Captives & Cousins: Play Analysis

Words: 278
Pages: 2

In the beginning of Captives & Cousins: Slavery, Kinship, and Community in the Southwest Borderlands, James Brooks describes the Comanche Dance reenacted by villagers in Northern New Mexico in 1938. He then comments on the practice writing, “As in years past, and through the cycles of generations, villagers and Indians will prey upon one another and, in doing so, lose a little bit of themselves in return for vital exchanges. The struggle will always center on community preservation, but each community’s survival will depend upon a capacity to surrender and adopt, exchanging self and other. The drama will always contain within its ritual a latent tragedy and hope of catharsis.” (page 5). Is Brooks sugar-coating the process of colonization? To