Thursday night at the American Indian Film festival we viewed “Rhymes for Young Ghouls”. Throughout the law few years of learning about the culture, I have grown to love and respect them. However, this film caught me off guard. It was powerful and insightful yet also blunt, terrifying, gory, and emotional. It explained many of the tragedies experienced on reservations; racism, addiction, alcoholism, forgetfulness, violence, fear and poverty. A certain scene in the film really made an impression on me as one of the main themes; the suppressed life as a Native American. As the family went to go visit the mothers grave, it was one of thousands and not one grave was labeled or named. This is a classic example of the lack of respect that society had for Native American’s. They were not labeled as actual people, and not worthy of remembering.
The entire story line was designed around Aila trying to stay out of the forced residential schools. The schools were mandatory to attend and run by sadistic white catholic males who forced out any trace of tribal culture, clothes, religion, language and hope. The goal was to assimilate the savage into white society so that eventually there would be no pure Native’s. This is a heart breaking aspect of American History, and I loved the intimate and surreal way that Alia explained it. She was caught and put into solitary confinement in the residential school, and her thoughts were profound:
“I wonder how many ghosts wander these halls… or those who got out alive, but ruined all the same.”
Having your culture stripped from you is essentially taking apart your very soul. She alluded to the fact that many kids did not survive these torturous schools, but even those who did survive, did not survive as themselves. They were a new person, contaminated with white ways and left wondering meaningless.
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