The Education of Little Tree is a 1997 American drama film written and directed by Richard Friedenberg, and starring James Cromwell, Tantoo Cardinal, Joseph Ashton and Graham Greene.

[2][3] Writer-director Friedenberg co-adapted the screenplay for the film alongside Earl Hamner Jr. and Don Sipes, shortly after completing his adaptation for Robert Redford's A River Runs Through It (1992).

Friedenberg was nominated for a Humanitas Prize for Best Feature Film, while Cardinal and Greene both won First Americans in the Arts Awards for their performances.

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.

[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.

Of course, America's treatment of its native people has been a genocidal disgrace, but every white person in the picture is a buffoon or a racist or both, aside from the grandfather, who has embraced Cherokee culture and renounced his own, and a dirt-poor little girl (Mika Boorem, very winning) whom Little Tree befriends.

"[4] Additionally, Caro felt the film was too didactic, noting: "The mistreatment of Native Americans by whites is a valid topic for a kids movie, but the treatment here is so heavy-handed that it begins to feel like a lecture.

"[4] Writing for Film Journal International, David Noh also praised Anastas Michos' cinematography, which he wrote "thrillingly records the unearthly, sun-dappled beauty of the mountains...