The momentum and influence of the American Indian Movement waned after the late 1970s, as many of its leaders faced various legal charges. Of these, Leonard Peltier remains the most well known. Peltier (Anishinabe and Dakota/Lakota) was one of a number of AIM activists who traveled to the Pine Ridge Reservation in 1975 at the request of traditionalist Oglala Lakota community members who hoped the outsiders would help to resolve the factionalist violence there. After a tragic shootout with FBI agents in that year, Peltier was convicted of first-degree murder and given two consecutive life sentences. Due to the handling of his case by the FBI and the prosecution, as well as the lack of evidence presented, doubts remain in some quarters about the fairness of the trial Peltier received and the sentence he now serves.
In 1992, Peltier’s controversial story became the subject of a documentary, Incident at Oglala, directed by Michael Apted and narrated by Robert Redford. Over the years, a number of international organizations and leaders have spoken in support of Peltier’s freedom. For example, in 1999, Amnesty International issued an appeal for his release, stating “there is concern about the fairness of the proceedings leading to his conviction and it is believed that political factors may have influenced the way the case was prosecuted.”11 A decade later, Desmond Tutu, the South African human rights activist and the Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town, wrote to the parole commission in charge of Peltier’s case, stating, “It is clear Leonard Peltier was persecuted because of his beliefs and refusal to accept the injustices imposed upon the people of Pine Ridge.”12 Although Peltier drew international attention as one symbol among the many representing the plight of modern Native Americans, his story and others failed to capture the attention or imagination of Star Trek writers and producers.
The passage of the Indian Self-Determination and Education Act in 1975 promised Native nations greater control over their funds and thus their welfare. Its implementation, however, met resistance from the entrenched interests in the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). Greater attention to the problem came in the form of Stealing from Indians (1994), in which David L. Henry, a certified public accountant and former BIA employee, exposed multiple cases of agency theft, embezzlement, and fraud against a number of Native nations by BIA agents. Tribal losses, according to Henry, amounted to billions of dollars. Later, in 1997, the BIA’s occupation of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma proved that Native American rights and sovereignty remain very vulnerable.13 Needless to say, Star Trek possessed—and missed—many opportunities over the decades to provide relevant and thoughtful commentary on contemporary events in Native American life and the relationship of the events to the mainstream U.S. culture and policy.
Who Mourns for Chakotay and His Imaginary Tribe?
Star Trek’s most significant opportunity to comment on Indigenous America came during the Voyager series in the form of the first regular character of Native descent, Chakotay, portrayed by Mexican American actor Robert Beltran. (This casting choice reversed the trend begun in The Next Generation of choosing Native American actors to portray at least the more visible Native characters.) When the series begins, Chakotay is a former Starfleet officer turned Maquis captain, thus tying together story lines from The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine. Starfleet captain Kathryn Janeway, in command of Voyager, pursues Chakotay and his renegade team. When both groups are flung against their will into the Delta Quadrant, they put aside their differences and form a single, blended crew, with Commander Chakotay as Janeway’s first officer.
Chakotay’s promise as a pathbreaking character, however, remains unfulfilled. Uneven and contradictory writing failed to make the character or his heritage three-dimensional, and this in turn led to the disillusionment and apathy of the actor, Robert Beltran, who characterizes Chakotay (with a mixture of arguably understandable frustration and truly regrettable homophobia) as “limp, weasely, cowardly, homosexual, charming.”14 It’s singularly unfortunate that Beltran chooses to criticize how his minority character was marginalized and stereotyped by stereotyping and marginalizing another minority group. But setting his own prejudice aside, we are still left with a question: What went wrong with Chakotay?
First, in an effort to be generically “Indian,” the creators of the episode choose not to give Chakotay an authentic affiliation with a Native American tribe, but rather to create a fictional Native nation, the “Anurabi,” as his extended family. As the scholar Al Carroll points out, the writers “deliberately avoided making Chakotay a member of a tribe that existed anywhere outside a screenplay. This enabled the writers to mix and match bits and pieces of New Age clichés about Natives without any regard for accuracy or believability.”15 After all, it’s difficult to fact-check information about imaginary people.
Using a generically “Indian” people to substitute for real peoples still reflects on the real peoples themselves, however, and it contributes to Star Trek’s future history for Native Americans as a whole. In flashbacks during the second-season episode “Tattoo,” for example, viewers relive young Chakotay’s trip with his father to the Central American rain forest in the year 2344. Chakotay complains, “Our tribes live in the past. A past of fantasy and myth. . . . Other tribes have learned to accept the twenty-fourth century. Why can’t ours?” Although the implication is that the cultures of some other Native nations have adapted and evolved, Chakotay’s people, at least, embody the stereotype of the savage, willfully primitive and stubbornly unchanging over generations.
