American Indian Culture and Research Journal

The noble savage, according to eighteenth-century French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, is an individual living in a “pure state of nature”-gentle, wise, uncorrupted by the vices of civilization. Producer-director Kevin Costner brings this vision to his film Dances with Wolves, and thus he creates a nation of Sioux Indians living in a golden age, free from European social convention and removed from the failings of ”civilization.” His film is less about Indian tradition than European romanticism: Its white hero longs for the Arcadian wilderness, pursues his own ”dream woman,” and searches for a nature uncontaminated by contemporary society. Costner’s vision of Sioux life before white contact is a chimerical dream of Native American existence, a portrait of a people doomed to extinction. Dances with Wolves is the story of Lieutenant John J. Dunbar (Kevin Costner) and his life among the Lakota Sioux. The year is 1863, and Dunbar, a Civil War hero, requests a transfer to the isolated Dakota Territory. As the only white in an alien world, he establishes contact and eventually befriends the Sioux. Dunbar adapts to Indian culture, defends the Sioux against attacking Pawnees, and marries a captive white woman who has lived with the band since childhood. When Dunbar later returns to his post to retrieve his diary, the army captures him and accuses him of treason. The Sioux, however, ambush the military party and rescue the officer. Ultimately, the soldiers begin to search for Dunbar, so, in order to protect his Indian friends, he and his wife must leave the Sioux community.