We Shall Remain – Tecumseh’s Vision
This documentary “We Shall Remain – Tecumseh’s Vision” begins back in1805 where Indians in the Midwest were experiencing the threat of westward extension by white pioneers. Tecumseh, an affiliate of the Shawnee ethnic group, utilized the increasing worry of different tribes to bring them into an alliance with the common objective of saving their motherland. The vision of an independent Indian country would die along with Tecumseh when he was murdered in war of 1813. In the 1805 spring, Tenskwatawa, a Shawnee, fell into a deep sleep that those around him thought that he was dead. When he woke up, the young seer alleged to have come across the Master of Life.
He persuaded those who gathered around to take note that the Indians were in terrible straits since they had adopted white customs and neglected customary religious ways. For a number of years Tenskwatawa’s spiritual revitalization group drew thousands of believers from tribes all over the Midwest. His senior brother, Tecumseh, would exploit the energies of that revitalization to form an exceptional military and political alliance of regularly antagonistic tribes, all dedicated to stopping white westward invasion. In this episode, Tecumseh still faces the same issues. Distressed and depleted indigenous communities refuse to give in to intrusion on their land. They made pacts, in this case with the British at some stage in the 1812 fight. However, those pacts are betrayed and they are defeated by military authority of US and hence lost their land. Tecumseh’s brother had a transformative dream in 1805 of abstaining from alcohol, live the habitual ways, and avoid the white man. This vision stirred up a generation of fighters and gave hope to Tecumseh’s vision of a united Indian motherland in the Great Lakes state.
The two siblings came closer than any person since to building an Indian state that would exist alongside the United States but independently. The vision of a sovereign Indian nation may have faded during the war of the Thames, when their leader Tecumseh was killed in the warfare along with his British supporters, but the great Shawnee soldiers would live on as a powerful emblem of Native pride and identity. On top of his problems, though, Tecumseh was faced the fact that these were not states, they were disjointed villages. Therefore, it was hard to convince a few chiefs and hope that they were going to be collaborative. The chiefs had little or no authority inside their own societies. However, this lack of power in Indian societies was both beneficial and disadvantageous to Tecumseh, because even if the chiefs supported their opponents, he could pull the fighters from underneath them by alluring them.
This episode relates to the course since it retells American history from the indigenous American standpoint. It is an extremely old-fashioned documentary that is built up gradually, chronologically, and strongly from a few crucial and familiar elements, which include talking heads and a commanding narrator. Each part of this episode concentrates on key historical events and ends with a short modern story that connects the past to the present. What I liked most about the episode is Tecumseh’s vision, which utilizes on-camera interviews and dramatic reforms shot with a feature film responsiveness to show the warrior’s last attempt to defend an Indian native soil east of the Mississippi. However I disliked the part where Tecumseh was killed fighting alongside his British supporters since the dream of an independent Indian state would have faded at the war of the Thames.