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  • 2 days ago
The documentary film explores how Enlightenment-era systems of knowledge—art, science, architecture, and cartography—produced enduring frameworks for racial slavery, territorial extraction, and Indigenous dispossession in what became the United States of America. Quote from the Director, Monique Linder: “After our last film about Reconstruction Destructed, I felt it was important that the next film go back to the very beginning, the making of America. This film really helps tie all the pieces in the Juneteenth Reckoning with Slavery film series together in a significant way. I’m looking forward to sharing it with others.”
Transcript
00:07So when I think of the Declaration of Independence being signed more than 250
00:12years ago, the idea that someone who was not born of nobility would consider
00:17themselves to be equal with someone born of nobility had never existed before on
00:23the planet. The words are extremely revolutionary, but at the same time who
00:30was the independence for and who exactly is still fighting for independence?
00:38When those founding fathers invented the concept of the United States of America,
00:46they had a dream. There were certain rights that are inalienable, that are supposed to be inalienable.
00:58The Dakota have been exiled from this very land for more than 150 years.
01:08We should be very, very proud of our culture, but they did everything they could to make us
01:14feel ashamed of who we were.
01:19Chances are the dominant story is the one that will survive. The data set is already
01:24skewed in favor of a particular story. What I intended to do and I tried to do was
01:30to record the history of our people. We are facing unprecedented times as Americans.
01:41America hasn't had to deal with fascism yet, but we're seeing it happen.
01:47A blueprint has been created. If government fails to provide life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,
01:55it is the right of the people to replace the government. The individuals who drafted the
02:02Declaration of Independence expected, expected that their children and their children's children
02:10would take it upon themselves to make government better.
02:14We need new, young leadership coming up. That's my message to the younger people. You know, we need
02:22you. Your people need you. Our own governments, we need you. We need you to take our places.
02:29Where people don't have the power of their story, it's hard for them to imagine a different world.
02:36When people own their stories, then they can envision something different. They can aspire
02:43to something greater. That would be an American experiment that I think we all could get behind.
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