Latest / The Bechdel Cast / Rhymes for Young Ghouls with Jess Murwin

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Rhymes for Young Ghouls with Jess Murwin · The Bechdel Cast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hi, everyone. We just wanted to provide a content warning
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: for this episode because in this discussion we talk about
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: and also the movie involves sexual and physical assault, child
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: sexual abuse, and suicide. Thank you for listening and enjoy
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: the episode. On the beck dol Cast, the questions asked
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: if movies have women and um, are all their discussions
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: just boyfriends and husbands or do they have individualism the
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: patriarchy zef invest start changing it with the beck Del Cast. Hi, everybody,
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: welcome to the back Selcast. My name is Jamie Loftus,
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: my name is Caitlin Toronte. I just wanted to start
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: like an MPR an episode of MPR. It's the Radio,
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: UM and this is our podcast where we take an
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: intersectional look at how how people are portrayed in your
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: favorite movies. It's true we use the Bechtel test sometimes
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: called the Becktel Wallace test as a simply a jumping
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: off point. The whole podcast isn't about that, despite common misconceptions. UM,
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: you know, you know everyone out there talking about the
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: Bechtel Cast all the time. Yeah, surely that's what happens.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: It's it's not just the people say the Bechtel Cast
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: and then whoever else is in the room goes, what
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: what are you talking about? Now? Everyone's like, oh, yes,
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: I know that podcast. Well that show we all know
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: and listen anyway, So the Bechtel test, uh, that is
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: again just what we used to inspire a much larger
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: conversation about representation and intersectionality and inclusivity. And that is
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: a media metric originally created by queer cartoonist Alison Bechtel,
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: in which two people of any marginalized gender must have names,
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: they must speak to each other about something other than
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: a man for at least two lines of dialogue. That
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: is our particular rendition of the test. Yes, but we
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: have a we have a myriad tests to discuss later
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: in the episode, one created by friend of the cast. Wow.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: What teaser alert? Um, And yeah, I'm really excited for
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: today's episode and for our guest. Yes, our guest today
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: is a non binary, mixed race magma artist, curator, and educator.
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: Their work focuses on reclaiming narrative space, infusing genre with
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: social justice, and holding space collaboration. You also might have
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: heard and seen them on our recent live reading of Twilight.
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: It is Jess Merwin. Hi, welcome, Thank you for having me.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: I am this is like a dream come true. Quite literally,
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: this is wonderful. I'm so happy to be here. We're
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: so happy to have you. Yeah, it's it's I really like,
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: can't we to talk about this, this weird native movie
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: that nobody's heard of. We're really psyched to talk about
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: it because it was originally recommended to us by um Ali,
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: who spoke about it when um When when Ali came
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: on to discuss Frozen to a couple of months ago podcast. Canonically,
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: I think, what is time? I've lost all Definitely October
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: here is well, it's October now, this episode is coming
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: out in November sometimes so so it's no future. It's November.
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: Someone was making the joke that it was like March
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: five hundred and eighty five. In a way, it does
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: feel it's been March years. The CBC newscast, like the
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: morning newscast that I listened to, has like gives you
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: like a day only update of being like, well we're
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: going in to day of quarantine. You're like, oh my god,
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: it feels very end times yes, right, like Datalogue day
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: four thousand. There's still no end in sight. Iron Man
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: at the beginning of End Game, right the original Quarantine er. Um,
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: but yeah, Ali brought this movie to us originally, and um,
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: we we were kind of tipped off about this movie. Um,
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: I guess we should just say the name of the movie.
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: I don't know what we're being it's a secret about.
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: We were talking, of course about Rhymes for Young Girls,
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: a Jeff Barnaby movie from two thousand and thirteen. And
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: the reason we're talking about it with Ali was first
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: of all, because it's a movie that Ali is a
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: big fan of, but also because it was the basis
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: for the Alo Test, which is the test that Ali created. Yes,
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: and we'll talk about that in a little bit, But first, Jess,
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: what's your relationship with Rhymes for Young Girls? Oh Man?
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: So growing up in the eighties and nineties as a
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: mixed race like Magma kid, So I don't I didn't
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: grow up in reserve, and I'm Magma through my mother's mother,
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: through my grandmother, and she had been which she was
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: orphaned at very young age, so she didn't really grow
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: up in a like a traditional sort of way in
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: terms of like learning how to do a lot of
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: traditional Maigma things. So you know, I was growing up
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: with this like identity that was very unresolved in a
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: lot of ways, and I felt like very conflicted about
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: because it's you know, being white passing but also being
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: like I'm also an indigenous person. I didn't really know
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: how I like fit. And on top of that, being
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: queer and being trans and just dealing with like a
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: lot of other stuff meant that I ended up feeling
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: like I couldn't really like claim to anything. You know.
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: It was just sort of like it's it's too much.
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: You can't be queer and native and you know, mentally ill,
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: it's just like too many things. So so when this
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: film came out, I had just been back in Canada
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: for a couple of years because I spent some time
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: living overseas, and it was like, we have this expression
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: of French. It's like a like a lightning strike um
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: and like we use it a lot, like when you're
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: like fall in love at first sight or when you
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: get like an idea, And it was almost like that
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: for for seeing this film. You know, I was in
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: my sort of early twenties and and just moved back
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: to Canada or like recent moved back to Canada. Was
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: sort of like, oh, my god, here's like a film
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: about Migma people with people speak Magma and it's like
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: the first time that I'm ever seeing this, and all
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: of a sudden it sort of like this way of
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: starting to reconnect with Magma culture, Like all of a
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: sudden sort of like seeing this film and being like,
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: oh my god, there is this part of me that's
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: like that, that feels something so profound and just like
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: hearing people speak Magma and seeing that represented on the screen.
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: And then uh, and we'll talk about this a little bit,
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: but there was so much other stuff going on in
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: terms of like indigenous rights an indigenous culture at that time,
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: and so it was like this was really the catalyst
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: for me like reconnecting in a big way to yeah,
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: to to sort of like Magma on Nous. That's incredible
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: and one of so many examples we see of why
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: representation is so important. I think, Yeah, Um, my relationship
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: with this movie is it was not super on my
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: radar until about a few months Blood Quantum. I did
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: not know about Rams for Young Gal. How did you
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: know about Blood Quantum, Jamie, I don't know. I think
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: it was just I was paying closer attention to movies
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: that were coming out last year than I was in.
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: But then when Ali brought up Rams for Young Gals
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: instead of the same director, I was like, oh, and um, yeah,
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: I think we did have a couple of listeners as well, Um,
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: recommend this this movie to us. So it's it's been
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: on our kind of watch list, our list of movies
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: to cover. Yeah, I think for our like horror movies
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: last year. In the request it popped up a couple
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: of times, and maybe that was why I was familiar
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: with it. Sure, yeah, yeah, but I'm I'm happy to
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: have seen the movie now. I watched it three times. Um,
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: but yeah, I'm so excited to talk about it. Should
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: we dive into the recap? Let's do it alright, So
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: we open with text at the beginning, UM describing the
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: law in Canada that states that every Indigenous child between
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: the age of five and sixteen must attend an Indian
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: residential school. There are truant officers who more or less
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: police the schools and the community, and who are responsible
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: for bringing into custody more or less any child who
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: is absent from school, and they are allowed to use
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: force to do that, any force that they see necessary. Yeah.
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: So we're starting off chill legal wording. That was. Yeah,
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: so that's an excerpt from the Indian Act. And we
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: can talk a little bit more about this in terms
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: of like context for the film, because there's a lot
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: to talk about because it's it's an act that's been
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: around since essentially the beginning of Canada, since confederation in
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: uh eighteen s and it's still exist today. So that's
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: that's cool. Um, But yeah, so that that's an actual
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: law that essentially governs all of the federal government's interactions
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: with Indigenous people. So um, to say it's racist is
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: a little bit of an understatement. And this kind of
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: like opening package that Jeff has chosen here kind of
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: helps like highlight a lot of the issues with the
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: Indian Act. Absolutely, and I feel like we were goofy.
