Hi, Robin.  "It is cheap and tacky to have entertainers stand-in for historians, academics, native elders..."  In this case, maybe so. (By the way, their "records" being myths and oral "history", I'm not sure native elders have a lock on "deep historical knowledge" over "thousands of years." But I digress...)

What I think you REALLY find objectionable is history treated as DRAMA.  As STORIES.  If so, say so.  What I find objectionable is when a series is neither good dramatic fiction-as-fact nor just-the-facts documentary (the ho-hum talking-heads kind you refer to.)  

Is "Black Robe" (Bruce Beresford, 1991) good entertainment? Failed at the box office.  Is it good history?  No, said one FN activist; it villified Mohawks because its theme was native resistance to Europeans was evil.  (Maybe because Jesuits thought so?) One of the best cinematic bits we've got, not that we've got a lot.  Need TONS more.  English biased, FN biased, Quebecois biased, west-coast biased, Newfie biased...