~Aussie_Luvtail

I don't know how many of you read an old story of mine called Plum Creek. It was from around 2012 and I deleted it a few years back out of embarrassment, but I feel like I owe an explanation and apology for even writing it in the first place. Even if less than 50 people probably even read it, I don’t care, it’s weighing on my mind and I want to get it off my chest.

It was a very short story about a minor historical event (at least I hope it was, more on that later) on August 27th 1867, where native Americans attacked a supply train bound for the trans-continental railway that was under construction. My one and only source of information for this was the Seven Wonders of the Industrial World docudrama made by the BBC in 2003. I love it, it's quite well produced and acted, and the narrator is excellent, I recommend it. One of the most memorable scenes of the entire series was a re-enaction of the aftermath of the Plum Creek attack. The director and/or the head of music and sound design for the episode clearly has a secret passion for horror that they were eager to sneak into the show, because it's extremely haunting and chilling, with the music especially able to thrill me so much that I'm loathe to watch the scene in a dark room alone at night. It really made an impression on me when I was young and for some reason I wanted to see if I could basically transcribe the entire story to see if I could come close to achieving that same atmosphere with my writing, my first crack at pseudo-horror, I suppose. It was a good test for myself, but I shouldn't have publicly posted it, because here's the thing. I didn't do any research at all to see if it was true, or if all the details were correct, or whether there was any nuance or a second side to the story that I was missing. I was just taking the BBC's word for it that it was completely correct, because why would they lie? It's a documentary about actual history, how could it be biased or misleading or incorrect? (...lol)

So today I was watching a Shaun video where he talks about and utterly debunks a video by an alt-right dickhead I wasn't familiar with called Stefan Molyneux. Here it is, it's quite good, just like all Shaun's videos; I'd reccomend his channel highly for anyone looking for a mix of interesting history and leftist content: https://youtu.be/Xd_nVCWPgiA?si=y0YbnXzDmz1JdQVa and it struck me just how little I know about the history of the native Americans, and what a shockingly raw deal they got. His factual recounting of the Sand Creek massacre, where US soldiers did dreadful things to a peaceful and innocent tribe of native Americans because they wanted to kill them all and steal their land, is just hideous. While Stefan flatly refuses to acknowledge that a genocide of the natives even took place (hence, dickhead).

And it made me think back on that story and a comment I got on it soon after posting it. See, I was going off the narration of the documentary for the details of the history, because again, it was my only source and I just assumed it was unbiased and accurate. And one of the lines was "The Sioux and Cheyenne were two of the most war-like tribes in America", which I copied directly. I actually misspelled both those tribes because I had never seen them written before! It's so embarrassing in hindsight how woefully uninformed I was to think I could write on this topic. I saw one documentary, with one scene that lasted less than five full minutes, and I thought I was an expert. So cringe! Anyway, I got some comments saying that describing the tribes as war-like was offensive. They correctly pointed out that the natives weren't waging a war, they were defending themselves from an invading army that wanted to kill them and steal their land. And I was like "hey, don't look at me, I'm just quoting from the documentary!" Which is true, but isn’t a great excuse.

Anyway, watching that Shaun video today, and then going back to rewatch the documentary, I noticed a few things with fresh eyes. They're not especially keen on portraying the US workers and soliders as an invading force, but rather as an innocent bunch of railway workers who were just trying to build a railway to link both coastlines of the emerging nation, who got attacked along the way for no reason by a hoard of savages. I'm exaggerating a bit there. I won't say the documentary wasn't sympathetic to the natives and it does offer some quotes from captured natives, and plays some sad music when describing the ultimate fate of the natives in the path of the railroad, it's clearly trying to lean more in favour of their point of view. But ultimately, it's a documentary about an industrial wonder. Industry has to take favour, because it's the ultimate achievement that the documentary was created to celebrate, so it inevitably has to put the issue of the natives aside and try to put it out of your mind as fast as possible before the ending of the episode.

It took me this long in my life to realise that the BBC (in 2003, but quite possibly still today) weren't some impartial organisation just trying to teach history through the fun medium of a docudrama. They're the official media channel for an imperialist nation, describing the actions of another imperialist nation as delicately as they can, because it’s not too far removed from their own nation’s history and world view. They don’t want to dwell too much on the actions of the US people and government at this time in history, because the UK is most certainly not blameless when it comes to imperialist crimes, so if they took too many jabs at the US in this regard, people would start to say “Oi. Glass houses, mate”. So there’s an inevitable bias in the way they tell the story, which I was simply too naive and uneducated to spot back in 2003-2012.

So, time to wrap up. If anyone here remembers reading the original story, my apologies! For all others, er, thanks for reading! If you’d like some video essays where there aren’t a lot of visuals and you can just casually listen to something while you do something else, give Shaun’s channel a look! His essay about the atomic bombing of Japan is a must-listen if you’re a history buff, and he’s done some great stuff on other more pop cultural stuff like Harry Potter and how Andrew Tate is a wanker (I watched that one with my parents! It prompted a great conversation about masculinity!). So yeah, enjoy! And thanks for reading!