Biopic of Inuit lawyer & activist Aaju Peter, who is in the process of reckoning being colonized by both Canada & Denmark. It follows her professionally as she works to form an Indigenous forum at the EU, but also follows her non-linear, personal journey as she unwinds the impacts of colonialism. We break down TWICE COLONIZED by Lin Alluna in this episode.
Sundance 2023 Section: World Documentary Competition
Distribution: Not Available, but seen Film Movement for updates
From the Sundance website: Aaju Peter is a force of nature. She is a renowned Greenlandic Inuit lawyer and activist who defends the human rights of Indigenous peoples of the Arctic and a fierce protector of her ancestral lands. She works to bring her colonizers in both Canada and Denmark to justice and deploys her effusive spirit and illuminating wit to provoke self-examination and personal responsibility among Westerners for imposing their colonial ways. As Aaju launches an effort to establish an Indigenous forum at the European Union, she also embarks upon a complex and deeply personal journey to mend her own wounds, including the unexpected passing of her youngest son.
In this inspiring, emotionally powerful documentary, the beautiful lens of director Lin Alluna journeys alongside an extraordinary human being as she plumbs through the social and personal wreckage of sanctioned white dominance to find the strength — within her abilities, her community, and her own vulnerabilities — to transform her hardships and painful experiences into something amazing that can inspire others who also struggle with the poisonous effects of colonialism.
Music Credit: spacedust by airtone
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Rough Transcript
[00:00:13.538] Kent Bye: Hello, my name is Kent Bye. And I'm Wonder Bright. And welcome to Story All the Way Down, where we're focusing on the Sundance documentaries from 2023. Today's episode is about twice colonized by Lynn Aluna and is following the Inuit lawyer and activist named Aju Peter. a journey of Aju trying to reckon the impacts of colonization where she's been colonized twice, both when she's living in Greenland by Denmark and then moves up into the Arctic Circle and colonized by Canada. I just want to read this little section from the synopsis. She works to bring her colonizers in both Canada and Denmark to justice and deploys her effusive spirit and illuminating wit to provoke self-examination and personal responsibility among Westerners for imposing their colonial ways. As Aju launches an effort to establish an indigenous form at the European Union, she also embarks on a complex and deeply personal journey to mend her own wounds, including the unexpected passing of her youngest son. So, as she's trying to reckon with the impacts of colonization, she's meeting with some of her friends and as she's speaking the Danish language, you see the real impact of even speaking another language of how much her own culture has been erased. She later is going back to places where she grew up with her family members. But on the whole, there's also these twists and turns when her son unexpectedly dies, that becomes a whole thread. There's aspects of her relationship with her boyfriend that's happening off screen, but also very much featured in this film. And I'd say the other part is that she's trying to work within the context of the European Union, which is very much into different regulations. And sometimes those regulations aren't always taking into consideration how that's going to impact different indigenous people in these different regions. And so restrictions around sealing has a very personal impact on the livelihood of the Inuit people that she is fighting against. And so you see her in these different situations. these different arguments, but also at the European Union, trying to come up with a form so that the EU can have a place to consult with indigenous people of these different lands that these different regulations are going to be impacting. So it's kind of a circuitous journey across many of these different issues, but at the heart of it is asking these questions about colonization and the impact of colonization. So yeah, love to hear some of your thoughts on twice colonized.
