WE SOLICIT YOUR ATTENTION. Northern Illinois's Jeff Chown, of Communications, has directed a historical documentary, "Lincoln and Black Hawk," that will air on Chicago's WTTW (Channel 11 in Chicago, also on DeKalb cable) this Sunday at 3 pm.

Chown directed the 52-minute documentary, focusing on Lincoln’s service in the Illinois Militia during the Black Hawk War of 1832. It was produced by Drew VandeCreek, director of digital projects for NIU Libraries, and edited by NIU Communication Professor Laura Vazquez, who also served as cinematographer. The Illinois Humanities Council provided funding for travel and image procurement.

“We think it’s important to showcase local history, and we think this is a good example of a work that tells a story that needs to be heard by viewers,” said Dan Soles, vice president of programming for WTTW.

“It’s a story about our native son Abraham Lincoln, about the displacement of American Indians and about manifest destiny as it played out in Illinois,” Chown added. “We compare the trajectories of these two great leaders: Black Hawk, at the end of his distinguished career, and Lincoln, at the outset. The events parallel the ascension of white culture at the expense of native culture. This history doesn’t get taught enough in Illinois schools, so we’re hoping teachers will take a look at the documentary.”

At least one amateur historian intends to.

The documentary took three years to produce and features interviews with top Lincoln experts and 19 th-century historians, including Richard Slotkin of Wesleyan University, John Mack Faragher of Yale University, Cecil Eby of the University of Michigan and Douglas Wilson and Rodney Davis of the Lincoln Studies Center at Knox College.

“Lincoln and the Indian wars are each very mythic subjects,” VandeCreek said. “This is by no means a debunking, but the documentary does an admirable job of getting to the truth, as closely as the historical record can show us. The Black Hawk War, like most of the Indian wars in this country, did not cover the United States in glory.”

Counter-insurgencies can be like that.

Readers who live outside Greater DeKalb have an opportunity to view the documentary on-line.

While VandeCreek served as producer for the documentary, arranging funding and interviews, he also digitized the video, which now can be viewed in chapter form on NIU’s Lincoln/Net Web site (http://lincoln.lib.niu.edu/). Extended interviews with experts from the film are also available there.

“We used the primary source materials that were already on the Web site as a guidepost in making the film,” Chown said. “The documentary should invite people to look at the Web site for further elaboration and depth.”

The release also announces a public screening and forum for next Tuesday. No report will be forthcoming from here as I have a prior commitment that evening.