Native America (2018– ) User Reviews

Didn't match my expectations

[jcravens42 · 6/10 · 19 November 2018]

I'm a huge fan of PBS documentaries about history and past civilizations, and I was so looking forward to a long-overdue in-depth look at the earliest civilizations in North and South America. I'm still looking forward to it, because this series isn't it. You won't learn much about the history of the first civilizations the way you do if you watch other PBS shows - there's little information about how First People lived once upon a time (diet, housing, building techniques, daily life, local animals and plants that were vital to them, theories about why civilizations dissolved, how the dead were buried, etc.), the role of women in the various civilizations that came and went, relations between tribes, different ways groups governed themselves, etc. This series is more of a celebration of how people NOW, descended from the First Peoples of in North America, feel about their past, how they view their history from an emotional point of view, their perceptions of the past - and that's absolutely fine, and interesting if you don't know about their feelings, emotions and perceptions, which many people don't. Everyone presents a very romanticized view that make the past sound like all was perfect and in harmony, with no wars, no conflict, no problems at all - and I don't think any civilization, past or present, can claim that.

Biased, unhistorical, poorly researched

[woodandwood · 2/10 · 28 August 2021]

I am watching chapter II in the French translation. At one point this documentary states that in 1493 the Catholic Church wrote a document (at the origin of the " Discovery Doctrine" ) which allowed to kill and take as slaves the native people.

This is a huge mistake. The Church never allowed to kill nor to take as slaves the native people quite the contrary (see the Papal bull Creator Omnium of 1434 which is a defense of native people of the Canaries and an order to free them if taken as slaves.)

In that passage they show a document in Latin as "proof" but it is the Dudm Siquidem of 1493 which was basically setting a geographic division of the new territories between Spain and Portugal and an exhortation to train and educate the native population in the Christian faith, which was meant in the proper missionary way.

The mistake is even larger when one can study that in 1493 the Church wrote 6 other documents on the topic which never contains any order to kill nor to capture anybody. The misunderstanding is due to the author confusing another document, the Dudum Diversam which was written in 1455. This was about the war with the Saracens (Muslims) in the Mediterranean and yes, being a war, it was customary to kill and take slaves on both parts, logically (the Vatican being for century a state without a proper army to defend itself):

I can't believe that so gross a mistake can be made,

To end the comment, it's known that things got wrong for many reasons, individual behavior of soldiers, pandemics, ignorance, fear, greed, etc.

The other documentary series "Conquistadores" is much nearer to the real facts than this series, in my opinion.

Also read the newly appeared book "Madre patria" by Marcelo. Gullo Amadeo to read how things really happened.

Finally, the documentary shows the very famous "painting" (in reality an image impressed instantaneously on the indios Juan Diegos' jacket according to eye witnesses) of the Virgin Mary (Virgin of Guadalupe) but no word about it is uttered. A bit too much for not believing that this documentary is instrumental to spread falsehood on the Christian Faith.