The Education of Little Tree (film)

In the 1930s, an eight-year-old boy who is given the Native American name "Little Tree" (Joseph Ashton) was being raised alone by his mother, having been widowed by war, and is left an orphan when she dies of illness. His white mother's sister comes to take him but his paternal grandfather (James Cromwell) and grandmother (Tantoo Cardinal), whose ancestors had escaped from the Trail of Tears and hidden in the Great Smoky Mountains, arrive and take the boy to live with them. In his grandparents' care, the boy learns about his heritage as a Native American through them and their Cherokee friend Willow John (Graham Greene). Little Tree is not only taught how to live the Native way as one with the Earth but also to 'learn a trade' passed down through his grandpa's Scottish heritage, whiskey making. This leads to conflict with professional still thieves.

A complaint filed with child services by his white aunt gives reason for the government to take him into custody. Little Tree is removed from his home by the government and placed in the Notched Gap Indian School, a fictional Native American boarding school whose mission is to reform Native children and make them assimilate into the dominant white culture by stripping him of his Native heritage. Little Tree's grandfather, made aware of his desire to go home through the help of Willow John, soon rescues him and takes him home. Later, Little Tree is orphaned once again when his Grandfather dies and his Grandmother follows soon after. Willow John takes him under his wing to learn more of the Cherokee way, and the story is told into adulthood by reminiscences.

The screenplay for the film was adapted from the 1976 fictional memoir of the same title by Asa Earl Carter (published under the pseudonym Forrest Carter) about an orphaned boy raised by his paternal Scottish-descent grandfather and Cherokee grandmother in the Great Smoky Mountains.^[3] In 1991, nearly two decades after its publication, it was revealed that Carter had in fact been a segregationist, anti-Semite, and member of the Ku Klux Klan, which marred critical discussion of the book.^[3] Carter's true identity was also questioned after the book's publication in 1976, but he did not address inquiries regarding it, and died three years later in 1979.^[3]

Writer-director Richard Friedenberg adapted the screenplay shortly after completing his Norman Maclean adaptation of A River Runs Through It (1995).^[4] Commenting on the controversial nature of Carter as an individual, Friedenberg stated: "Here was this guy, who did bad things, disappeared off the face of the earth in Alabama, where he was a Ku Kluxer, and reappeared in the Oklahoma-Texas area near the Cherokee reservation of the western Cherokee nation, where he proceeded to write several books. It strikes me he spent his literary life, and whoever he was in his second phase, in some kind of grand apology for his first life."^[3] Friedenberg was originally drawn to the book and chose to adapt it as he felt that "characters and milieu they were in represented everything that was good about America and everything that was bad."^[3] Prior to Friedenberg's involvement, filmmakers Steven Spielberg and his former producing partnership between Peter Guber and Jon Peters had considered adapting the work into a feature film.^[3]

Joseph Ashton, who stars in the film as the titular Little Tree, is himself of Cherokee ancestry.^[5]