To Save the Man

Filmmaker and author Sayles’s (Jamie MacGillivray) new novel, set in the 1890–91 academic year at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, focuses on Captain Pratt (source of “kill the Indian, save the man”), Indigenous students at the school, and figures in between—such as Miss Redbird, a former Carlisle student who has become an instructor. In a multiperspective narrative, Sayles addresses the cultural genocide inflicted at Carlisle, as well as varying points of view about what white settlers call “the Indian problem” and local rumors of an impending Ghost Dance. The rumors stir anxieties among the white settlers; the Ghost Dance purportedly has the power to return slain buffalo to their lands, destroy all white people in flood or fire, and raise the Indigenous dead. In response, federal troops are deployed onto Lakota land, and news returns of the murder of Sitting Bull by Indigenous police working for the federal government, followed by the massacre at Wounded Knee. This particularly cinematic narrative experience, purposely jarring, joins the experiences of Indigenous characters with troubling perspectives of the government and those who did its bidding.