COLONIALISM
Historical exploitation shaping present
WATCH
-
The Battle of Algiers — Gillo Pontecorvo, 1966 · Film · Anti-colonial resistance in Algeria; the film the US Army screened before Iraq.
-
Lumumba — Raoul Peck, 2000 · Film · Patrice Lumumba’s assassination and the colonial forces that orchestrated it.
-
Black Panther — Ryan Coogler, 2018 · Film · Colonialism’s alternative; an African nation that was never colonized.
-
Rabbit-Proof Fence — Phillip Noyce, 2002 · Film · The Stolen Generations in Australia; colonial child removal as cultural genocide.
-
The Mission — Roland Joffé, 1986 · Film · Jesuit missionaries and Spanish colonial violence in South America.
-
Sankofa — Haile Gerima, 1993 · Film · A Black woman transported into slavery; colonialism’s wound made visceral.
-
Beasts of No Nation — Cary Joji Fukunaga, 2015 · Film · Post-colonial African state failure and its human cost.
-
Eye on the Prize — Various, 1987–1990 · Series · Civil rights as the domestic face of anti-colonial struggle.
-
Persepolis — Vincent Paronnaud & Marjane Satrapi, 2007 · Film · Iranian identity under colonial and post-colonial pressure.
-
Embrace of the Serpent — Ciro Guerra, 2015 · Film · Amazonian colonialism through two parallel journeys across time; visually radical.
LISTEN
-
Decolonize This Place Podcast — Various · Colonialism and its present-day persistence in museums, cities, and culture.
-
The Dig — Daniel Denvir · Imperialism, colonialism, and their contemporary forms.
-
Throughline: Colonialism — NPR · The history of colonial power and its long aftermath.
-
Africa Is a Country Podcast — Various · Post-colonial African politics, culture, and thought.
-
Seen and Heard — Various · Indigenous and colonized voices in their own words.
-
Scene on Radio: Seeing White — CDS · Colonialism and whiteness as interconnected systems of power.
-
Afropop Worldwide — GPB · Music as anti-colonial cultural resistance across Africa and the diaspora.
-
For the Wild — Ayana Young · Indigenous knowledge and decolonial relationship with land.
-
Majority Report — Sam Seder · Anti-imperialism and colonial politics examined from the left.
-
Empire Files — Abby Martin · US imperialism as ongoing colonial project; global reporting.
READ
-
The Wretched of the Earth — Frantz Fanon · The foundational text of anti-colonial thought; decolonization as psychological necessity.
-
Orientalism — Edward Said · How colonial knowledge production created and sustained the idea of the “East.”
-
An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States — Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz · American colonialism from those it was practiced against.
-
Things Fall Apart — Chinua Achebe · Colonialism’s destruction of Igbo society; the novel that answered Conrad.
-
King Leopold’s Ghost — Adam Hochschild · Belgian colonialism in the Congo and the genocide it produced.
-
How Europe Underdeveloped Africa — Walter Rodney · Colonialism as deliberate economic extraction and its lasting consequences.
-
Decolonizing the Mind — Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o · Language, colonialism, and the reclamation of African literary identity.
-
A People’s History of the United States — Howard Zinn · American colonialism, imperialism, and conquest from below.
-
Pachinko — Min Jin Lee · Japanese colonialism in Korea across four generations.
-
Half of a Yellow Sun — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie · Nigerian life before, during, and after the colonial wound of the Biafran War.
