Colonialism & Resistance

There is a scene in the documentary film Jane Goodall's Path in which an elder living on Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota is interviewed. Looking directly at the camera, the elder tells how he lost his sixteen-year-old son to suicide. His bewilderment apparent, he tells how many other young people living in Pine Ridge have killed themselves, too. He reveals that the rate of alcoholism is 90%. The elder explains that he brought Jane to the reservation because he believes she can help the young people living on the reservation find hope. And then he cries.

The absence of hope. This is the penultimate insult of colonialism -- second only to rape. I don't argue that a lack of hope is second to death, because a lack of hope is death -- a different brand of death, but death all the same. It is a slower...
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