Conte de Michel Hindenoch : Fruits Rouges

Descriptif

When I was asked what I thought of American Indians, a flashback to my childhood came to mind: when I played Cowboys and Indians, I was naturally viscerally on the Indian side.

I'd rediscover the landscapes of my favorite games: getting lost in the Vosges forest, the fir trees, the snow, climbing trees, crawling noiselessly through the ferns to discover tepee camps lit up at dusk like carpets of fireflies. Bare-handed knowledge: being in the forest like a fish in water.



There was the strange happiness of Indian life: the feathers, the moccasins, the bangs, the dances... Flexibility, secrecy, words and great knowledge. These words as strong as armfuls of images, this beautiful religion of the earth, far more humane than our catechism of today, ecologist, hygienist: consumer! Between Mac Gyver and Little Big Man, I don't hesitate for a moment. And I must confess that, at twelve, I already found the little squaws so much more attractive than the white women in the convoys...



Of course, there's our shame at the massacre of the Indians, the disgust and rage it arouses. I'm not an ethnologist, and I'll probably never have the taste or the manner to do it. My gaze is simply grateful: the white man that I am will always owe a debt to these Red Men: a debt of child's play.