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For those confused- currently we know that Rage has partnered with The Ummah Chroma for a film on race and ethnicity/ identity in the United States. Shots have already included themes of mixedness/ being biracial, expansionism and manifest destiny, and the history of whiteness. https://twitter.com/ratmupdates/status/1349174429746483208
The band features multiple historical figures in this trailer- and have so far primarily focused on John Brown and Sarah Grimké, abolitionists seen as traitors to the higher class and to whiteness itself. Grimké herself also became a women’s suffrage advocate and activist.
Additionally, shots of the video captioned “WHO ARE YOU?” include herds of bison/ buffalo and stacked mountains of bison skulls hunted by white settlers, who nearly hunted the animal to extinction. “Every Buffalo dead is an Indian gone” was a common refrain by powerful whites.
I myself am a Native person and also a bit of a history nerd so that’s why I’m tying this out so fast, sorry to not have “official” sources.
The Buffalo were and are a sacred animal to many communities who inherited the land prior to white settlers. Whites nearly hunted the animal to extinction within years. But unlike how taught in most schools- it was a calculated political effort for land and monetary gain.
Figures like Buffalo Bill and General Sherman commonly seen as heroes in American history were bloodthirsty and power hungry, and wanted to operate commerce on the plains without the people native to the land.
The treatment of the Buffalo by the whites versus the native highlighted a major contrast in approaches to life, creation, and waste. The Buffalo were/ are spiritually connected with the natives as all living things are, and were cared for even in death- while whites wasted them
Even as some in power called for the protection of the Buffalo, president Grant refused to federally protect the animal and soon forced the Comanche, Kiowa, Cheyenne, Arapaho peoples into ‘reservations’.
This project is delving into identity and history, and how the political figures you grew up learning about as heroes are truly the villains of this story. This is a “who controls the present, controls the past” if you want to get Orwellian/ Rage lyric associated specifically.