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: Americans have a tendency to really romanticize Canada as this
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: place of justice that it you know, clearly is not
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: um and so I mean, even just from the beginning
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: frame of the movie or just like yeah, no, we
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: are desperate to feel a way about Canada that is
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: not true. No, no, and it's it's it's one of
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: those things too that like, you know, don't get me wrong.
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: We have like legal weed and free healthcare, so pretty
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: you know, things are pretty good. But on the other hand, yeah,
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: we do still have a lot of the systemic racism
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: and discrimination that exists in the United States, and like
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: Canadians are you know, aren't necessarily all like super polite
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: and super you know, courteous. Like there's I think that
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: we have this sort of angel complex with regards to
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: the rest of the world where we're like, oh, we're perfect,
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: We're not the United States, and it's like, oh, the
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: bar is on the floor all like all the Native
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: people in the back are like, well, I don't I
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: don't know about that, Like it's like, yeah, have you
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: read that law lately? Yeah, or even just the fact
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: that like since this year there's been like a half
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: dozen high profile killings of Indigenous people, either at the
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: hands of police or at the hands of our medical system.
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: You know that since like January. Horrifying. So yeah, So
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: we opened on the movie. It is nineteen sixty nine.
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: We are on a fictional reserve called the Red Crow
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: Indian Reservation. We meet a Magma family, including young Ala.
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: She's a little girl who loves to draw and she
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: usually draws kind of like morbid horror imagery of like
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: zombies and ghoules and Whatnotum, she has a little brother, Tyler.
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: We meet her mother Anna and her father Joseph, as
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: well as her uncle Burner. They are all drug dealers
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: on the reserve. And then one night, the adults they're
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: all smoking weed, they're drinking heavily, and then a bunch
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: of tragic things happen kind of all at once, where
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: AILA's mother accidentally kills her little brother Tyler in a
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: drunk driving accident, and then her mother kills herself. Her
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: father takes the blame for it and is taken away
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: to prison. So that's in the first ten minutes of
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: this movie that we're talking about on a on a
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: humorous podcast, you know. Um, and it doesn't I think
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: that there's like a lot of stuff even in that
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: that we should talk about in terms of like depictions
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: of Indians using drugs and being broken. But again, like
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: all of these parentheses are kind of like paragraphs, so
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: it might make more sense to finish with like the
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: plat sumary and then get into it because otherwise, yeah,
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: it's like, right, we got things to say. It is
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: so much it is quite a bit of trauma in
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: I think ninety seconds. Yeah, it all happens very very
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: very quickly. Yeah, and then there continues to be trauma
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: after this. Oh um. Yes. So we cut to seven
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: years later. It is now the mid seventies. A La
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: played by dave Rey Jacobs is now a teenager living
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: with her uncle Berner, and we also learned that Berner
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: is kind of a snitch in the community where he
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: kind of rats out his fellow man on the reserve
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: to these white truant officers, the main one of those
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: being this guy named Popper, and Paper comes to collect
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: quote truant taxes, which are basically this family bribing him
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: so that the kids don't have to go to the
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: nearby residential school. And we will also provide a lot
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: of context in our discussion about residential schools and that system.
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: But it's know that it's a place that you don't
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: want to go. So ALA's friends Chilo and Angus tell
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: her that Solo had gotten robbed by Stripper and can't
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: pay the truant tax and Aila realizes that Popper kind
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: of set up this whole thing, and this I might
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: need a little bit of clarification on my kind of
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: assumption was that Popper did that kind of like orchestrated
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: this whole setup and like robbed them so that they
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: wouldn't be able to pay the bribe so that he
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: could justify sending them to the school. Is that, Yeah,
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: I think that's that's sort of the idea. And I
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: think that also has to do with the fact that
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: Joseph is coming out of prison. Like essentially Papper sets
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: up Burner in that first sort of scene where he's
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: like there at the fish Mitten and he's like, thanks
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: for telling us you're here, so they'll get the ship
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: kicked out of them by guys in the community so
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: that like Joseph will come home and stay in line, okay, right,
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: And so that's also part of like why Popper would
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: steal their money is because then you know, he can
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: get Sholo and Angus and Aila, you know, scoop them
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: up and take them to to St. Difano's to the
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: residential school um as sort of again like a way
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: of sort of being like, you know, this will keep
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: Joseph in line, got it, right, because he gets released
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: from prison and we also meet, uh serious, a kind
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: of grandmother figure for Ala, and she tells a story
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: about a wolf that's kind of delirious and ends a
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: beautiful animated series that I didn't I didn't I was.
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: I love when I don't see an animated sequence coming
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: and then it hasn't been beautiful. I loved it. There's
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: a one. There's one like that in Blood Quantum too.
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: That's really cool. And and in both of the cases,
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: like Jeff's using it as a way to sort of
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: like insert some of the like oral tradition UM and
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: like the way that like our traditional storytelling works UM
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: and sort of differentiate and distinguish it from the rest
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: of the story, you know. And it's really interesting because
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: like talking about the animation, you know, I also as
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: an animator, like love those sequences. And yeah, I think
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: I think some people sort of wh they first saw
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: the movie where like I don't get it. I don't
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: get why there's like an animated sequence, since like you
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: just gotta like experience it as part of the film,
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: you know. Like, but yeah, Serious also has a cat. Yes,
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: we see a live feeding a couple of times. I'm like,
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: it passes. You know. What I think is my test
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: is the Caitlin test. Is there a cat in a movie?
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: If so, it passes the Caitlin test. You've been all
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: you said. A few weeks ago, you said you were
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: never going to bring it up again, and now it's
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: the test. I'm sorry, I'm enabling cat talk okay live
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: for cat talk, and I was sad to see it go.
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: What I said was, I'm never going to bring up
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: cat facts again because I don't want to talk about
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: cats nipples anymore. But I still want to talk about cats.
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: They're great in general, the movie They're great. The movie
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: Cats Cats so clever, so funny. I love how we
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: all kind of just like we're like we sort of
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: been the words we can mutter along with this. I
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: just know the feeling again, right, Yeah. I had a
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: growing up. I had a Cat's soundtrack, like on the
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: cassette tape. So I didn't even know it was like
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: a musical because I just thought it was like a
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: concept album because none of the adults ever like explained
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: to me, and so like, when I found out it
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: was a musical, I was like, Oh, this makes so
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: much more sense, does it? Though doesn't make any sense.
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: I had a very similar experience with Phantom of the
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: Opera where my mom just like put on the c
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: D and left the room, and you're like, I think
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: I know what's happening, but I don't know what anyone
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: looks like. And I would just make my hunchback of
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: Notre Dame dolls kiss right, It's like, I don't know
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: epic kissing. Um we'll have talking about Yeah, you know,
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: that's all kids do anyway, And it's like, regardless of gender,
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: I think like all kids at some point in time
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: have been like, where their adults around, I'm gonna make
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: them spitch. Like I was straight up making my barbies
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: have sex with each other. So I was were you
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: like kids? It was like yes, correct, that was a
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: fun friend and girlfriends. So anyway, the Caitlin test, I
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: was like, where are we? What's happening? The cat got
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: here from Cat So there is a cat series has
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: a cat. So we hear this story about a wolf
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: that is like kind of rumming the land. Um, it's
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: delirious and it ends up eating itself, which I'm interested
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: to kind of talk about like the thematic implications of
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: that later on. But um, so Aila decides to steal
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: the money back that got robbed from them, and um
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: we also at this around this time revealed that Aila
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: has now gotten into this drug business ever since her
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: father left for prison and her dad, Joseph comes back
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: and is like kind of disappointed, disappointed to learn that
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: Burner let her get into all this. But because she's
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: an artist, she's like a really skilled kind of crafts
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: person of like rolling the joints and like flavoring them
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: and them and stuff. Yeah, I was like, she's cool. Yeah,
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: she's so very cool. It's also she doesn't like one
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: of the things that keeps coming back and like and
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: even one of the things that like in that scene,
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: you know, Burners like I've been drinking and smoking and
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: stuff like that. She's like, you can't roll for ship,
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: Like she doesn't she never like she doesn't smoke weed.
