Windwalker

An aged Cheyenne warrior comes back from the edge of death; years earlier a Crow raid killed his wife and carried off one of his twin sons, and now he has one more chance to protect his family and reach the boy he lost. Kieth Merrill’s film is set in the pre-colonial Intermountain West and contains no cowboy at all. Its most unusual feature is language: apart from an English narration, every line is spoken in Cheyenne and Crow with subtitles, a choice that makes the audience look from where the Native characters stand rather than from the usual white lead. The cast is largely Native, but for Windwalker himself Merrill brought in the English actor Trevor Howard, and that decision sits alone against everything else the production was careful about. It was adapted from a novel by Blaine M. Yorgason and shot in Utah.