Showing posts with label Indian Boarding Schools. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Indian Boarding Schools. Show all posts

Sunday, November 18, 2012

The Thick, Dark, Fog - it is a gripping documentary

I really liked this film.

Here is another film I think you will like. I posted about it on Facebook today too. If you have a chance to see it, I personally recommend it highly. You may get emotional watching it, but that is a good thing.


I watched this great documentary film called  The Thick, Dark Fog on local channel 11, WKYU today.

It was all about Walter Littleman and others' experiences at an Indian Boarding School and about finding hope and identity as a Lakota person later, and more about what this really means to him as a person. I learned a lot watching this. 

Albuquerque Indian School, 1885. From the National Archives via Wikimedia.

One thing I learned is that there was a lot of damage done by taking children away from parents at a young age and forcing them to learn and speak English at boarding schools. There was a lot of emotional and physical abuse there.

This (bad, even evil) policy backfired in a big way and did not accomplish great purposes; instead, left many people traumatized and lacking focus or self-esteem. 
Luckily, there is a movement now to help heal people who lived through this, and journey back to Lakota and other tribal foundations. This film can teach many good lessons to all cultures, as a lesson why forceable changes to valuable traditions is not the way.
There is info. here also about what other things happened at the famous Wounded Knee incident too, that I already had read a lot about. 
Like other documentaries I have seen in the last few years, it opened my eyes to lessons and helped me see things in a brand new way.

You can see more about the film here: http://www.thickdarkfog.com/.

The Thick, Dark Fog points to another website at the end of this enlightening and touching film. It is http://www.nativetelecom.org/.

-Betsyanne


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