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: And that's like also part of like that gas mask
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: is like this idea of sort of like yeah, she's
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: she's also sort of like not she's part of this world,
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: but she's not like in that world in the same
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: functioning in the same way as the people around her.
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: She's not going to be a wolf who eats herself.
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: She's not going to destroy herself. So Ala pitches this
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: plan to her friend's Chilo and Angus that they break
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: into the nearby residential school sat dis is what they
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: like nickname it, and they're going to steal their money
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: back from Popper. So she orchestrates this heist. She draws
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: a map. There's this little kid, Juji who I think
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: does he attend the school and and he will kind
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: of be there's like the inside man. He's the man
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: on the inside ten. I don't know what that kid
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: is doing now, but oh my god, what a sweet kid,
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: like a star. He always calls a la boss. Yeah.
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: He's like, well what now boss? Um? I yeah, is
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: like um. I don't know if that would be like
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: his given name, because that's like a nickname in MGMA,
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: which means like like a little bug or little thing.
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: I'm a stand yeah. So meanwhile, Aila is having some
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: dreams and visions of her dead mother and brother, sometimes
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: as zombies, sometimes not, but this is kind of like
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: a recurring visual motif throughout the film. And then one
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: day Aila is out with her dad and they have
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: this violent run in with Popper and his cronies because
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: Berner sold them out to Popper and let them know
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: about Ali's plan to break into the school, so Poppers like,
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: you wanted to go into the school, fine, now you're
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: you're there. So he sends her there as punishment. But
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: if and correct me if I'm mistaken, But it feels
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: like that's kind of part of her plan. She gets
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: sent there on purpose so that she can also kind
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: of be on the inside. Or I might be wrong
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: about that. I'm not totally sure the thing, you know,
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: what I've gotten over the years, I've gone back and
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: forth on it, honestly, Caitlin, Like, I feel like, Um,
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: when I first saw the film, I was like, oh,
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: this is definitely like like she's improvising sort of like
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: this wasn't her plan. And I sort of feel like
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: now when I'm seeing and I'm like, I feel like
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: this was part of her plan in a way, because
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: Jiuji was to come and let her out of the hole, right, So,
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: like I think that it was her plan. I was
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: also questioning that because I was like if if that
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: was her plan? Galaxy brain genius right, like, because the
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: first time I watched the movie, I it didn't even
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: occur to me. But then on the second watch, I
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: was like, wait, she's so smart that it didn't even
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: occur to me that that might have been intentional, right,
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: But I also think that it sort of like speaks
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: to the character that Eila is and like because I
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: think in a way that she she talks about aging
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: a thousand years and I think that like after her
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: mother dies, and I think that there is a certain
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: wisdom in that character that's sort of outpaced with her age,
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: you know. And and like at the end of the film,
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: you know, Joseph says to her, like, you know, I
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: just want you to know you're a little girl, and
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: she's like, I was never a little girl. I think
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: that there is a certain she knows that Berner is
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: going to crack under press sure and wrap them out,
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: like and she knows that like there's a there's a
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: chance of that. So I think that she's kind of
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: got some ideas in her head. She knows that they're
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: not supposed to go out on the water. They've been
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: out on the water, you know, so I think that
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: I think it is planned. She also like engages in
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: that fight where she could have just like stood back,
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: and I think maybe, like, oh, if she if she's fighting,
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: that that's going to be all the more reason that
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: they might send her to the school. In any case
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: she gets sent there, they cut her hair off, they
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: put her in solitary confinement. That's like, that's the scene
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: that still and I've seen this film so many times
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: now throughout the years. I still cry every time I
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: watched that scene. That seems so hard to watch because
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: they used to do that to people, you know, and
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: for us, like your hair is really sacred because it's
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: your connection back to the earth. So I'm tearing up
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: now even talking about it. So like the you know,
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: that was one of the things that they always used
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: to do. And the kids were taken to residential schools
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: as they would cut off their braids. And I was
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: doing this project with a bunch of youth up north
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: here in Quebec, where we were creating this like woven tapestry,
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: and it was all made up of these different like
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: lengths of braid that were woven together into this like
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: five by ten tapestry. And we had this one elder
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: who came and sat with us one day and was
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: like telling us about her residential school experience and was
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: talking about how seeing all these braids woven together was
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: like so powerful to her because and this was not,
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: you know, not something I had really thought about beforehand.
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: But she was talking about how like, you know, you
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: would see all the hair too, like after all the
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: kids had had their hair cut off, just like swept
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: to the side, you know, like all these braids like
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: on the ground. Um, So it holds a lot of
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: cultural significance in that way. Yeah, that scene was. Yeah,
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: that scene was devastating. And also if you don't really
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: know whether she planned or not to get sent to
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: Stiffen as all of a sudden, you're like, our hero
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: is in this peril. You know, you don't know what's
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: going to happen to our next, right, So it's either
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: like a huge deliberate sacrifice or just her kind of
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: falling victim to these horrible circumstances. Yeah. So while this
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: is happening, her friends solo Angus and then there's another
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: friend of theirs who I'd never caught the name of Maytag.
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: Is that Maytag? Okay, So they are prepping for this
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: heist and they go into the school, they break out,
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: They rig up the plumbing so that literal human shit
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: comes out when Popper turns on the shower, which so satisfying,
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: really good stuff and like a whole bunch of like
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: male full frontal nudity. Not that it was like you
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: were wanting it, that's the same, but it's like independent
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: Canadian film where you get to see like a whole
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: lot of dick there, like to see a little bit
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: of shit rainting on full frontal. Right, you're just like
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: you deserve this, yeah, and it's just at the lowest
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: moment in that moment, and you're just like, so good
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: the Catharsis that's been. That's been kind of I feel
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: like a discussion that's been picking up in the last
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: couple of years of like how rare male nudity is
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: shown period, and then on top of that, when it
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: is shown, like the way it shown is never humiliating,
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: which whatever speaks to who is making most movies. But
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: it was that's true, right, very satisfying to see him
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: humiliated in such a like primal way. I don't know, Yeah,
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: oh totally, And especially because you've you've sort of spent
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: the entire movie up to this point just watching him
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: and his guns kick the ship at it everybody, right,
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: And it's like I remember remember seeing this So when
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: I originally saw this film, I saw it at a
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: festival and at that point in the film when Happers
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: like lying on the bathroom floor covered in ship just
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: like I'm gonna get you people that the audience were
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: like cheering. It was amazing, you know because like the
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: end of Get Up, people were like full on like
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: being like, yeah, oh my gosh, yeah, this would have
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: been a cool movie to see in theaters, damnit it was.
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: It got a really limited release, so I was coaching
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: to see at a festival. But we'll talk about that.
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: It's also something we need to like, Yeah, I think
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: people need to think about sometimes for sure. Yeah, definitely. Um,
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: so he's covered in ship. Meanwhile, they steal the money
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: out of his safe and run away. They get away
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: with I think twenty dollars. But when when Aila gets
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: back home, she finds out that her grandmother, Sarah's, has
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: been killed by Popper's thugs. And then when Popper comes
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: for Ala, he beats her, he's about to rape her,
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: but then little Juji shows up with a gun and
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: another very cathartic moment blows Popper's head off. AILA's father
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: takes the fall for it again. He gets carted off
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: to prison again, and then the story ends with, um,
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: a is it is that a family friend or a
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: relative Jisugu or juice Agu? I wasn't sure. The old
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: man Yeah yeah, yeah, so he's like he's like a
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: family friend. Okay, there's a lot of like on small reserves.
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: We always jerked it's like, well, everybody's related like somehow.
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: It's like they're probably related somehow, right. Yeah. He was
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: the guy who earlier in the story had also there
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: were there was talk of him having aged a thousand
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: years because he had gone to fight in World War
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: Two and came back like a thousand years older because
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: he had lied about his age, saying he was older
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: than he was to be able to fight and then um,
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: you know, experience a trauma of war and then came back. Um.
