This old John Wayne movie reminded me that Hollywood changed its mind (around the 1960s) about portraying "the Indians" as bad savages.
So we got "Revisionist Westerns". Australia has no Hollywood. Australian stories are disappearing from our screens as we speak.
Frankly, our film & TV producers are girding their loins to battle for stronger Australian Content Standards and Quotas on subscriber, free-to-air and "somehow, some day, somewhere" online services.
It is the culture war! They will die with their boots on. It feels like an episode of Minscule in the big, wide world.
So it is uncertain if revisions of our treatment of refugees will make it to the tickertape news that runs across the bottom of our screens - considering that in the political and social spectrum culture comes somewhere behind carbon pricing, refugee processing, jobs and the Australian dollar, not to mention the mining tax.
Still, Australians aren't taking to leaky boats yet.
This John Wayne movie made me think how times change but history doesn't.
I mean the systematic removal of the "redskin" (the now-outlawed Hollywood Western turn-of-phrase) from their homelands condemned them to live as refugees.
Here's proof of prisoners (including the famous Geronimo) from the National Archives of the USA - or maybe it was just staged, right?
Had "the Indians" fled, they would call themselves citizens of another land not "Native Americans" - do we think less of people who flee?
Today's decision to redraft refugee laws is a defining moment, just like 1975's dismissal - just like the Howard Government's decision to bring in off-shore processing in Naru or turn back the Tampa.
This is a blog. This is opinion. This is a democracy. Comprende?
Heroes define us. I guess that's why Australians stick to sporting heroes - there's a scoreboard.
Leave it to elected representatives to define our character - just as long as they don't interfere with the real game.
Politics is history. You can't separate civilians from "party wars" - even civilians who switch off the TV, even citizens who cast a donkey vote or don't vote or can't vote.