What do I remember most about this movie? Neither the lush soundtrack nor the bison stampede nor the touching romance. I remember Kevin Costner, portraying Union Army Lt. John Dunbar, sitting in a tepee listening. Listening without judgement to the people of a Lakota Sioux village, although Dunbar's army colleagues consider them the enemy of the white settlers. Listening humbly and absorbing this "different" people's language, culture, and lifestyle as being equal in value to his own. I remember those vivid blue eyes of his intently observing people's faces, gestures, actions. Learning. Absorbing.
Dunbar is rebuilding and manning a deserted fort when his Lakota Sioux neighbors try to steal his horse and intimidate him. He chooses to seek out the Sioux camp and begins to dialogue with them. A young white woman whose family has been killed by the Pawnees and who was subsequently adopted by the Lakota medicine man, serves as interpreter. Their dialogue, in Sioux, is given English subtitles. (The script was translated by Albert White Hat, the Chair of the Lakota Studies Department at Sinte Gleska University.) Dunbar and the Sioux villagers eventually, through various experiences in which they learn to rely on each other, become trusted friends of each other.
A dangerous maneuver and approach on Dunbar's part? Of course. The Sioux and the white army and the settlers were all caught up in a lifestyle of ongoing violence against each other. It was a dangerous approach for the Sioux as well - and their people ended up being almost eradicated from the face of the earth!
I won't tell you the rest of the plot, in case you decide to watch the movie for yourself. The life lesson I learned from Costner's character is that the key to building relationships is approaching each other with humility and openness. It is so easy to approach people from different races, religions, cultures, or sexual orientations with an unconscious elitism. Yet even our "enemies" have something to teach us. If we approach others already presuming that our beliefs or way of life is "right" and theirs is "wrong," we have already shut the door on any successful dialogue. We have closed our minds and emotions off from learning anything new, from growing, from being enriched.
The gift and the curse for all of us is that we are tribal people. We do develop our own groups, and those groups develop individual cultures, values, languages, ways of doing things. There is safety and security in our own group. So we learn to depend on our own tight group to give our lives purpose and meaning. We don't think that we need those "outsiders." In fact, if we think that they threaten our own lifestyles, they become our "enemies." Yet, for God, there are no "outsiders." God looks upon all peoples as God's family. Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the first black Archbishop of Capetown, South Africa, knew well the danger of dividing people into "insiders" and "outsiders" because of the struggle against apartheid in his country. He said
"God's family has no outsiders. Everyone is an insider. When Jesus said 'I, if I am lifted up, will draw..." Did he say, 'I will draw some, and tough luck for the others?' He said, 'I, if I be lifted up, will draw all. All! All! All! Black, white, yellow; rich, poor; clever, not so clever; beautiful, not so beautiful. All! All! All! It is radical. All! Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, Bush, - All! Gay, lesbian, so-called 'straight,' - all! All! All are to be held in the incredible embrace of the love that won't let us go."
All of us have flesh that will bleed. All of us love husbands, wives, children, parents. All of us laugh; all of us weep; all of us fear; all of us understand the courage that overcomes fear. All of us face a time of eventual death when our bodies will be consigned to the earth from which we came. In the meantime, what better use of our time, what better way to enrich our minds, hearts, and souls, than to humbly meet, greet, understand, and love as many other members of God's family - and ours - as we can?