James Giago Davies: Grandstanding for the white man’s money

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Nick Tilsen, President & CEO of NDN Collective, is seen in the CNN program United Shades of America in an episode titled “The Landback Movement.” Screenshot: CNN

Iyeska Journal

Grandstanding for the white man’s money

Tuesday, August 30, 2022

By James Giago Davies

Managing Editor, Native Sun News Today

nativesunnews.today

Most people did not use logic or reason to arrive at their ideas.

So you can’t use logic or reason to talk them out of them. We are not talking about mouth breathing idiots here, but successful people, with mainstream platforms that influence others, and these people often filter their focus through a prism of issue-addled preconceptions that makes them churn out idiot product.

Recently, a filmmaker, W. Kamau Bell, who presents programming entitled United Shades of America for CNN, produced a nauseatingly schlock documentary about the Black Hills, and the efforts of tribes to get the land back. He featured Chase Iron Eyes, a convicted felon, and Nick Tilsen, a grandstanding activist who has inexplicably won the regard of lots of naïve liberals with tens of million to squander.

#UnitedShades starts NOW!

Let’s get #LandBack trending! pic.twitter.com/hqHxtz53id
— W. Kamau Bell (@wkamaubell) August 15, 2022

Because Bell is himself an activist, he is like the hammer that sees everything as a nail, he can only process struggles for social justice through the lens of an activist. He completely disregards all other aspects of the struggle and the history, even when these non-activist aspects are essential to developing even a rudimentary understanding of the issue.

Bell did interview tribal chairmen. He interviewed Mario Gonzalez, the man whose 11th Hour injunction on behalf of his Oglala tribe stopped the pay out of the June 1980 judgment.

None of this was included in the documentary, because who are these people who actually make the real history, who have the skill, the training, the knowledge, the contacts, the track record, who are they to think their impact equals that of Chase Iron Eyes and Nick Tilsen, who combined have accomplished exactly NOTHING in getting back Native lands, let alone getting back the Black Hills, and don’t even understand the history and struggle of those who have fought this battle since Ralph Case back in the 1920’s.

Bust out the Kardashian sisters and get them activating on behalf of land back.