The Native Americans

 ((Mon., Tues., Thurs. (10, 11, 13), 8:05-10 p.m., TBS))

By ALAN RICH

Produced by Turner Broadcasting. Executive producer, Jonathan Taplin; line producers, Patricia Foulkrod, Michael Grant; directors, John Borden, Phil Lucas (parts 1 & 2), George Burdeau (part 3); writers, Hanay Geiogamah, Grant.
 
Narrator: Joy Harjo.
 

Turner Broadcasting has fashioned a stirring six-hour documentary, blending visual splendor with heartbreak, out of the 500-year history of oppression of North America's original inhabitants. The message tends to repeat from one region to the next, merely proving that the history of land-grabbing, deception, murder and exploitation takes in the entire American expanse. The tone is inevitably tragic.

Directors John Borden, Phil Lucas and George Burdeau need no trained actors; Native Americans tell their tribal histories to the camera and, as they speak, ancestral memories play across their saddened, leathery faces. Like the petroglyphs carved into the rocks of New Mexico's canyons, the wounds abide.

The stories are told by tribal elders in informal groupings. Though obviously scripted -- by Kiowa writer Hanay Geiogamah (with Michael Grant) -- every narration takes on the accents of a firsthand account.

The music by Robbie Robertson (who's of Mohawk descent) is exactly right, throbbing, sometimes on the verge of a sob, never intrusive but always there.

Moments of filmed action -- the ritual dancing at Santa Fe's famous Indian market, the resurgence of thebuffalo under the care of prairie farmers -- merge into a graphic treasury: Indian paintings ancient and modern along with the landscapes of Alfred Bierstadt and Frederic Remington, who illuminated the beauty of the land rather than its plunder.

True, there isn't much relief to the story, as one Indian nation after another is pulverized into history by the usurping forces. What does come out in the conversations, over and over, is the persistence of pride, of parents' efforts to teach children their heritage, of the growing number of university departments teaching Native American languages.

There are the contradictory feelings of Grace McNeley, Navajo, who talks of guilt pangs whenever she is obliged to speak English, and of Bob Haozous, Apache , who deplores having to sell to tourists his pots and plates, decorated with symbols precious to his heritage (but does so anyhow).

The sense of wistfulness turns simplistic at times. It's a little late to bemoan the days when Manhattan Island was a thriving forest.

In these revisionist times, however, when Christopher Columbus is blamed for every American measles outbreak and Pocahontas and John Smith probably never met , it is sobering to realize that Lincoln signed away millions of acres of Indians' rightful land, and that Theodore Roosevelt refused to grant the ailing, exiled Geronimo leave to return home.

The harrowing lore of which those episodes are a small part is, at least, handsomely told.

Setting aside his ownership of the Atlanta Braves, whose team cheers have been criticized as anti-Indian, there's no questioning mogul Ted Turner's devotion to the Native American cause.

Editor, Allan Holzman; music, Robbie Robertson and the Red Road Ensemble.