This rain forest trip and its insinuations that the Anurabi were related to Mayan or pre-Mayan civilization presented an opportunity for Star Trek to allow Chakotay (through Beltran) to represent not only
Native Americans but also the Chicano movement in the United States. Since the 1960s, some members of the Chicano movement have invoked Aztlán, the mythical homeland of the Nahua people in Mesoamerica, as a symbol for Hispanic unity, pride, and identity. Chakotay as a character and Beltran as an actor might have served as an inspirational role model for both communities, emphasizing their common ground quite literally.
Instead, “Tattoo” paints Chakotay’s people—and thus Native Americans—as irrevocably Other. The sacred “Sky Spirits” venerated by Chakotay’s father are the same beings Chakotay finds on an uninhabited moon in the Delta Quadrant. They explain that they had visited Earth forty-five thousand years previously and found ancient nomads who, despite being ignorant of communication or civilization, deeply loved and respected the land. The aliens admired these people and gave them a genetic bond, marking them as “Inheritors” of the aliens. Chakotay is descended from these early Natives/Inheritors.
This story plays on classic stereotypes of Indigenous Americans as mystically tied to the land and mysteriously set apart from other peoples. Scholars Darcee L. McLaren and Jennifer E. Porter see this episode as more indicative of New Age spirituality than Native American tradition, pointing out that it underscores the “New Age link between Indians, Aliens, and environmentalism.”16
The revelation about the Sky Spirits also suggests that even in the twenty-fourth century, some Natives such as Chakotay’s father will be naive enough to mistake aliens for gods (not unlike the Native Americans in the Star Trek episode “The Paradise Syndrome”). As one First Nations viewer notes in Sierra S. Adare’s study, “Tattoo” effectively “says Natives would have remained primitive children of nature who respected the land but couldn’t communicate with it or each other or show the land their respect because they had no language or culture until a more civilized, advanced race came across the vast ocean of space to help Natives progress.”17
The homogenized “Indianness” of Chakotay’s character also tells us other things about the future history of Native Americans. Chakotay observes a mismatched assortment of practices. Although “Tattoo” suggests a Mesoamerican lineage for Chakotay’s people, the first-season episode “The Cloud” shows him using a medicine bundle to summon a spirit guide and using a word from the Lakota language to describe the creature, both of which indicate a Great Plains origin, not a Mesoamerican one.
More to the point, he shares his rituals—handling the medicine bundle (VOY, “The Cloud”), using a medicine wheel (VOY, “Cathexis”), and undertaking a vision quest (VOY, “The Cloud”; VOY, “Mortal Coil”), for instance—with his shipmates. Without being educated or prepared for sacred (and often very private and personal) ceremonies, these other characters use Chakotay’s spiritual practices as they might use a tricorder: as a tool to be picked up, used, and then put down once again, rather than as a lifestyle or faith requiring commitment and conviction. As one First Nations viewer puts it, in the future, “Everybody can be Indian!”18 For that matter, any Indian can be every Indian.
To be fair, Chakotay does provide a middle ground visually between the fully assimilated Ensign Walking Bear of The Animated Series and the abundant jewelry of the crewmembers in Star Trek: The Motion Picture by donning a Starfleet uniform to reflect his membership and having a subtle tattoo to reflect his individual ethnicity. His use of the futuristic high-tech “akoonah” device to substitute for psychoactive herbs in achieving his vision quests also points to a way in which traditional beliefs might evolve over time and incorporate new technologies (VOY, “The Cloud”; VOY, “Basics, Part 1”; VOY, “Mortal Coil”; VOY, “The Fight”).
Nevertheless, as the scholar Lincoln Geraghty says of Chakotay, “Ultimately, the character replicates previous stereotypical versions of the Indian that have permeated American film and television.”19 Chakotay as a symbol of Native American people obscures more than he illuminates, and in troubling ways this hearkens back to the villagers of Amerind in “The Paradise Syndrome.”
A Mixed Grade for a Mixed Legacy
No episode of Enterprise (2001–2005) spotlights specifically Native American topics, although its first episode, “Broken Bow,” takes its name from Broken Bow, Oklahoma, a town located on lands once owned by the Choctaw Nation and located in what was formerly “Indian Territory.” (According to Trek’s future history, Broken Bow is the site of the first human contact with Klingons in 2151.) Of course, as a prequel, Enterprise feeds into the Trek timeline already established. Similarly, the 2009 Star Trek film does not overtly address Native themes. Thus far it remains unclear how, if at all, the movie’s “reboot” of the Trek universe alters the future history it projects for American Indians.