[00:02:45.970] Wonder Bright: Well, I was really interested in watching this film because I'm always interested in stories about identity. And I'm especially interested in stories about identity that are searching stories because for one reason or another, somebody is cut off or obstructed from being able to find their root. One of the ways that I've been describing that story through this series is by talking about experiences of the 12th house, which astrologically relates to things that are hidden that we cannot see that get removed from our view. which relates to experiences of exile or being cast out or experiences that have to do with traveling really long distances and sometimes not being able to get back. The 12th house is also like a house that talks about sorrow and secrets and trying to ferret out the truth of things. So of course I'm naturally drawn to stories that have to do with immigration, stories that have to do with race, and definitely to do with colonization and the impacts of that on people and their ability to try and articulate who they are when they've lost the ability to trace themselves back to their roots. So I was very interested in this story just going in because I knew obviously it was going to be dealing with that. And then, despite all of that, I found myself resisting this story because I was falling prey to the common cultural narrative, which is this sort of like Shakespearean idea of the individual overcoming their circumstances, right? So like, there's this idea in the West that we have to be heroic and we have to be bold and we have to be fearless and we have to like never say we're hurting and we're just like we have no apology and we're just resolute and we carry forward and we sally forth against all odds. This is, this is the story of colonizing essentially. And what this film did for me was when I noticed that I was feeling resistant to Azure Peter because she wasn't presenting in that way, right? the brilliance of both the filmmaking on the part of Lena Luna and the screenwriting on the part of Asia Peter, that they understood the story that they were actually telling, and they didn't make it easy on the audience. Her brokenness, or what we might think of as being broken in this twisted worldview that we have created, is the point. Like that is the story. That is the experience of being colonized. That is the experience of being cut off from your roots, is that you become rootless, that you become wracked with grief and have lost your defenses. And so there is this story that unfolds of the human spirit and her resilience inside of those spaces, her capacity to understand the narrative that she's putting forth. that is in and of itself the way that it's constructed, an abject rejection of the colonizing narratives, of the Shakespearean narratives, of the idea of, you know, man against the world and I shall conquer and I'm going to hold forth and all ye look at me and hear this. It's just not that story. And what emerges instead is this other experience, this other lens for looking at the world and this other lens for looking at self. And I found it really liberating. You know, I'm a settler. I'm white. I'm English on my father's side. You know, I come from settler stock myself. And my resistance to the narrative that she's showing me is the resistance to the narrative as it operates in my own life. We also have discussed victim-suspect in this series, and that shows how this system works. As I'm watching as you construct or rather deconstruct this narrative to create this alternative way of telling a story to unpick herself from that colonizing narrative of overcoming something and instead just meeting herself where she is, it just pulls up this really rich question about what is possible for us as a collective whole on this earth if we begin to approach it from that place, from that positioning. from unconditional empathy for ourselves where we find ourselves? What if we root ourselves in that strength, in that capacity for feeling and being with ourselves where we actually are?
[00:07:55.943] Kent Bye: Yeah, yeah. And this film is another one of the films where the main protagonist is at the same time in the process of starting to write her own biography and titling it twice colonized. But the film version gives us immersive experiences of different things that I think would probably be difficult to fully capture in the written word to be able to bear witness to these moments when she's talking in the Danish language to her friend and Just tell us on how painful it is for her to even speak the language and we see her later on Going back to Denmark and speaking the language and we know in the background of our minds that there's this underlying pain and trauma that even speaking the language and communicating is is giving her. And so, you know, it's fairly early on in this film where her son does unexpectedly pass away, and she has to deal with the grief and everything that's coming up. And I think there's another element of this film that is a lot about confronting the grief and drama of her experiences growing up, but it's all brought to the fore with the death of her son, which, you know, there's not a lot of additional context other than that there's likely a lot of intergenerational impacts of colonialism that is for sure a through line and a thread that is impacting her. So, you know, we don't know all the details for how that gets connected together, but we just see the end results. And these moments where she's going back to places where most people have fairly fond memories of places where they grew up. But for her to even revisit some of these places with her family, it doesn't necessarily always result in positive feelings about her experiences or her life. And so, I feel like there's so many different ways that she's reckoning with the impacts of colonialism that are shown to us in the film that... I think would otherwise be difficult to know or understand. And, you know, just the pains that she is going through and the way that she's processing it, and also reaching out to other indigenous people to speak about their experiences about colonialism. We don't see a lot of those interviews or the results of those conversations anywhere in the film, but we know that it's a part of her searching and her journey for trying to reckon what's it mean for her to be colonized twice.
[00:10:21.032] Wonder Bright: And what colonization means altogether, you know, like what the impact is on individuals, not just yourself, but on the human being.
