Hey, I'm writing a book going over the history of Sonic SatAM (I'm SatAMHistorian on Twitter), and I was curious if you could give me the source on the coverage of Ben Hurst and Pat Allee's Unto These Hills? I feel it'd be a good source for my book, as it's good to acknowledge when I talk about that section that the reaction to their script was negative. Didn't know about that. Will say that I feel both you and the paper was a tad overly negative regarding the duo, as it's possible there were outside factors which led to their script being compromised (such as John Tissue's seemingly kinda shadiness indicating he may have requested certain elements be changed to be more marketable). Will say that Ben and Pat DID work previously on Native America related stuff, contrary to what the paper suggests. They previously worked on a virtual tour CD of the Museum of the Cherokee Indian in 1998, and worked on a paper regarding Duane H. King and his work with native american museums and such entitled "Trail of Tears". I don't doubt Pat and Ben were knowledgeable on Native Americans, and I think it's very possible those issues with the script may have been due to the direction they were given. Although the childishness and jokes being eh was probably on them tho.
Will say that I feel both you and the paper was a tad overly negative regarding the duo, as it's possible there were outside factors which led to their script being compromised (such as John Tissue's seemingly kinda shadiness indicating he may have requested certain elements be changed to be more marketable).
1.) No offense, but it kinda sounds like you're trying to excuse Pat and Ben here under the guise of executive meddling. I'm more inclined to believe a paper with sources than conjecture.
2.) Both me and the paper were overly negative? Both me and the paper. Not just me, but the paper specifically describing their rendition as whitewashing and their credentials as dubious.
Too negative. About cultural appropriation. In a paper literally entitled
...........I.
also how can you tell if the paper is being "a tad overly negative" when you haven't even read it.
Okay. Let's break this down, piece by piece.
First: intent doesn't matter when it comes to harm. Even if neither Pat nor Ben intended harm, the fact of the matter remains that they took a job opportunity away from an indigenous person who could have handled the source material with more cultural sensitivity and empathy, and instead used that opportunity to present an unfunny whitewashed version of history.
If they were really dialed-in to Cherokee culture as claimed, they could have recommended another indigenous writer to the CHA rather than take the position themselves. I'm fairly confident in asserting there probably wasn't a dearth of indigenous writers at the time.
Second: more accessible to who? White audiences? The play was originally white-directed; why would it need to be made even more accessible to white audiences? Would an indigenous perspective be considered too alien for general audiences to understand? What does "accessibility" mean in this context, and why do you assume accessibility to a culture that has suffered the appropriation of its history is something to strive for?
I. (rubs temple) I've been having one hell of a time trying to explain to people that not all cultures are up for grabs all the time. Just recently I had to tell a Sonic fan to knock it off with their w****goag AU because those spirits are sacred to the Anishinaabe and should not be treated like fictional playthings, and their defense was a flimsy "free cultural exchange is good."
No. Not always. Not to indigenous people, who have had their stories and beliefs violently ripped away from them and placed in the hands of outsiders who then profit off of them. Sometimes stories Are Not Meant To Be Told By You.
Indigenous people in particular have suffered a nasty history of being deprived of the right to tell their own stories by the dominant culture, and of having our stories regurgitated back to us in some whitewashed form. Unto These Hills was originally a white-directed morality play about Cherokee removal that the Cherokee then tried to make their own in order to generate revenue for the nation.
That is an act of survival. To take the narratives that hurt us and say "If we cannot stop this from happening, we might as well do it in a way that helps us."
With all due respect, I don't think I'm being "too negative" about cultural appropriation.
If this is what Pat and Ben did to Sequoyah, reducing him to a joke for The Lolz, I can't imagine what they did to the Cherokee museum.
And I'm sorry but frankly, I doubt Pat's credentials in this case when she, allegedly, was an "expert on Native Americans" and had her Wolf Pack do such quintessential Eastern Woodland tribe stuff as: wear togas and live in stone temples. ._.
The Wolf Pack are not based on any specific tribe. They're based on an ignorant view of Native people as a vague pan-Indian monolith.
Source: I'm a Haudenosaunee person and know we didn't wear togas and live in stone temples. Easterm Woodland tribes means our structures were made of wood. Longhouses, wiiigiwaam, etc., are made of wood.
We also do not mess around with fake curses because kacĢiĢkacĢiks (voodoo) isn't something you casually mess around with, even if the intent is to scare off outsiders.
Back to the main point... Sure, Ben could technically say he'd worked for the museum, but what did that actually entail when the CHA's standards were lax under John Tissue? You can't say "executive meddling was the reason they bastardized the play" in one breath and "Pat and Ben's work is legit because the same organization hired them to work on other stuff" in the next.
The problem here is twofold:
1.) Pat Allee and Ben Hurst were given a position that previously belonged to an indigenous man when their own credentials were dubious at best. The play's previous playwright was a Kiowa man, Hanay Geiogamah, who lost the position for petty reasons.