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: And he gives a La a really interesting piece of
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: advice during that conversation too that they're having when when
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: they talk about him being a thousand years older, because
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: he's the only other character that here referred to in
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: that way, and he says this thing that I ended
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: up picking up on and and I ended up reading
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: a couple of articles about it. Two of like you know,
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: he's like courage is sometimes moving with the dead, you know,
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: like as like bodies were sort of piling up, you know,
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: it's like you have to keep moving. And I think
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: that that's almost an interesting like thesis point. I think
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: for like what Ala is doing in a certain way
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: of sort of like despite everything, like having to like
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: keep moving forward, Like you know, they're going to be
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: casualties along the way, but it's like you have to
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: keep moving forward because otherwise you're one of them, you know, right.
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: So yeah, so he's an interesting character. Um. He pops
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: up a little bit Blood Quantum too. It's interesting because
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: Blood Quantum also takes place on the Red Crow Reserve
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: and but in like a parallel universe. So because of
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: the fish Mitten's Strip club is also in Blood Quantum. Yeah.
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: I love an expanded universe, that's all right. Yeah. So
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: so there's like these interesting sort of like crossover points
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: that kind of happened where like and a lot of
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: the folks I think in the film weren't actors. I
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: think that like some of them are just like people
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: who maybe had a little bit of like outside of
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: the main cast, who are like Canadian indigenous, like film Royalty. Um,
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: Glenn Gould has been in everything like you don't make
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: like you don't make a native film in Canada and
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: not include Glenn Gould because what are you doing? Who
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: plays Joseph in the film. He's incredible. I mean that
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: like the scene that I think like, I mean stuck
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: out to me. I'm sure everybody was. The scene at
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: his wife's grave was just so it's just like, yeah,
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: he was. He's incredible. Um Okay, So then uh, this
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: character shows up who we've seen here and there. Um,
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: it's just saying like Aila, I don't want you. I
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: don't want you to work in this drug trade anymore.
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: And she's like, good, I don't want to either. And
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: then um Jujis the little Boy comes back and he's
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: like Okay, now what do we do boss? And she's
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: like I don't know. And that's how the movie ends. Um,
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: let's take a quick break and then we'll come back
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: for discussion and we're back. Yes, where shall we begin? Well,
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: I think it's probably helpful to to provide some historical
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: context for the residential school system, because you really have
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: to have an understanding of what that is to appreciate
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: the events of this film and why the characters are
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: doing everything that they do to not have to go
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: to a residential school for sure. And I think that
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: would be good to to talk a little bit about
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: the a little bit about reserves, and a little bit
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: about the Indian Act, because I think that there's like
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: there's layers to this, right, It's not just the residential school.
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: It's like it's everything you know, and um, this time
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: watching it through too, I was thinking a lot about
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: like the violence in the film and thinking about how
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: it's sort of it's incessant, like it's it's just like
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: around every corner, like it was just biking down the
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: road at one point, and like somebody like comes out
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: of nowhere and punches her and like and that's, you know,
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: such a visual metaphor for I think what it feels
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: like sometimes to be a like a marginalized person, whether
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: it's you know, your your black, Indigenous or like a
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: person of color, or whether you're trans or whether you're
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: differently abled. Like I think that there's like a sense
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: sometimes of like things can come out of nowhere and
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: kind of like knock you on your ass. Um So, yeah,
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: just to talk a little bit about and and like
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: feel free to jump into um. But yeah, so talk
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: to talk a little bit about the Indian Act, because
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: that's kind of where it all starts off, right. So
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: the Indian Act was officially passed in eighteen seventies six.
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: I hope there's no like Canadian history buffs who are
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: like like to check in my because like it's the
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: one like I can remember meeting a person ten years
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: ago for like fifteen minutes, but I cannot remember dates
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: for the life Most of our most of our listenership
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: are Canadian history scholars. So but I do believe that
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: data is correct. Yes, okay, I have that in my
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: notes as well. Awesome. Yeah, so the but before that,
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: there had been sort of a patchwork of different colonial
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: laws that had existed, and then sort of when Canada
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: became like a country as opposed to sort of different
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: like sort of colonies, you know, like between like New
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: France and Upper Canada and Lower Canada, that it was
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: sort of brought into law and a sort of more
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: official sense. And the Indian Act. The short version of
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: the Indian Act is that it was legislation that was
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: designed to very literally like legislate out of existence indigenous people,
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: and it did that through a number of ways. So
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: the residential schools which we're talking more about, we're part
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: of the Indian Act, this idea that you'll civilize and
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: abusing air quotes, you'll civilize Indian genious children and assimilate
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: them into Canadian society. The Indian Act also, you know,
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: targeted women. Uh So, if you were an Indigenous woman
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: and you married a non indigenous man, you lost your
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: status and indigenous status, our native status, which exists in
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: the United States as well, uh is sort of like
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: your only pathways for being able to access things like
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: on reserve housing, like certain like educational like scholarships and
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: benefits and things like that are only accessible through your
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: status card. There's other services and things like that that
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: are only accessible through your status card. So losing your status,
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: you know, it was a big deal, and so we
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: often referred to when women married on indigenous men. It's
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: happened a lot in the you know, early days of
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: Canada as marrying out because it was essentially like, well,
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: now you're out of the culture, goodbye, one less Indian.
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: And you know, there were other other things like the
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: the Indian Act did you couldn't leave the reserve to
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: get a higher education. You couldn't just like leave the
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: reserve to go see a doctor. There was a whole
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: system of passes that Indigenous people had to have for
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: a long time. Like it was essentially like a passport
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: that said like okay, I'm leaving my reserve now, and
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: that you know, there was no thought given to It's
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: like okay, well we don't have a hospital on reserve,
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: I have to leave the reserve to go to the hospital.
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: Or even just like I want to go visit a
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: friend on a different reserve, like you'd have to like
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: have that passport signed off on by the Indian age
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: it who could also say no. So people's movement was
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: really controlled. People's lives were really controlled, and like I said,
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: you know, disproportionately. The Indian Act targeted children and women
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: through things like the residential school system, through things like
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: losing status if you married out, which wasn't applied to men.
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: If men, if Indigenous men married non Indigenous women, they're
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: non indigenous wives would get status and all their children
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: would get status and they were able to remain a
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: part of their communities. Jesus Christ. So it's it's like
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: it's not even like, uh, it's so blatant. It's almost
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: like a Bond villain who's like, and then I'm going
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: to set up the laser and then it's going to
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: catch you in half, and then I'm going to take
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: over the world. It's like the Canadian government essentially said
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: from the beginning, we don't want any more Indigenous people,
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: and this is what we're gonna do to get rid
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: of them. Um. However, the double edged sword of the
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: Indian of the Indian Act, you know, and you're I
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: can imagine it's sort of like, well, if it's so
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: terrible and so sexist and so racist, just get rid
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: of it. Unfortunately, it's really one of the major legislative
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: tools that we have in Canada as Indigenous people to
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: be able to hold the federal government accountable because it
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: defined what an Indigenous person is so which is just
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: like magnitudes of frustrating absolutely so. Originally, and this this
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: ties into the film. In nineteen sixty nine, Pierre Elliott Trudeau,
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: who's Justin Trudeau's daddy, was Prime Minister at the time
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: and he introduced this essentially this act that would have
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: gotten rid of the Indian Act this is so this
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: is the nineteen nine This paper ended up becoming called
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: the White Paper, and it was this really catalyzing moment
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: for a lot of what we call red power or
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: like an indigenous like civil rights movement sort of stuff
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: began happening because, you know, people were really hit to
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: the idea that like, if we get rid of the
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: status of Indian, which is what it would have been
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: called at the time, then the government doesn't legally have
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: any enforceable responsibility towards Indians. If Indians don't exist, they
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: don't exist. Does that make sense right, Yes, it makes
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: sense the way you're explaining. It's just that that's so
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: there's so many layers of mind fuckery going on. Oh yeah,
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: it's it's a whole. Like it's a whole. Taramis Sioux
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: of like fucked up, which is terrible. I shouldn't do
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: that to Taramisious. Termisus was like taramistous will recovery. Taramisus
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: has got a good rap people looking can come back
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: from this. But yeah, so so what the solution has
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: sort of become, you know, is because we can't get
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: rid of the Indian Acts, sort of amend it and
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: a lot of these are endments, I think sort of
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: the most recent big push of amendments. There's little things
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: going through all the time, but I think two thousand
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: and two was like a big push of like a
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: whole bunch of amendments to it. In the eighties, we
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: had a big push of amendments that allowed women who
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: had lost their status through marriage to get their status back,
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: which was a huge thing. Um. You know, I had
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: a I have a friend who you know, at that
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: point in time, was already you know, like a teenager,
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: and she talks about how important it was like that
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: moment when her mom gets status back, which meant that
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: she could get status and like because even though it
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: isn't like like having status is not what makes you
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: an indigenous person, sure it still can feel like a
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: very significant thing in terms of belonging. Yeah, so it's
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: is this whole sort of mess. Unfortunately, um and the
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: Indian agents, like we see paper in the film, were
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: the enforcers of this incredibly racist law. So Indian agents
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: had total, like unchecked control. It was like even worse
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: in some ways than sort of like you know how
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: we talk about like, oh, you know, the sheriffs in
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: the Old West, and you know, they could sort of
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: make up the rules as they go along. Indian agents
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: were sort of that, except they were white, racist assholes.
