Reflections on Jonathan Lethem’s Essay “Defending The Searchers”

I recently read Jonathan Lethem’s essay from his book “The Disappointment Artist.” It’s the opening essay in this collection of self-reflective essays (nice way of saying navel-gazing, kind of like this blog).

My view of this essay is that it is part of the standard “liberal” or “enlightened” commentary about the horrors that have been visited upon the Indigenous peoples of this hemisphere and especially this continent. In other words — yes, we did the Indians wrong, but so what?

My other view, not worth developing, is a sense that Mr. Lethem is one stubborn dude to have withstood so much opposition to his “defense” of The Searchers over the years to still retain his firm belief in its merit and to feel the need to write an entire essay about it. Lethem isn’t going to win any awards for this essay. Not that it’s a bad representation of his work, but because it’s about Indians — and work (outside of the academy) about Indians doesn’t win awards in America. There’s a reason for that fact and it’s tied to my critique of this essay.

Consider first the very limited commentary about Lethem’s “Defense.” One review of the book noted, “The Searchers is an old John Wayne movie, dated and awkward, yet Lethem is moved by its imagery, by John Wayne’s acting power, and remains in thrall to it. He is moved to defend it, even in the face of a hostile audience, even to people he knows would understand neither the movie nor his compulsion to speak.” Another review added

Here as elsewhere, Lethem’s work gives the lie to the notion that the art people love and the lives they lead can be separated. In the collection-opening essay “Defending The Searchers,” Lethem traces his relationship with the John Ford classic across several decades of repeat viewings. In each case, the circumstances of the screening and the events of Lethem’s life change how he sees it. That’s bound to happen, of course, but Lethem—who drew heavily from the film for his novel Girl In Landscape—digs beneath this to ponder whether something about the film itself keeps its story of obsession elusive to even the most obsessive admirers.

These are laudatory remarks. Yes, the reviewers are saying (much as Lethem does), The Searchers is “dated and awkward,” although probably not offensive. Lethem admits that the film is offensive. He knows it is because everyone he’s ever watched it with tells him that it’s offensive.

I wonder if he’s watched it with an Apache Indian, or any Indians at all. Undoubtably not, although a sequel essay by Lethem called “My Defense of The Searchers after My Dinner with Carey Vicenti” would be a delightful read. Yes, the Indians are always missing, but we’re still here and we’ll always be a thorn in the side of everyone else. Lethem dispenses with the Indians in his essay because he has liberal friends, people who don’t like The Searchers or John Wayne, to represent them — and be his foil.

Well, Lethem’s essay reminds me of some of the legal materials I’ve been reading the last few months. No one in our field has done a comprehensive study of all of Indian law going back to Fletcher v. Peck and earlier, but my guess is that Indians and tribes have never won very many cases. Yes, tribal interests did okay during the Warren Court era and even the Burger Court era, but it’s been a disaster ever since. And before that it was a century and a half of disaster.

My research in the cert pool memos from 1987 to 1994 indicates that the average (if there can be such a thing) Supreme Court clerk viewed a claim by Indians or tribes as utterly meritless on the face of it, but with one or two cases a year that merited a look. I suppose I’m thinking that a Supreme Court clerk looks at Indian law the way a clerk for a federal magistrate judge looks at prisoner civil rights and habeas cases — there’s too many cases, almost none of them have merit, and they waste our time reading and responding to them because, well, we have to — one or two a year might be valid.

It’s getting to the point where Indians are getting smarter and more sophisticated about their legal rights that they actually can put together a strong legal complaint with very strong legal authority to back it up. Consider the New York land claims. New York bought all this land from the Haudenoshaunee in the early 19th century, all of it in violation of federal law. Under black letter law, the sales were void from the beginning and the land is still owned by the Haudenoshaunee. New York (with the informal help of the US) spent a century and a half ignoring the law and denying Indians the right to sue, but you can’t keep good people down forever. Eventually, they got to the Supreme Court with a good legal theory and won the right to bring these claims. And so they did and they kept winning and winning. Twenty years after the first big one, these Indians were still winning their land claims. So then what happened? The (new) Supreme Court changed the rules right from underneath these New York Indians (see City of Sherrill).

You don’t ever hear anyone complain about this outside of Indian law. Yeah, some perceptive law students write their notes about it and a whole ton of us Indian law scholars have been arguing against it all along. No one on the Senate Judiciary Committee asked Roberts and Alito what they thought about changing the rules on people midstream. No one in Congress complains. Not even the scholars who don’t like the conservative makeup of the current Court mentions it. Who cares? It’s just Indians. (Or probably, “who cares, it’s confusing”).

It’s like The Searchers. Yeah it’s offensive, racist and sexist and violent and utterly without historical basis, but it was on AMC just a few weeks ago without apology. And it’ll be on again and again.

It’s like Lethem’s reviewers, especially that second one from The Onion A.V. Club who called The Searchers a “classic.” What’s important about Lethem for these reviewers is his excellent articulation about how he got to where he is as an intellectual and a writer. Does anyone ask why this stubborn writer feels the need to defend such a film, and then practically brag about it by calling it his “private club”? No, that would lead to a discussion about Indians. Uggh.

But Lethem himself (well, his essay, because he could be just making the whole thing up) is at least honest. He knows and acknowledges that the film is drivel, spit on the sidewalk, trash, or in his words, an “abomination.” But he elevates himself up above the fracas by celebrating his intellectual folly of a defense of it. He knows he’s wrong.

And I suspect that the Supreme Court knows it’s wrong about Indian law, too. It must. Justice Ginsburg’s re-writing of first year property law in Strate and then the rewriting of the laches defense in Sherrill (I’m not trying to pick on her; it could have any been any of the Nine; well, maybe not Justice Breyer) demonstrate the utter lack of importance that Indian issues have in those Chambers. What’s important to the Court (and anyone else with significant power) is how we got to where we are. New York took that Indian land and sold it for money, money they needed to run their government those first few decades. And the counties and localities that regulate the land now need it as a tax base, for money to run their governments now. And the non-Indians who own the land benefit from their ignorance about the history of the dispossession of the Indians. So much non-Indian history and politics is tied to that land now — so who cares about the Indians?
That’s what the Court’s defending — how we got here, with Lethem’s defense of The Searchers.

Lethem’s defense of The Searchers amounts to little more than this — it’s just too late for the Indians. They had it all and lost it, though fraud, murder, history. And Lethem will lament their loss, and lament the impact of this incredible dispossession from Indians to non-Indians — because lament is all that is necessary. Restoration is not necessary; indeed, as the Supreme Court says, it’s impossible.

There are three viewpoints: (1) That of the Indians — give it back or made us whole somehow; (2) That of Lethem’s liberal friends — lament the historical losses suffered by the Indians and lament the impact of that history on non-Indians; and (3) Lethem’s view — admit everything, but stubbornly lament nothing. Note that view #1 is not present in this essay. Restoration of tribal losses isn’t even worth discussing. What is worth discussing (though Lethem seems to reject it) is assuaging the impact of this history on Indians and non-Indians alike.

That’s not enough.

I’m harsh on Lethem here the same way I am harsh on anyone who utterly ignores the very subject matter of discussion. How many times do non-Indians have to undergo “serious” examination of the history of Indians in America without even talking about Indians, or even trying to understand the viewpoint of Indians?