The documentary film explores how Enlightenment-era systems of knowledge—art, science, architecture, and cartography—produced enduring frameworks for racial slavery, territorial extraction, and Indigenous dispossession in what became the United States of America. Quote from the Director, Monique Linder: “After our last film about Reconstruction Destructed, I felt it was important that the next film go back to the very beginning, the making of America. This film really helps tie all the pieces in the Juneteenth Reckoning with Slavery film series together in a significant way. I’m looking forward to sharing it with others.”