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: So you know, I've read different things over the years
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: about like people talking about how like, oh well as
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: Popper's attitude and behavior a little bit extreme, it's like, well,
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: like some of the stuff did happen, Like some of
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: the stuff we know has happened because we've heard stories
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: from people and it's also been documented. You know, by
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: the time that we get to the late sixties early seventies,
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: the Indian agents were starting to be phased out because
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: we were starting to move into a new period in
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: terms of like the Indian acting. Like I said, some
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: of those like, um, big changes that were to come
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: in the eighties, but at the time we still had
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: Indian agents that were quite sort of literally allowed to
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: do whatever the funk they wanted with impunity. Um, you
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: had Indian agents in the States as l and they
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: were this maybe chuckle, not because it's funny, but because
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: it's sort of again macavillian. The original Indian agents were
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: under the U. S. War Department initially, which is like
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: very blatantly like, could you be any less like clear
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: about how you feel? Yeah, Jesus Christ. Yeah. So so,
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: but what happened with the Indian Agans and the States
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: is as we moved through the eighteen hundreds and into
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: the nineteen hundreds, they sort of transitioned into being superintendents
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: for what the American equivalent of residential schools is the
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: Indian boarding school system, and they were that position. Shifted
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: into more of a civilian role later on, but yeah,
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: it was it was like a government Department of war position.
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: It was essentially, like I brought up in the Twilight Reading,
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: it was to swindle people out of their land whatever
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: way you could. And uh, yeah, it was it was
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: about like this idea of like manifest destiny. You know,
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: it's like, well, we've we've arrived and now it's ours.
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: Like yeah. So that's a little bit of a background
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: on on the Indian Act. And so, like I said,
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: the resident social system was established as part of the
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: Indian Act under the mandate of killed the Indian and
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: educate the child sort of thing um, which is just
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: like a real cool, chill sentiment to have. And so
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: they started out, you know, we had Jesuit schools, especially
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: UM coming into like New France, so sort of what
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: is like Nova Scotia and New Brunswick like part of Quebec,
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: like New England sort of area. So we would have
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: had like early Jesuit schools and like you know, those
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: were a little bit less rigorously sort of organized, and
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: those were mostly we're in the sixteen hundreds, some in
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: the seventeen hundreds, but like I said, it functioned a
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: lot more sort of like uh, what's that where as
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: a missionary sort of effort, Like it was like we're
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: going to go on christianize this. There's nothing colonial about this, No,
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: We're just talking about Jesus. And it's really interesting because
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: we from that the Magma converted to Christianity in sixteen
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: o four, and like a lot of that had to
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: do with the presence of like Jeesuit missionaries in MCMAGI
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: and MGMA territory at the time. But moving out of
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: that period, moving into the moving into the nineteenth century,
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: UM is when we sort of get officially into the
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: like what we call the residential school period. And these
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: were schools that we're government funded, managed by Christian churches,
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: So there was like different denominations that were involved in The
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: The Roman Catholic Church was a big one of course,
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: but like there were Presbyterians, um, I think Anglican Anglicans. Yeah,
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: the Church of England was very big, just kind of
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: not facilitating getting all ripped up on my words, but
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: like essentially administering the schools, so like they were all
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: run by nuns and priests and and like Lake Herd
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: Clergy as sort of like the the only attendance at
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: the school. And and we estimate that about a hundred
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: and fifty thousand children Indigenous children in Canada went to
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: residential school And is it is it safe to I?
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: I just um for our listeners who are not fully
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: clear and what the intent was the intent of the
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: school is to take your culture from you and replace
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: it with something else. Yeah, it was essentially that it
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: was this idea that like like I said, you know,
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: like it's the the idea of like killing the Indian
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: through education. So you'd be taken away from your community,
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: you'd be taken out of your language, so you only
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: spoke English at residential school. Um, they would cut off
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: your braids much like we see in the movie. You
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: would be wearing Western clothing. Um, you'd only be educated educated, uh,
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: and sort of like European centric, like his story and
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: like customs and mannerisms. Um. In the States more than
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: in Canada, there was also like this idea of vocational training.
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: But yeah, it was it was about westernizing indigenous indigenous
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: kids because they were seen as being savages. Yeah, I
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: like it was forced assimilation. Um. And then in addition
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: to that, it was also the like officials at these
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: schools inflicting severe amounts of emotional, physical, and sexual abuse
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: upon the children. A lot of children died in the
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: residential school system throughout the years. There was a lot
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: of like malnutrition I read I even read some cases
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: of like experiments being done on the children. Yeah, and
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: there was just like not really much education happening. It
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: was just abuse. No. And that's sort of the problem, right,
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: is that their primary goal was was forced assimilation. You know,
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: they're goal wasn't a sort of build young people up
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: so that they'd be able to stand in the world afterwards,
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: you know, like um, like one would hope that the
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: education system does to some degree. It was it was
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: really about like you are bad, you are dirty. We're
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: going to make you clean and pure and you know,
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: we can't bleach you, but we'll make you as white
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: as possible. Um. You know, it estimated now that about
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: six thousand children died as a result of the regidential
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: school system. However, those numbers don't take into account. Well one,
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: you know, the records are not complete. A lot of
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: schools as they were shutting down, you know, especially in
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: the eighties and nineties, you know, burned records just like
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: wholesale got rid of stuff. Was like we don't know,
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: graves were often not marked. So there's been a whole
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: pro process even now sort of like trying to figure
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: out like people trying to figure out where their relatives
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: are buried. Conditions in school were really terrible, you know,
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: so kids were not only dying of like malnutrition, but
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: also disease, also of abuse. Like at times the abuse
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: would be so severe, Like there was one case that
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: I was reading about where the children were routinely like
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: electrocuted and like small doses, and sometimes they would die
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: because they were like as a punishment being electrocuted. And
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: that doesn't even take into account the I think what
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: we see through ALA's parents is like the after effects
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: of that abuse and how if you do make it out,
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: what is life like after that, you know, coping with
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: all that? Yeah trauma, Oh exactly. And you know that's
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: just it too. Like how many people, you know, their
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: whole lives have had to struggle with you know, the
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: weight of that abuse have you know, people who have
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: died by suicide, Like, yeah, it's it's it's a very
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: hard thing to put a number on, you know, the
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: fatalities of of people coming up through the residential school
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: system because it was this terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible machine
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: that just like like I said, you know, it was
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: meant to get rid of what the prime minister at
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: the times for John and McDonald, which was he was
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: like very famous Canadian prime minister from my back when
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: Canada was sort of created as a country. You know,
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: like he was like the Indian problem that people were
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: seeing as a problem. It was like, oh, well, we'll
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: just get rid of them. You know. You know when
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: we talked about this a little bit before the phone call,
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: you know, YouTube were sort of saying, like, you didn't
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: learn anything about this in school. I learned a little
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: bit about this in school, but it's really only been
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: the last couple of generations that we've even started talking
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: about this openly. So the last residence of school in
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: Canada closed in nine, you know, so like there are
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: people my age whose like parents went to residential school
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: you know, and their aunties and uncles, and like we're
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: really directly impacted by that. Uh yeah, and we just
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: didn't talk about it. I didn't talk about it. We'd
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: like there was a sense that for a really long time,
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: even like in two thousand nine, the Prime Minister of Canada,
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: Stephen Harper, was like, Canada doesn't have a colonial history,
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: you know, like we don't where everything's great, you know,
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: when we start looking at like the time in which
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: the rhyme for term googles is coming out. In a
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: lot of ways, it was like a big piece of
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: media that was made about this terrible, terrible system. And yeah,
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: and and and so I think that a lot of
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: the violence and stuff that you see in the film
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: was really done with the idea of like trying to
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: convey just how destructive this was. You know, was there anything, Caitlyn,
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: I I don't know if like you had mentioned that
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: you had like a specific timeline for residential schools. I
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: don't I kind of jumped all over the place, I'm sure,
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: and I mean I think what you covered was was
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: really helpful context. I have just some kind of dates
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: scattered through and some additional numbers. For example, like the
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: sixties scoop was this u moment in history that was
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: actually several decades long where I think an estimated twenty
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: Indigenous children were taken from their families and placed into
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: um foster care or adoption homes, often with non Indigenous families.