[00:10:30.778] Kent Bye: Yeah, yeah. And we get to see it in a way that it took some twists and turns that I wasn't expecting. But I think that's the nature of the cinema verite documentary is to record the life as it unfolds. And she's a really compelling character. And we see her go through all of these moments of upheaval in her life and these turning points that the camera is just right there to help document, whether it's her family, her relationship, or her professional career, or trying to articulate and express her own experience of colonization, I think is at the heart of what the film is. But I feel like In a similar way that you're talking about with those unexpected twists and turns, it takes these different paths that is like, I could describe it as a securitist journey, but at the same time, it's one that is ultimately a searching. There's questions that she's trying to answer for herself and trying to articulate this experience in a way and find others that have articulated it. Yeah, I think it's a broader part of this conversation around colonialism and processes of decolonization. And I think she's in her own process of trying to decolonize aspects and memories of her life. And we watch that unfold within the context of this film.
[00:11:45.244] Wonder Bright: Yeah, and also like deconstruct it as a narrative trope as well, right? Like how healing is normally conveyed in a film, right? And to deconstruct that at the core. And despite the fact that she really is able to just bear herself and really allow us as an audience and allow the filmmakers in to record what she's going through. And it can be hard to watch, despite the fact that she is willing to allow the filmmakers access to herself when she's far from her best. As you say, she's a very compelling person to follow and watch. because she has this energy contained in her body. She is compelling literally to watch on screen. She is so vibrant in her movements and where she puts her attention and the fierceness with which she names what she's experiencing. that you want to follow her. And then in addition to that, this searching mode that you're describing, she just doesn't seem to be able to rest until she's able to find those places where she's able to experience some kind of fruition in that search. And also because the film is intercut in this marvelous way between her private life and her public life as a speaker, as a lawyer, as an activist, where she's externally in the world, really speaking to people in a way that also allows them access to what she's gone through and what she's doing about it in the world. There is this forward action in the film that just continues to propel you ever forward, searching with her, essentially. And that is just riveting. And I never didn't want to watch. I never didn't want to see what happened.
[00:13:49.680] Kent Bye: Yeah, this is a good example of a film that goes between the realms of the public life and the private life, whether it's her family, her relationship, and being able to talk about all the different dimensions of that with her friends and her colleagues and her professional life as you go between the public and private. Yeah, I think this film is blending those two in a really interesting way, those different contrasts of her experience and especially these moments where she's engaging with her brother and her family and asking these same questions and having these shared experiences between the two of them. So yeah, I guess as I start to think about what I'm bearing witness to in this film is the courage that Aju Peter is showing to put her life out there in this way and to be in these vulnerable places and exploring these questions and you know, there'll be some moments that really stick with me with the honesty she has with communicating, speaking the Danish language. As she was a teenager, she goes over to Denmark to go to school there. And so she's got this experience of the language that is representing these deeper aspects of colonization that again, speak to the heart of what's it mean to have your mother tongue and not be able to fully articulate what you're experiencing with the people that you're in these different contexts in. And so, yeah, those subtle aspects of the impacts of colonization that I think the film medium itself are able to capture. in this documentary in a moment like that or in a moment with her family and other parts of her journey. I'm looking forward to see what she does with her memoir and to see how she starts to construct her story and tell that in a written form. But in this, we get a little glimpse of the embodied experiences that she's gone through and we're able to see it and reflect and as best as we can identify with what some of her experiences might have been through this experience. So, Yeah, I'd love to hear some of your thoughts about what you're bearing witness to in Twice Colonized.
[00:15:55.054] Wonder Bright: Yeah, same. As you, Peter, that's who I want to bear witness to. And particularly the way that she is exploring these themes of the 12th house, the experience of exile, how to reconnect yourself. to your roots, how to create your roots, how to find new ways of rooting yourself, how to find new ways of articulating what home is and where you belong and who and what you belong to and how to fight for those things.
[00:16:34.417] Kent Bye: Yeah. So that was Twice Colonized by Lynn Aluna. It was a part of the World Documentary Competition at Sundance 2023. At this point, there's no distribution for Twice Colonized. And yeah, I just want to thank you for joining us on Story All the Way Down. To learn more about this film or the podcast, visit storyallthewaydown.com. There you'll find some show notes, more information about the podcast, and opportunities to support what we're doing. Thanks again for listening.
