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By Brittney Pastion of CFWE-FM
Windspeaker.com Contributor
Searching for Winnetou, a documentary by Ojibway author Drew Hayden Taylor, is scheduled to air on CBC Jan. 28 at 9 p.m. It is the product of 16 lecture tours of Germany that Taylor has taken over 20 years.
The documentary traces “Indian enthusiasm” from its roots in the writings of Karl May in the 1880s. May is best known for his novels of Apache warrior Winnetou and his German sidekick. May’s portrayal however had come from no first-hand knowledge of Native Americans, having never traveled to North America.
Winnetou is May’s noble warrior that is the epitome of humanity and morals, said Taylor. “He was a Christian Apache. His best friend was a German.” The novels were written from the German sidekick’s perspective. Searching for Winnetou reflects a discovery of how the novels led to the mania of what Winnetou represents in Germany today, 130 years later.
While on the first of his lecture tours in Germany, Taylor began to notice the “bizarre mania” in “Indianer” culture and lifestyle, including the hosting of their own Native North American-inspired powwows.
“There’s this whole romanticized mythology surrounding Native people,” he said. In Germany, however, Native people are still thought of as having never progressed beyond the 1880s.
Taylor is the author of 30 books, and is not usually a documentary filmmaker, but he thought the German phenomenon would make for an interesting exploration. CBC showed an interest and the result is “… just a dream come true putting this film together;” a mind-bending journey through history, art, politics, and controversy.
Even Adolf Hitler and much of the Nazi elite were bizarrely obsessed with North American Native warriors, reads a press statement about the project.
Of the examination of Native appreciation, or appropriation, in Germany, Taylor says that the Germans have no expectation or belief that they will ever be Native. He likens the celebration of Native peoples to a renaissance fair or Harry Potter mania.
“Whereas here in Canada or North America you meet people like this and these are people that either want to be Native, hope to be Native, or claim some form of Native ancestry,” said Taylor. They are embracing it in a way that they will become part of the community, whereas in Germany there is no belief of that whatsoever.
“They are doing it because they think it’s fun.” He says that’s problematic in itself, “but I don’t think its as detrimental to our culture as those of who wannabe, so to speak, part of the culture.”
Taylor finds the German fascination with historical Native American lifestyle interesting and humorous, and wanted to share the joke through the documentary.
Searching for Winnetou will air on the CBC Docs POV series, Sunday Jan. 28, at 9p.m, (9:30 p.m. NL) and the documentary will also be available to watch online at cbc.ca/CBCDocsPOV on Friday, Jan. 26, from 5 p.m.