TV REVIEW : Nothing New in ‘Last Stand at Little Big Horn’

“There were no survivors at the battle of Little Big Horn.” We still hear that statement even in these politically correct days, yet, as “The American Experience” host David McCullough points out, there were hundreds of survivors--all of them American Indians.

“Last Stand at Little Big Horn” (at 9 tonight on KCET-TV Channel 28 and KPBS-TV Channel 15, at 8 on KVCR-TV Channel 24) does a decent, thorough job of correcting that slip of the historical tongue.

But “Last Stand” is curiously flat and uninvolving, probably because it seems dated. Fifteen years ago this would have had a far stronger impact, correcting the scales after years of imbalance. Instead, it has the feel of old news: Yeah, Gen. George Armstrong Custer was a jerk, yeah, the white man rampaged through the West--so what else is new?

Worse, that tack works against the show: None of the academics or descendants of warriors from both sides--white and American Indian--of Custer’s Last Stand ever mention anything good about the push into the West, or Western civilization for that matter. Never is heard an encouraging word.

Still, “Last Stand” has much information to impart. Producer-director-co-writer Paul Stekler has assembled an interesting array of rare photographs, archival film, maps and Lakota and Cheyenne ledger drawings. Also of interest are the little nuggets of personal detail and reminiscence, ranging from the footage of Custer’s widow years later (she got rich writing about him, just one of many who cashed in on the defeat as myth of self-sacrifice) to the recollection of Two Moons, a Cheyenne who fought with Crazy Horse, that the battle took “about as much time as it takes a hungry man to eat dinner.”

And let’s not forget that the Lakota were relative newcomers to the neighborhood--having pushed out other tribes from their “ancestral home” a mere 100 years earlier. What goes around comes around.