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Last night, I watched the @NatGeoChannel documentary #Jane—I wanted to see it for a while, but now that I have access to Disney+, it seemed a good time to catch up (1/n) https://films.nationalgeographic.com/jane-the-movie
But I also found it challenging to watch. It’s a beautiful story I know well, about a brave female scientist who studies chimps, makes important scientific discoveries, and becomes a devoted conservationist (2/n)
Of course I know it because it was one of my major inspirations for getting into primatology, and believing that, I too, if I work really hard and never give up, could be a primatologist (3/n)
But at the same time, it’s hard recognizing now how much of that story is rooted in neo-colonialism. That’s part of the inescapable historic context, but this and other documentaries continue to obscure that neo-colonial context (4/n)
Goodall comes from a middle-class family, and she notes, there wasn’t money to send her to college. But she’s related to British nobility, and was a debutante, presented to Queen Elizabeth II (5/n)
Goodall saved up to travel to Africa, where she went to British-occupied Kenya, and was connected Louis Leakey, who hired her as a secretary and made plans to send her to do research on chimps in then-Tanganyika (6/n)
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/lleakey.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/lleakey.html
Leakey’s research in paleoanthropology is steeped in colonial history, as his family were Church of England missionaries sent to “British East Africa,” or Kenya. Leakey started his paleoanthropological work in the 1920s; Kenya became independent in 1964. (7/n)
Goodall began research at Gombe Stream, then in the country of Tanyanika, in 1960, while it was still under British occupation. Tanyanika achieved independence in 1961, and merged with Zanzibar to become Tanzania in 1964 (8/n)
Goodall’s research was documented by Baron Hugo Van Lawick, who she later married, and much of that footage was the basis for the @NatGeo stories and documentaries that generate worldwide interest in her work (9/n)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_van_Lawick
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_van_Lawick
Baron Van Lawick was a member of Dutch nobility, and had grown up in the the “Dutch East Indies” or Indonesia, which became independent in 1949 (10/n)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_East_Indies
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_East_Indies
Behind this amazing story of scientific discovery, of learning about chimpanzees and sharing their stories with the world, is a story of scientific opportunities forged under colonial occupation, and extended into neo-colonial frameworks (11/n)
The research opportunities, access, and widespread publicity were all facilitated through colonial privileges, and reinforced through @NatGeo cultivated European and American audiences (12/n)
Meanwhile, the story portrayed is one of a brave, determined British women who lives all alone in the wild (with the company of her mother), and Black Tanzanians are barely mentioned or shown in the documentary footage (13/n).
In they documentary, Goodall mentions the combination of luck and hard work that led to her success—but unsaid behind it all is a web of white, European privilege rooted in colonial structures (14/n)
Her research is deeply important and inspiring, and the research center at Gombe trains Tanzanian scientists… but often these scientists do not get the same recognition as foreign researchers (15/n)
https://www.janegoodall.org.uk/our-programmes/gombe-stream-research-centre
https://www.janegoodall.org.uk/our-programmes/gombe-stream-research-centre