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: This was happening from like the late fifties into the
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: nineteen eighties. UM. So, I I know folks who were
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: scooped and like, which is a weird way of putting it,
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: but in some cases it was literally like oh, you know,
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: these social workers arrived at your house and they loaded
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: you and your siblings in a car and then you
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: never saw your siblings again because you were all adopted
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: by different families, which you know, the term that we
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: would use for this now is child trafficking, you know,
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: um absolutely, And this was a government this was government
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: mandate that this was like government endorsed. Um. So that's
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: another way in which like the Indian Act has been
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: used to sort of um separate children from Indigenous communities,
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: right is through things like the sixties and seventies scoop um,
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: which really could be called like you said, like the
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: start in the fifties and went until the eighties. And
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: now another thing too that has become that's gotten a
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: lot more attention in recent years and and is something
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: that there's been a lot of call to abolish is
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: we call them birth alerts. So what can happen, unfortunately,
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: is that like social workers can essentially sees a newborn
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: from an Indigenous mother if they deem her to be
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: potentially not a good parent in some way. Um it
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: was a couple of provinces have abolished these like birth
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: alert systems, but it's still upheld in Saskatchewan and I
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: believe Alberta as well here. So yeah, so if you're
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: an Indigenous woman, giving birth in a hospital can be
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: very risky because if you're not if they're like, oh
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: you're kind of young, you know, or are you a
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: single mother? You know, like essentially the staff will alert
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: UM Child Services and then will come and take your
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: child before even like the drugs have worn off from
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: the birth. You know, Like it's a really really horrific system. Um,
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: I also wanted to this was Unfortunately, as as I
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: was watching this, I was reminded of news item that
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: I read not too long ago in September around um
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: just issues that would have certainly been affecting a LA,
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: in particular forced sterilization as well, which when I did
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: a little more research, I found it peaked in the
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: years that this movie is covering. Peach between nineteen sixty
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: six and nineteen seventies six, over a thousand Indigenous women
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: in Canada were forced to be sterilized. And the reason
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: that the story is relevant right now is because it's
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: still happening. Yeah, like you said, you know, it is
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: still happening. Um, there's still a lot of pressure in
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: terms of and you know, and in California as well,
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: Like there were a lot of Indigenous women sterilized in
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: California during the sixties and seventies. Not that I'm picking
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: on California. It just happened to know this California, but yeah,
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: it's it's it's still going on today. There's still a
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: lot of pressure, especially if women like have any sort
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: of even minor health concerns. Like a lot of times
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: like there still is this pressure of like, wow, we
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: could just like you know, sterilize you. Um, if women
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: are incarcerated, there's also pressure. Um yeah, you know, it
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: disproportionately affects the Indigenous community of course, because of colonialism,
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: because there is still huge bias unfortunately with regards to
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: with regards to Indigenous people. Absolutely. Oh, I was gonna
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: say in top of the sixties, Scoop, if you want
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: to be some other set statistics, I feel like we're
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: just like, oh, and this thing that's also really depressing.
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: So today talking to about the birth alart system. You know,
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: even though the last residential school closed here in Canada
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: in the in the nineties, which like spoiler alert, we
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: were all alive. Then wait, how old do you Jamie?
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: We were all It's like Jamie's young, Jamie's James scrappy.
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: But yeah, so it's within our lifetimes, you know, And
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: I think that that's a really important thing to remember. However,
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: a lot of Indigenous folks will argue that the child
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: weft for a system has taken over the place of
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: the residential schools in terms of like taking kids out
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: of communities. You know, you have the birth alert system.
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: You also just have like tremendous like scrutiny and surveillance
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: of Indigenous families. And you know what should be shocking
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: up setting to people is the fact that Indigenous children
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: represent fifty of the children in foster care in Canada,
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: even though they only represent seven percent of the youth
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: population UM in Quebecet's estimated that one out of every
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: Indigenous family has a child that's in foster care with
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: like non Indigenous people UM and it's endemic. It's it's
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: just like, you know, if it's not something you have
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: experienced directly, it's something that like you know other people
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: who have and when you start looking at things like that,
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: you know, with regards to kids and the child great
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: resistant with regards to you know, suicidality, with regards to incarceration,
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: you know, with regards to like drug abuse, like all
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: the things that we sort of see in this movie.
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: You know, you can draw a straight line from one
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: to the other and it can't be an accident. At
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: this point, you know, there's just so much like paperwork
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: and documentation of how things have intentionally been done, you know,
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: throughout the years to make that this is the case.
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: At a certain point, in time, you have to kind
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: of be like, well, it's not even a conspiracy anymore,
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: because you know it have documented and to speak to
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: your point from earlier, that's just the documentation that still exists,
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: right what what was burned and what was destroyed in
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: and what was lost and you know, and what will
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: not come to light you know for whatever reason, and
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: on and on and on. Unfortunately, let's take a quick
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: break and then we'll come back and we'll discuss how
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: this context informs the film, shall we and we're back? Um.
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: I wanted to, uh, if it's cool with everybody's share, um,
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: some quotes from Jeff Barnaby please about the production of
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: this movie and just kind of his motivation behind writing
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: it and where I'm sort of where he was at.
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: I still, I mean, especially after watching this movie a
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: couple of times, it I can't believe that he is
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: not a more mainstream name. Like it's so he wrote, directed,
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: and edited this movie, which is fucking unbelievable. I'm like, God,
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: imagine having three skills I hand he well, he he
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: did the same for Blood Quantum and then I think
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: he also co wrote the score to that film. Yes
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: he did. Yeah, So he's a composer as well, and
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: he also has a small cameo in Rhymescrey on Ghoules,
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: which which he's the priest who puts a lot in
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: the hole. I was in the film for like three seconds.
