Paul VanDevelder, investigative reporter,
filmmaker, photojournlist, and author of Savages and
Scoundrels: The Untold Story of America's Road to Empire through
Indian Territory (Yale University Press, April 2009) will
serve as the project's writer and co-producer. Savages
and Scoundrels (the book), which was commissioned by Yale
University Press for their American History series and won an
Oregon Book Award in 2011, grew out of the research and scholarship
begun in his critically acclaimed book Coyote Warrior: One Man,
Three Tribes, and the Trial that Forged a Nation. Much of the
material he brought together in both the book and on this website
was gathered from primary source material, government documents and
reports, letters and reports from Indian agents in the field,
hundreds of interviews, and the work of legal experts such as the
late Vine Deloria Jr., author and legal scholar Charles Wilkinson,
Professor Raymond Cross, historian Patricia Limerick, and
ethnographer, Raymond DeMallie. Paul writes for Audubon,
Forbes, American History magazine, among many others, and is a
regular contributor to the Los Angeles Times on resource law and
public lands policy. Paul has also collaborated on many
projects with producer Raymond Chavez, including as writer and
co-producer for the feature documentary film, Journey to
Medicine Wheel. Mr. VanDevelder has also collaborated as
a writing consultant and on-camera historian for Carlos Peinado's
award winning documentary film, Waterbusters. The author's
website features examples of his writing at:
www.elbowoodscafe.com. The creative team
enlisted the services of the web design company, Proworks, to build
the website Savagesandscoundrels.com to support both the
film and the educational outreach that goes hand-in-hand with this
multi-dimensional media project.