NPS photo / Steve Arthur

“The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted.” ~ D.H. Lawrence

I caught the last half of “Ma’iingan, Brother Wolf” on Wisconsin Public Television Monday night. The Ojibwe Indians who spoke reminded me of the Indians I met at a wolf hearing years ago in northern Wisconsin. They spoke calmly and lovingly of their Brother Wolf and their common destiny. I thought of the genocide of American Indians that the Europeans inflicted in clearing North America under “Manifest Destiny.” I thought of the last third of wildlife left on the planet, which is under continuing assault.

The film focuses on the many ways that wolves are so much like the Indian tribes — their love and care of each other and the care of the entire pack for their pups. Their lack of aggression to humans. Their retreat…