Started watching a documentary on Netflix, The American Experience about the Indian tribes of America, "We Shall Remain," and right away the Indians are the good guys and the Europeans the bad guys. I suppose there's some poetic justice in this up to a point, since earlier treatments of such subjects were awfully one-sided in the opposite direction.
Now in the politically correct multicultural view (more accurately it should be known as the anti-western-cultural view) the Indians are subtly presented as more civilized than the whites in a way, in little things -- expressions, manner, bearing etc., -- the Indians have dignity and family feeling, the whites appear to be a rather scruffy wild crew. And the narrator describes them in such terms:
In December of 1620, after 66 days at sea, and five uneasy weeks on the northern tip of Cape Cod, a SCRAGGLY CULT from England anchored its sailing vessel, the Mayflower, off the mainland coast and sent a small party of men to scout the wooded shores. RADICAL RELIGIOUS VIEWS HAD MADE THE PILGRIMS UNWELCOME AND UNWANTED IN ENGLAND. They had no home to go back to if they failed to make one in this new world. [my emphases of course]It's all in the point of view, right? This is an outsider point of view, not the American point of view, certainly not the Christian point of view. There's no hint in this characterization of a people coming across the ocean on a noble enterprise with the noble ideas about government that became the Mayflower Compact and ultimately influenced the greatest nation ever to exist, with a true understanding of the cause of Christ, or anything of the sort.
Soon after they arrive they come across a mostly abandoned and destroyed Indian village --Patuxit -- where the population had been drastically reduced by disease, and "they attributed this devastation to God looking out and clearing the way for His chosen people." Which of course in the context of the miserable sufferings of the people who died there sounds quite ignoble.
And in the whole presentation there's no hint of a genuine Christian faith that rises above fallen human nature.
Then the film does show the efforts at good will between the peoples and their success, while continuing to picture the whites as just a little less than noble and the Indians a little better than.
I had to stop watching.
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Later edit: By the way, I started this film because I had just watched one about the Navajo code talkers who played such a big role in WWII against the Japanese, and was very touched by their patriotism. I hurt for them that they weren't given the recognition they so deserved, especially when it was mentioned this was at least partly because the army was still racist then. I'm far from insensitive to this problem in other words, but it's terribly wrong when the "solution" is an attack on white culture and an elevation of the Indian, whose culture is NOT to be compared to Christian culture whatever its merits. It's sad our history is so rocky, with so much lack of respect for the American Indians, but the solution is NOT "multiculturalism."
