Videos/Media
Rape on the Reservation
"Rape on the Reservation" from Wallace House on Vimeo.
A documentary about the Native American women raped in Indian reserves.
This doc fails to address the colonial context that directly produces these high rape rates. With the Native people's forced cultural assimilation, mass kidnapping and brainwashing in colonial schools, also came the assimilation of western values -including patriarchal oppression- that sets the foundation for the suppression of the feminine. The Sioux nations featured in this presentation traditionally are, and have been a matriarchal culture. With crimes such as rape being non-existent. These "post" colonial high rape rates are a result of being colonized and demoralized, and expressed through lateral violence.
"In the colonial context... the [colonized] fight among themselves. They tend to use each other as a screen, and each hides from his neighbor the national enemy."
-Franz Fanon
The oppressed become the oppressor.
Since this documentary fails to address the colonial influence on this issue, it ends up perpetuating a "victim-blame" portrayal of the people. It is however useful in illustrating the morbid living conditions and the complex coping mechanisms of being colonized.
Vanguard is a television documentary series that was broadcast on the now defunct Current TV television network.
On January 2, 2013, Al Jazeera Media Network announced that it had purchased Current Media, LLC and would be closing down the Current TV channel while launching and integrating the remains of Current into a new American news channel titled Al Jazeera America using its distribution network.
