"Incident at Oglala" (Documentary) (1991) - Movie Review

I have often wondered on the term of criminals in war. The clear ground in a society has enough dubious doubts to offer on a day to day criminal case and in the middle ground of fire exchange authorized by a country heads to bat out the hell out of each other, is there a reach for justice out there? The shoot out resulting in the deaths of two FBI agents in June 26th 1975 in “Incident at Ogalala” was not an official declared war but at that moment with Pine Ridge Reservation pinnacle for the high deaths due to violence, it was a war to protect each other.

Narrated by Robert Redford, Michael Apted directs towards that day of losses where the FBI agents Jack R. Coler and Ronald A. Williams came in to the Jumping Bull location chasing a pick up truck driven by their suspect, a man named Jimmy Eagle. Not alone Jimmy Eagle was not in the car but in the vicinity and the mystery person in it became their object of attention. The thing blew up because the ambience among the Native American community in the region was lethal. With the internal tension and people camping up nearby and no awareness of who started the shooting, suddenly that place became a war zone. The people nearby living in the culture of being hunted down wanted to protect their loved ones. Bullets rained and ended up with the FBI agents and a Native American dead. The film details on the situation which led to it and the trials of this tragic event.

Apted has a rare use for narrator Robert Redford who places facts than the emotion. In documentaries emotions run high among the people involved in flesh and blood with an incident or a cause either in complete truth or in the opposite of it. Perceptions differ and the director in the middle of putting the pieces in front of us has an obligation of placing all the facts possible. In a documentary, end is mostly a confused state of the viewer what to believe in. Some times it is loud and clear as “An Inconvenient Truth” and some times riddles you out as “The Corporation”. Here things went wrong and it was not followed by a right but a series of vengeance, politics and emotions leading to a very high possibility of a man wrongly in prison for life convicted of two murders. His name is Leonard Peltier.

The ring of violence which built up before the shoot out and after the shoot out is a chronicle of the government negating the rights, will and goodness of the Native American people. They had a leader, Richard Wilson, Tribal Council Chairman, a corrupt one who not only routed the Federal money for welfare into his wellbeing but formed squads to terrorize the traditional clan amongst the community. The rivalry never dealt became the outcome into an air of fear and hatred. The American Indian Movement (AIM) came to protect the traditional people. The word protect takes a very big significance as to defense. This was civil war and the day of June 26th 1975 it forced them to use their power in fear and guard when the lives of FBI agents were taken along with their fellow man.

The film knows what it believes and it does not force us to believe that. It has interviews of the then FBI heads, the US Attorneys, one of the jury member, witnesses, defense attorneys, the Native American people and we are left with a situation dealt bad and have the property of doubt carrying it over for so long. Redemption seems to be an option when power, ego and hatred reigns all through these times. Near the end of the film we see a possibility of an unknown confessing individual who did the killing and we see the opinions shed by Peltier and others. Peltiers says he knows who it is and will not reveal it. This is not a Michael Moore moment but a true genuine person who has already past half of life sentence and aware of his possible demise before his release in the year of 2035.

The FBI agents were executed in close range than shot by distant rifles. What happened that day would only be told in papers and over screens and the people having it in memory. But the incident is not alone a tragedy of the lives lost but an origin of a tremor for the injustice being done to the Native American community. The law enforcers and protectors have the toughest job any one could possibly imagine and more than the rules applied to a normal citizen, they are bound to be more stringent than necessary. It is a double standard set for a purpose which would in any case cannot and will not allow that shade of doubt to pass on their philosophy of guarding the law. Basically good and fair law officers cannot afford even a stumble because the very next moment their every step is doubted and justice never gets served. In the case of this incident, the matter of the guilty or not guilty was major regardless the existing sourness of the government and the community got wider and inapproachable due to this severe crusade of vengeance over fairness. The result is the doubt over justice itself.