Robert Warrior, director of LAS’s American Indian Studies program and an English and history professor, will be featured in two of the six episodes that will air beginning Sunday, April 25 on the History Channel.
The series, called America: The Story of Us, is a retelling of American history from Jamestown to the present day, focusing on the forces and beliefs that shaped America into a nation. The series will run for six weeks in two-hour segments and feature dramatic reenactments that even include New York reverting back to wilderness.
Warrior appears in program three, “setting the tone for the series,” according to the program’s executive producer, Jane Root. In one part of the episode, Warrior contrasts the Shawnee’s view of their land with that of Daniel Boone: “These areas that seemed like wilderness to the Americans, they weren’t wilderness to these American Indian people. That was just their lands.” Warrior picks up the story again in episode six with the continued expansion into American Indian lands.
Although Warrior has not seen the final product, he is pleased that he was asked to contribute a contemporary American Indian viewpoint. It is one way, he says, of making American Indians less invisible. “I wanted to make sure there was not just an acknowledgment of the place of American Indians in the history of the U.S., but a living American Indian voice talking about Native American experiences.”
Warrior was also an advisor for the PBS documentary "Wounded Knee," which premiered to sold-out audiences at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival. Warrior has written extensively on American Indian activism.