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: And it's funny because I've I've met Jeff sort of
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: like subsequently, just through like Montreal film sort of stuff,
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: and it's very like I totally agree, I think he
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: should be a household name, but it sort of touches
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: on some of the ways that like it can be
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: really hard to make a film when you're not a
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: straight white man, you know. And for Blood Quantum, he
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: was working on that project for years, and like different
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: things were shot at different times, and you know, there
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: was like self funding at different points, and like well
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: even for Rhymesprey on Ghoules, there was like you sort
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: of get to see it's like all of the Canadian
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: film funders contributed because it's like we have tiny little
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: bits of money that we can give you, so it's
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: you know, it's it's unfortunately still like an uphill battle
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: in a lot of ways just to like have have
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: a film made and then to get people to see it,
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: you know, and this I mean, this movie's budget was
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: only a million, five hundred thousand, which I mean for
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: a movie, it certainly uses that budget to its fullest extent.
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: It looks incredible. And we had we had sort of
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: a similar conversation not too long ago in our girl
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: Walks Home Alone at Night episode, And just like the
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: number of barriers that are put in front of filmmakers
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: who are not straight, white male, and how many different
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: avenues you have to go for funding, and even when
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: you have this finished product and it's incredible and it's
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: you know, very exciting and different, distribution becomes a whole issue.
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: And so if you're listening right now and you haven't
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: watch the Barnaby Canon, get on it. But I really
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: liked There was an interview he did, I believe around
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: the time this movie was first coming out in festivals
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: um with musk Rat magazine, and he was asked by
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: the interviewer, let me get their name, Jemis DaCosta Um.
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: He was asked why he chose to have a female
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: protagonist for this story, so I thought relevant to our interests, uh,
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: And here is how he replied. He said, my nation
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: is a matriarchal society and paying respect to that archetype
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: of a woman and the strength that is there, particularly
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: in First Nations women. It's imperative for me, as a
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: First Nations man who loves his mom and loves his
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: wife and loves his sisters, to pay reverence to their
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: struggle and their strength. I think women are awesome. Ga.
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: My mom had me and a straight up there with
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: our Robert Eggers. Oh yes, women, I've heard of them. Um,
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: Jeff Party thinks women are awesome. My mom had me
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: at such a young age and didn't have a lot
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: of support around her, but still managed to make it work.
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: She and my stepmom were a big influence, along with
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: my sisters, and seeing what they went through at such
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: a young age gave me a measuring stick in terms
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: of the things you can complain about in life. And
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: then he said, um, kind of going off of that,
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: why he chose the era in residential schools that he chose.
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: I believe this movie is set in the year that
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: he was born, in nineteen seventy six, but he says
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: about that in the same interview quote, I thought, if
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: there was ever a point in time that this residential
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: school was going to crumble, it would have been in
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: the seventies. It just made sense to me to have
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: a young Native girl bring this institution of ugliness to
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: its knees. It made sense to me because First Nations
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: women are the language and cultural keepers. They are the
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: epicenter of our matriarchal society. I've mostly only known strength
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: to come from the women in my life, which isn't
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: to say that men haven't been influential, but the rock
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: state power that doesn't waiver seems to only come from women,
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: and which I think he compliments his wife for a
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: long time. It's nice, but I'm not going to read
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: the wife is really lovely, too very nice. Well, I
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: think you see that in the film, this this like
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: ideology with like of Ayla's peers, who seemed to be
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: entirely boys, she is the smartest and most competent of them,
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: not even of just her peers, of all the like
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: adult men around her. She seems to have kind of
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: the most awareness of what is going around, because like
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: there's scenes where like Soholo and Angus are just like, oops,
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: I got robbed by a stripper, dough like Tither kind
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: of laughing about it. You know, It's like, oh, well, no,
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: big deal. We'll just sell some bottles. We'll get the
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: money back that way, and ailes like no, like, do
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: you see what's happening? Do you see what we have
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: to do? And she's by far the most competent, and
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: and like why is this? We talked about sort of
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: having to age prematurely almost and having to be wise
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: beyond your years, not in a like precocious child dropey
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: way that we you know, always take guph with on
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: the podcast, but in a when you're growing up in
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: these horrible, like systematic oppression situations, there's no other choice.
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: You can't like it's that's just it hardens you. And
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: it and the fact that the story of the wolf
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: eating itself that becomes so important um to how she
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: views herself and how we view her as the audience
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: comes from really the only other woman that we get
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: to know besides her mother in the movie of like
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: she I mean, I guess, going off of um what
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: Jeff Barnaby said, she was the keeper of that wisdom
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: and passed it along for sure. And I was going
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: to say to that just like a little bit of
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: like added magma context. Um, there is this huge reverence
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: in our culture for not just women, although you know,
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: like Jeff says, you know, it's a it's a very matriarchal,
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: matrilineal culture, but also grandmother is in particular are really revered,
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: um you know, as elders, as elder women. There's a
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: lot of stories of glose Cap who's are are sort
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: of um how to describe glose Cap. He's a trickster
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: figure and he's within traditional storytelling, but he's also like
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: a protector figure for the Maigma. You know, he was
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: sort of helped when creator made the Bigma at the beginning.
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: You know, it's a shapeful landscape. So he plays this
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: really important role through all of our our traditional stories.
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: And there's a lot of stories about glues Cap just
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: like doing stuff with his grandmother. Um. And even the
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: word that we use her grandmother, nogu midge comes from
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: what glose Cap calls his grandmother, which is nukumi. And
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: that like that j on the end is like how
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: you sort of like talk about like something being smaller,
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: like we talked about Jiuji is like a small bug,
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: so like our grandmothers are like a small version of
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: Bluecaps grandmother, you know, And there's also a lot of
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: reverence in Um in Nigma culture for figures like Santa Anne.
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: There's a very important a cathedral called sant and de
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: beau Prey where a lot of Magma folks do pilgrimages too.
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: It's like I said, we converted very early on, so
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: Christianity has gotten very tied into our traditional culture. And
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: Sant Anne in the Bible. Now I'm talking about my
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: ass a little bit. I'll be at and I cannot
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: help you because I have never read the Bible, but
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: sant Anne is is Jesus's grandmother and so uh, you know,
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: she she remains very symbolic and very important for the
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: Magma in that sense. So the fact that Sarah's is
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: really the only female figure that we know in the film,
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: I think is like is very emblematic of like Magma culture.
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: And you know, and I love those scenes so much
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: because they're actually speaking Magma. Oh there's my cat. Wow.
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: This episode of the Bechtel Cast passes the Caitlin test
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: because a cat is pleasant. I was going to say,
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: but yeah, I love those sections with Sarah's because they're
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: speaking in Migma. She's making Bannock, you know, she's doing
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: like all these things that like are so familiar and
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: are so like grounding. And when we're in Sarah's house too,
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: you have a sense of like Ala doesn't have to
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: be you know, the smartest, you know, most sort of
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: like aware person. She can just kind of be there
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: and like is comforting. It feels like the closest scenes
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: to where she feels like being a kid, because it's
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: really easy to forget that she's a kid because she
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: has the weight of the world and then some on
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: her shoulders. But yeah, and those scenes with Staras and
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: I think like part of why it's devastating to see
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: that Sarah's has been murdered is because that's why, I mean,
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: one of the only times you sort of see Ela
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: relax the smallest bit and just feel, like you said, comfortable, yeah,
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: big time, you know. And it's also interesting because what
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: you're saying to about her, like I think, like I
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: really see it as after her mother's death and her
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: father is in prison, you know, Ela kind of has
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: to become the adult, has to become the parent, you know,
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: and like you know, you both mentioned like that's not rare,
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: unfortunately for kids who grow up in circumstances where there
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: is like subtance abuse, or there's like a parent absent
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: um for whatever reason, you know. And I really refer
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: to I always think about like all the men in
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: the film kind of as like lost boys in a sense,
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: because there is sort of like this waywardness, this sort
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: of sense of like there's not like any other kind
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: of like parent like chy relationships really depicted. And sometimes
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: it can kind of like feel like that in In
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: Circumstances Um, you know, where there is so much intergenerational traumas,
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: like everyone's kind of like lost and everyone's kind of
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: like separated from each other, you know. And so I
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: thought that that was really interesting the way that they
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: treated that in film. Yeah, particularly with ALA's relationship with
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: her father, which I thought was the way that that
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: was developed was I mean it really emotionally effective, but
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: really interesting too, where it's I don't know, every character
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: in this movie is so multidimensional and so complex, where
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: it's like I can be mad at ALA's dad in
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: one scene and then in the next scene be like, oh,
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: but I but but I understand where he's coming from.
