Film Analysis: The Canary Effect

The Canary Effect

The Canary Effect is a 2006 documentary that looks into how our U.S. policies have had a huge effect on the Native Americans that live here. It gives a deep insight in history of the Spaniards relationship with American Indians in America. The film begins discussing what events were going on during the time frame when Columbus first discovered America (1492). Although the view on the events that happened don’t seem to be that of Christopher Columbus, but rather Bartolomeo de las Casas. Las Casas was a priest from Europe that traveled with Columbus but had a point-of-view from the Native Americans that were brutally tortured and massacred by Columbus and others from Europe. That brings us to the films focal point, which is

that Europeans first impulse in what was considered the “new world” was to completely wipe out the Native Americans that they considered beneath them. Genocide means any acts committed to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethical, racial, or religious group.
The film starts off interviewing Professor Ward Churchill followed by other American Indians. The Canary Effect walks viewers through multiple events that correlate to what happened to the Native Americans, which was complete genocide. Christopher Columbus’s army began massacring Indians that refused to convert to Catholicism. Even that wasn’t enough so the people from Spain began to kill any Native Americans that refused to follow the rules made by the people from Spain. After watching how the film describes how Native Americans were tortured, it really leaves horrible images in a viewer’s head. The film talks about how they took babies by their feet and smashed them on rocks, cutting Indians hands and leave them dangling by their skin, and threw others to dogs.
As the Canary Effect really starts to let the viewers see how even though these events happened many years ago they are still having a major impact on the American Indians today.

The film discusses in detail how a huge characteristic of genocide is the future occurrence of events that heads toward a path of death for a group. Indian reservations are living in the highest poverty in the U.S. with some of the most substandard farming lands, water resources, and employment. The direct outcome of these conditions leaves Native Americans today with the shortest life expectancy and some of the worse health problems than any other culture in America. The acts of the Spanish meet every criteria of genocide, which leaves an entire different side of what we thought we knew about the events surrounding Christopher

Columbus.
There were many interesting facts and statistics in The Canary Effect. One of which were the fact that based on demographic studies the amount of Native Americans settling in America prior to the Spanish settlement was about 8.5 million and after all the massacres that number dropped to a little over a hundred thousand Indians. Another shocking statistic was that when President Clinton visited Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, South Dakota they had a current unemployment rate of 73%. I could imagine if I lived in an area with that high of unemployment rate. One other scary fact is that Indian women were forced to be sterilized over a period of many decades and had absolutely no consent on the matter. It is estimated about 40% of Indian women in their child bearing years were sterilized. I could not even begin to understand how that would feel to be forced to do something like that and have no say in the matter.
When analyzing this film using the theory of Internal Colonialism, I think that the Spanish settlers began a manifestation of genocide on the Native Americans that would affect their entire population for years to come. This era created an idea that white culture will always be in the most control and have the most power. It is said that history repeats itself and although there are no longer massacres, there is still other nationalities that are oppressed because of their roots. Many people see our past events of internal colonialism and feel that one group will always need to be in more power than other, so why let it be us that has a chance at being the oppressed group.
For many centuries The White Racial Frame has been a dominant frame. Over many years in our Country we have had a system where we are raised to an environment that teaches us to live in a racialized society. We as a White Racial Frame view ourselves as a master frame seeing others as the outsiders or different from us. This is because of the first European American suppressors, creating a future for our frame of stereotyping and interpretive visualizations of others. We see ourselves as rulers in this complicated hierarchy system of race and material oppression.
The Racialization of State Policy is becoming a more important issue as the years pass.

Racialization has formed our entire government, economy, and our very own identities. In order for our Country to move on and begin to improve we need to develop an alternate worldview of one another. Racialization has direct effects with everything in our society such as economics and political power. Our Country has to be able to come together to prevent racialization from destroying every part of our society system. Our society today is beginning to enter a complete Racial Dictatorship. The government is allowing race to control situations and how people live their lives to make everything equal which I completely understand. The problem we are having is how they are approaching the situation. People of one culture should not be forced to work somewhere or live somewhere because of a quota or a number that needs to be met to make us look like an equal society. I believe people should be able to make their own decisions while looking at society not as a racial separation but as a whole

community.
Capitalism is a huge problem when involving race or class-divided societies. Many people act like everything is equal for the publics eyes but in reality there is a huge imaginary line diving our society by race, sex, gender, religion. Although in our society today the capitalist class doesn’t get an advantage from racism, it actually hurts their class. This is because when a problem arises it becomes a national problem which needs members from every race to work together. I believe once we all can realize that racism is a huge problem in our society we can begin to work on not diving ourselves by race but by a class basis and establish a successful economic system.