Taken as a whole, Star Trek earns a mixed grade in its treatment of Indigenous America. While the franchise has become increasingly sophisticated in dealing with some aspects of American Indian history such as the Removal Era, it remains unwilling to engage with current events or contemporary political issues in Native America in the same way it responds to present-day concerns of other groups. Moreover, the future history Trek creates for Natives often builds on tired stereotypes, creating an artificial, homogenous “Indianness” by appealing to mythic history with an added dash of New Age sensibilities. American Indians in the Trek universe, it seems, are creatures either of history or of fantasy. For Natives, the twenty-third and twenty-fourth centuries often look like the past—and not necessarily the “real” one, either.
Notes
1. Michael Shermer, Science Friction: Where the Known Meets the Unknown (New York: Holt Paperbacks, 2005), 229.
2. Stephen E. Whitfield and Gene Roddenberry, The Making of Star Trek (New York: Ballantine Books, 1968), 22.
3. Gene Roddenberry memo to Fred Freiberger (March 31, 1968), quoted in Daniel Leonard Bernardi, Star Trek and History: Raceing toward a White Future (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1998), 46.
4. Quoted in Sierra S. Adare, “Indian” Stereotypes in TV Science Fiction: First Nations’ Voices Speak Out (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005), 52.
5. Bernardi, Star Trek and History, 48–49.
6. Russell Bates, “Bio-introductory Notes,” in Star Trek: The New Voyages 2, eds. Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath (New York: Bantam Books, 1985), 56–57.
7. Vonda McIntyre, The Entropy Effect (New York: Pocket Books, 1981), 45.
8. Ibid., 44.
9. Adare, “Indian” Stereotypes in TV Science Fiction, 79–80, 86–87.
10. Roger Ebert, “Star Trek: Insurrection,” Chicago Sun-Times, December 11, 1998, http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19981211/REVIEWS/812110304/1023.
11. “USA: Appeal for the Release of Leonard Peltier,” Amnesty International, July 14, 1999, http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/AMR51/160/1999.
12. Desmond Tutu, letter of July 8, 2009, to the Parole Commission. Online at http://electricbrave.wordpress.com/2009/07/13/archbishop-desmond-tutu-support-leonard-peltier/.
13. Amy H. Sturgis, “Tale of Tears,” Reason (March 1999): 46–52.
14. Robert Beltran, transcript of online chat (March 1999), quoted in Adare, “Indian” Stereotypes in TV Science Fiction, 45.
15. Al Carroll, Medicine Bags and Dog Tags: American Indian Veterans from Colonial Times to the Second Iraq War (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2008), 24.
16. Darcee L. McLaren and Jennifer E. Porter, “(Re)Covering Sacred Ground: New Age Spirituality in Star Trek: Voyager,” in Star Trek and Sacred Ground: Explorations of Star Trek, Religion, and American Culture (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999), 106.
17. Quoted in Adare, “Indian” Stereotypes in TV Science Fiction, 95.
18. Ibid., 89.
19. Lincoln Geraghty, “‘Neutralising the Indian’: Native American Stereotypes in Star Trek: Voyager,” U.S. Studies Online: The BAAS Postgraduate Journal 4 (Autumn 2004), http://www.baas.ac.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=127%3Aissue-4-autumn-2004-article-1&catid
=15&Itemid=11.
Chapter 9
Terrorizing Space
Star Trek, Terrorism, and History
John Putman
On the morning of September 11, 2001, hijacked airplanes piloted by al-Qaeda terrorists struck the World Trade Center, bringing down the Twin Tower icons that dominated the downtown New York City skyline. In total, the hijacking of four planes by al-Qaeda led to the deaths of more than three thousand people, ushering in a “war on terror” that two months later began with American troops on the ground in Afghanistan. Two years later, viewers of Star Trek: Enterprise watched a probe launched by an alien group called the Xindi cut a swath of devastation from Florida to Venezuela. For the next year fans watched Captain Archer and the Enterprise crew hunt down the alien force and thwart another planned attack.
These two events—one real and the other fiction—have more in common than one might think. Just as Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry used Star Trek to comment on issues of race, religion, and war in the 1960s, Enterprise writers drew inspiration from the 9/11 attacks to explore American reactions to terrorism. Beginning with The Next Generation through Enterprise, Star Trek’s handling of terrorism in many ways similarly reflected American reactions and attitudes to very real episodes of foreign and domestic terrorism.
Star Trek and History Page 16