Furthermore, the man who vouched for Pat and Ben's credentials, John Tissue, could not specify why they were a good fit beyond a vague shrug. Especially brow-raising was the fact that they hadn't had a single writing credit to their name since 1999 when they got the job in 2006:
The CHA replaced Geiogamah the following year with Pat Allee and Ben Hurst, who made their living writing cartoons. They decided to replace Geiogamah because of his inability to fulfill the CHAās expectations. Though he did not inform the press of the reasons for deciding to fire Geiogamah, executive director John Tissue admitted to Scott Parker that Geiogamah "plagiarized text from the old drama and [had] no second act. "Hanay lifted the second act nearly verbatim from his American Indian Dance theatre shows and we didnāt get that version until [two] days before opening!" The accusation of plagiarism did not focus on the script, but the series of dances and āa Cherokee version of the American Indian Dance Theater DRUM CALL which served as the prelude to his removal scene. Because of Geiogamahās tardiness, the Association considered cancelling the first week of shows.
Choosing Allee and Hurst to write the new script showed that the CHA sacrificed its desire for a fully Cherokee story, to use 'veteran Hollywood writers.ā Their credits, however, consisted of mainly childrenās cartoons such as āTiny Toon Adventures and two separate āSonic the Hedgehog series. Neither one had any writing credits to their name since 1999. Tissue, defending his choice, wrote to Parker that ā"Ben and Pat did write cartoons among many other things including the TV show Taxi but they also have [ten] years experience writing about Cherokee history. I needed that mix." Tissue did not divulge the details of their work on the Cherokee to Parker or strangely enough to newspapers.
I was not saying this to be a dick. You can read it in the paper yourself.
2.) Pat and Ben turned the play, which was originally about Cherokee removal, into glurgy, unfunny, "we're all one race" Christian feelgood schlock:
The main focus of removal here, however, does not occur in Cherokee, but in Nashville, Tennessee. White citizens line the streets to watch the Indians pass through their town. Upset by the occurrences, they bring out blankets, food, and clothing, and some begin crying. Kamama, a small Indian child mentions this to her grandmother, who responds "ānever forget, Kamama, there are always good people, no matter what color they are." Throughout the scene, Cherokees sing the hymn Amazing Grace, and āafter a few stanzas, all the whites join in. The orchestrated score swells, filling the house and the song is sung in full harmony to a huge dramatic finish. This picture of harmony between the races took the focus off of the impact removal had on the Cherokee people, and showed how the playwrights imagined whites and Indians interacted. [emphasis mine]
Compare this to Geiogamahās treatment:
Whereas Hunter [the play's original white author] saw this as the end of the action, Geiogamah chose to place removal as the center of the drama. [emphasis mine]
Even the construction of the scene created a different message then that of Hunterās script. The scene has few spoken words. It begins with Major Davis giving the order for the Indians to remove in two weeks, and ends with Kanati singing about removal.
According to the paper, Pat and Ben's rendition reflects a puerile view of history:
Their background in cartoons showed in the very childlike script that played for laughs. The play is more a series of vignettes than a cohesive story with a unifying thread running throughout. Though news reports claimed the second change in the script brought Tsali and Thomas back into the story, the playwrights relegated their part to the end of the play. Whereas Hunter denied the Indians any sense of humor, Allee and Hurst, made the Indians cartoonish, filling the script with bad jokes in English. Instead of using the Kanati and Selu as narrators, Allee and Hurst used a grandmother and grandfather telling bedtime stories to their grandson and granddaughter, an idea more accessible to white audiences.
Native people get opportunities ripped out from under them in favor of white people all the time, so it acts as a double kick in the face when our own stories aren't allowed to be told on our own terms, either.
As I've said earlier in this post, Unto These Hills was originally a white-directed morality play that the Cherokee people eventually tried to make their own.
Losing an indigenous playwright to two white cartoon writers for bullshit reasons is bad enough, but they then produced a cartoon mocking important figures, shelving other significant figures, and having everyone sing Kumbaya around the fire... as if dispossession was just an unfortunate tragedy instead of a calculated act of assimilation forced upon the Cherokee by the federal government.
Yeah.
No.
I didn't have a high opinion of Ben Hurst to begin with, considering his disdain of the Sonic series' core identity, the video games, led him to comment that Sega's vision for the series was "not very creative"; considering his comments on wanting to be "whatever species was compatible with Sally" were creepy (and yet this fanbase that hounds you over "impure" ships let it slid, maybe because they didn't know, but who knows?); and considering that his posts on SatAM seemed to heavily imply he couldn't let go of it decades later. Quite a claim to make that a hypothetical season 3 "wouldn't suck," and, just on a personal note, it's a little sad to think nothing else creatively fulfilled him quite like a cartoon he developed in his youth. Those are all the petty reasons I don't like Hurst.
...However, seeing two white authors take job opportunities from indigenous people and whitewash Native history actively pushed that dislike into upset.
Frankly, I was going to include a disclaimer, after a friend pointed it out, that just because Ben and Pat wrote something racially insensitive doesn't make them bad people. But, you know what, this is 2025 and it should go without saying. And centering their feelings/honor shouldn't be the focus of this post anyhow.
There's someone else here who is also dead, and can no longer defend himself, but that didn't prevent him from being made fun of. Sequoyah.
