Choctaw Code Talkers

From the same producers behind the award-winning True Whispers: The Story of the Navajo Code Talkers (about the Native American soldiers who radioed secret transmissions in their native language during WWII), this documentary from director Valerie Red-Horse tells the tales of the Navajos' predecessors, a detachment of recruits from the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma who served in the trenches of World War I and whose dialect—used in sending messages at the French front—baffled the German enemy. The ironies are legion; these men fought for the American side in 1917, when Washington, D.C., was still fighting gun battles with recalcitrant Indian holdouts over territory; the Choctaw themselves did not hold official U.S. citizenship; and the notorious white-run Indian schools discouraged any speech but English. Informed that their code-talking mission was top secret, the Choctaw said practically nothing about their historic deeds for the rest of their lives, not even to their families. Choctaw Code Talkers does a fair job of overcoming that lack of firsthand input by combining archival footage/stills with commentary from historians, descendants, and others who offer insight into a story that has heretofore been sorely neglected. Recommended. Aud: C, P. (C. Cassady)