can't begin to describe what this movie means to me as a colonised person, how this whole movie is about Indigenous genocide and the intractable damage of colonialism

but this scene is close to capturing it all in a few short frames https://twitter.com/gettinganimated/status/1322371316830404611

watching it is exhausting cos it's not a happy ending.

like yes things can be recovered and the small spirits still exist, but there are things that can't be fixed.

he can't go home to his people.

she can't return to her people.

the forest spirit is gone, that magic is removed from the world and will not be restored.

"but lady eboshi is good, she employs people who would otherwise be in poverty" yes, the same could be said of any colonial endeavor.

the fact that the labour they're undertaking in Irontown is theft of forest resources to create guns is a vital point you really can't ignore.

the sacking and enslavement of whole continents was of great benefit to europe, which experienced an undeserved and unearned cultural, technological, and economic boom in the form of the Renaissance.

i have never seen a single piece of school curriculum connecting these ideas.

the Renaissance is treated as a flowering of western potential, as opposed to what it is: when any civilisation subjugates all others and steals their wealth and labour, they have a lot of free time to make art and test theories.

this is the single source of every piece of white supremacist nonsense.

anyways: no, sending your 'surplus' population to go shovel someone else's forest into your bank accounts doesn't make you a super great person, it just makes you King Colonizer.