Kevin Costner Slams Horizon Native American Controversy

Namely, the movie is supposed to open with the Apache tribesmen massacring the settlement of Horizon and the townspeople’s attempt to fend off the savage brutality of the attacking Apache. This has caught people’s attention because it does portray Native Americans in a rather unfavorable way in the movie.

However, according to Kevin Costner, the controversy is pointless, as one has to look at the wider picture, especially since the movie later explores the lives of the Native American characters as they deal with internal turmoil, mostly caused by European expansion inland.

With that said, Kevin Costner also revealed that he’s not afraid of controversy associated with the film’s opening being viewed as a more stereotypical rendering of Native Americans, mostly because those are historical facts. The Native Americans aren’t the bad guys of the movie, mainly because one man’s savior is another man’s tyrant, but they are the opposing force because they dislike the settlers, their way of life, how they were being treated, and having to share their resources with them.

Kevin Costner has addressed the controversy, in the hope that the audiences would understand that showcasing the anger of the Native Americans is really important for representing the harsh realities of the past and their individual and collective stories as complex characters. The Apache were angry because the settler’s expansion prevented them from being able to hunt and feed their own people, which ultimately reinforces the previous statement about one man’s savior.

Admittedly, those stirring the Kevin Costner controversy aren’t really doing it without reason. The Native American representation in the Western genre isn’t Hollywood’s proudest moment due to the long history of portrayals that depict the Indigenous people as villains and savages who attack innocent settlers, kill women and children, and wreak havoc on the lives of protagonists.

While all those things happened in the horrific realities of war, the problem with Hollywood’s depictions is that they only demonize one side and glorify the other.

The movie that caused this Kevin Costner controversy has Pionsenay, an Apache tribesman, leading the attack against the settlers at the opening of the movie, pushed into action by the fact that tribes that have previously co-existed are now at each other’s throats for the limited resources, now that the settlers have disrupted their way of life. He then decides to break away from his Chief and create a completely new tribe of those who wish to fight and protect the same lands their ancestors used to hunt across.

The Kevin Costner controversy is overshadowing that Horizon: An American Saga is the first in a new series that tells different stories over the course of 12 years in the American West. It’s scheduled to release on June 28, 2024, in theaters across the US.