Popular Culture Review Vol. 11, No. 1, February 2000 | Page 146

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Popular Culture Review

to Michaela than old school ties. Cloud Dancing and Dr. Quinn are part of a new
and superior society: the inclusive frontier. Though Native American critic Michael
Dorris’ criticism of contemporary television depictions of American Indians as
overly reverent characterizations and Geiogamah and Pavel’s (both members of
North American Indian tribes) complaints that Native Americans are still depicted
in “sidekick” roles are certainly applicable to Cloud Dancing, the character is at
least a multi-dimensional and attractive figure.
Watching all these tolerant and culturally aware characters, audience members
may indulge their wishes that there were people like these in frontier towns standing
up for the values which we prize today. Awkward complexities, such as the fact
that the Cheyenne “had done terrible things to the settlers that were not forgiven or
forgotten “(Foote 44) are deftly avoided. In DQMW the frontier is remade as the
land o f opportunity not only for white males, but for women, children, Native
Americans, immigrants and the physically challenged. In short, DQMW gives us
American history as it might have been if women had had more authority and
Native Americans had been afforded more respect. Even if this depiction is
sometimes bizarrely anachronistic, the very fact that television’s powerful
storytellers acknowledge inclusion and tolerance as a “better” way is clearly an
audience pleaser in the late 1990’s.
A closer look at one episode of DQMW will show how this program uses
popular narrative to systematically re