While the contrast between indigenous ways of learning and understanding and dominant/hegemonic modern Western forms of education is quite starkly drawn - as indeed is the contrast between indigenous
and modern Western capitalist ways of life more generally - this very starkness can be useful pedagogically in challenging university students to question some of their most deeply ingrained preconceptions and prejudices about education and schooling.
What I find especially moving and poignant about this film is its depiction of the impact of colonial Western education projects on indigenous families and communities, with community elders persuaded
of their own uselessness, disillusioned young people brainwashed into leaving their communities to pursue the Western capitalist dream finally confronted with the ultimate fraudulence and emptiness of that promise (reminiscent in some ways of Shevek's journey
to Urras in Le Guin's 1974 anarchist utopian novel The Dispossessed: 'Here
you see the jewels, there you see the eyes. And in the eyes you see the splendor, the splendor of the human spirit. Because our men and women are free—possessing nothing, they are free. And you the possessors are possessed. You are all in jail. Each alone,
solitary, with a heap of what he owns. You live in prison, die in prison. It is all I can see in your eyes—the wall, the wall!'), and people of all ages coming to see themselves as failures in a system explicitly designed/rigged to ensure that most
'fail' in order that others might prosper at their expense.
For those considering using the film in their own classes, I recommend pairing it with the documentary 'Life and Debt (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0284262/),
a 2001 film which examines the effects of globalisation on Jamaican industry and agriculture (this film was an eye-opener for many of the first-year students in my Introduction to Globalisation module). The painting 'American Progress' (1872), by John Gast,
is a useful visual aid. In terms of accompanying scholarly literature, I recommend Leanne
Betasamosake Simpson, Dancing
on Our Turtle's Back: Stories of Nishnaabeg Re-creation, Resurgence, and a New Emergence (ARP Books, 2011); Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, As
We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom through Radical Resistance (University of Minnesota Press, 2021); Taiaiake Alfred, Wasase:
Indigenous Pathways of Action and Freedom (University of Toronto Press, 2005); and Ivan Illich,
Deschooling Society (Harper and Row, 1971).
Best wishes,
Laurence
(with apologies for any typos or errors in this email, as I am composing it in a train with unstable internet connection)
Department of Government and Politics, University College Cork, Ireland