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: Where I mean, when we flash forward, Ala is essentially
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: her uncle's boss. She's clearly the brains behind the operation,
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 1: and her dad is not able to you, like, I
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: don't know, get emotionally where he needs to be. And
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: and the anger sort of is lashed out towards her
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: when it is his anger with the circumstance, not with her.
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: And seeing them navigate that relationship and reach i mean,
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: go full circle in the best and the worst way
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: by the end was just so so so impactful. It
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: was just yeah, so beautifully written. Yeah, and and and
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: sort of you know, you're right and sort of like
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: seeing that full There's a lot of like circular sort
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: of narratives that happened in the film, and I think
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: that that's very intentional in the sense of like kind
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: of being caught in systemic racism can often feel like
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: you can't escape this vicious circle that you're in, right,
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 1: like any kind of systemic oppression. But we sort of
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: we opened the movie with her father going to prison,
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: we close the movie with her father going to prison.
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: You know, the amount of journey that he has to
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: do in between, you know, in terms of his relationship
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: with Ala is huge. Mm hmmm. So im my cats
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: eating my notes um as I am trying to read
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: them uh, you know, is absolutely huge, you know. And
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: I think that exchange at the end of the film
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 1: where where Joseph like just comes out and says, you know,
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: like you're still a kid. I want you to be
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: a kid. You know. I think that that you finally
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: understand in that moment what the stakes are for him,
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: and like the fact that like, you know, he understands
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: even though he's like, I want you to be a kid,
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: he understands that like they can never really be a kid,
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: you know, like that's just not on the table. And
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 1: I think that's kind of interesting in terms of like
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: looking at this film as like in comparison with like
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: other films about like teenage girls, because I think there
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: could be an argument made that in some ways Rhymes
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: is a coming of age story. But it's just like,
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 1: you know, you look at that and then you look
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: at something like a book smart and you're like, oh,
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: you know, you guys talk so much abou like how
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: you know, oftentimes teen movies take place in a very
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: like narrow sort of class Oh yeah, um, And you know,
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: it's sort of interesting to see the way that this
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: film steps kind of outside of that, you know, to
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: tell this like story of It's like, well, you know,
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 1: sometimes coming of age means having to be your own parents,
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 1: you know, absolutely a teenager. Yeah, I mean, and I
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: feel like I would I would qualify this movie is
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: I wrote down all the different genres I felt like
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: this movie touched on at different points, which is another
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: thing that I loved about. It was like, there's just
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: there were whole sequences that were a highest movie. There
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 1: were whole sequences that were very much drama. There were
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 1: whole sequences. But it feels like a coming of age
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: movie to me. Yeah, And I don't know, I mean,
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: maybe not at first glance, because it's not an experience
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: that we usually see reflected on screen, but we definitely
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 1: see her her come of age. Um and right, It's like,
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 1: I mean, so it's almost like you might not necessarily
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 1: immediately recognize it as a coming of age story because
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 1: there's no party at a rich kid's house, so maybe
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: that's where, right, there's no like oops, I smoked weed
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: for the first time and now I'm tripping at my
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 1: at my friend's mansion that I'm hanging out at. Right,
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 1: It's like, but but it's like, yeah, a movie about
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: a young indigenous teen girl in the nineteen seventies in Canada,
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 1: like that is what coming of age would look like, absolutely,
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 1: you know, and even I think that, like, you know,
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 1: there were even things like like I think that in
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 1: my own coming of age that like I like resonated
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: with me in terms of the film. You know, like
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: I said, I didn't grow up in a REVS, but
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 1: I did grow up with two parents who had serious
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 1: substance of these issues. And yeah, there are definitely things
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 1: about like Ale's story that resonated so so strongly with me,
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: like on this very profound level. And I think that's important.
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: I think that's so important in the media that like
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: young people can see. You know, I was older than
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 1: Ala when I saw than Aila would have been then
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: when I saw the film. But it's a film that
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: like I try and like show young people too, because
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: it's important, you know, we're talking about like representation. You know,
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: it's important to sort of see like, yes, it is
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: this very brutal, violent, I don't think particularly optimistic story.
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: But Jeff Barnaby talks a lot about this idea of
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 1: like wanting to portray the res in you know, in
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: a way that's like true to his experience, you know,
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 1: And I think that, like whether you're indigenous or not,
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 1: if you're a young person who is living in like
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: in a precarious situation where the you know that's because
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: you know it's always because of things like that you
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: can't control, then I think that there's things you're going
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: to relate to. In terms of ALA's story, Yeah, absolutely,
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: I mean even getting back to the relationship with her dad.
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: I mean just navigating a complicated relationship with I had
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 1: a number of people in my family who had substance
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: abuse problems, but you love them and you feel like
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: it's not especially when you're still a kid, you can't
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 1: really sever that chord and I I don't know, it's
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 1: it's something you almost never see in teen movies, and
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 1: if you do, it's kind of framed like a joke
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: instead of you know, a problem that is something you know,
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: very sensitive that needs to be navigated, and another thing
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: that kind of I guess I'm curious that what you
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: both felt about this, But I also was really affected
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: by the I don't like Ala is so mature in
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 1: ways that I'm like, I currently don't even know if
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 1: I could be where the amount of grace and understanding
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 1: that she's able to extend to both of her parents consistently,
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: even when she is, particularly with her dad, who she's
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: often piste off at the decision she's making. She realizes
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: he's lashing out, he's compartmentalizing, he's not able to fully to,
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 1: you know, deal with what's in front of him. But
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: she has this very I mean, there's that scene with
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: her and her uncle where she says, the jail didn't
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: break him, we did, which is her putting more blame
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 1: on her you know, we we know as a viewer
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: she's putting a lot of undue blame on herself. But
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: just the amount of grace that she extends the people
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 1: in her life because she has such a thorough understanding
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: of how circumstantial a lot of their problems are, I
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: thought was like really cool. And and again just something
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: you don't see that subtlety expressed in this genre really ever.
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: And something you mentioned about the there's this kind of
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: ongoing discussion throughout the movie about characters kind of having
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: to age two rapidly on a maturity and kind of
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: emotional and psychological level. There's also this idea of um
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: characters being broken, and there is that discussion between um
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: Aila and Berner talking about Joseph saying, you know, like
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 1: you said Jamie, like Aila thinks that like we we
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 1: broke him, And it's not necessarily clear if she means
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: like we as the family or we us a community
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 1: or what exactly. But then there's another quick interaction between
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 1: Aila and Joseph at the end when he's saying the
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 1: whole like you you're just a little girl, and she's like,
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 1: I was never a little girl. And then he says,
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 1: you know, your your mother was broken way before what happened,
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 1: meaning like way before the accident that killed her brother.
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 1: And this has nothing to do with you, and that,
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 1: you know, is a reference to them becoming broken, being
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 1: survivors of this residential school system and and and of
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 1: this systemic oppression and racism of being you know, forced
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: into reserve life, and it's it's just heartbreaking. Yeah, And
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: I think that in some ways, And I was thinking
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 1: about this, I think a little bit closer this time,
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 1: because I was thinking about the podcast, and I was
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 1: thinking about other films that you've discussed that that have
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 1: like teenage female protagonists, and and I think that Ala
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 1: has a certain amount of like as portrayed as having
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 1: a certain amount of stoicism and a certain amount of
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 1: like restraint, and a certain amount of like ability to
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: see the larger picture that you kind of see crack
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 1: at the end when she's like, you know, right before Popularize,
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 1: when she's crying after she's found Sarah's and she sort
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: of says, you know, the for the you know, the
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: last rule of surviving in the Kingdom of the Crow
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 1: has never let your emotional guard down. And I think
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: that sometimes for kids who grow up or people just
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 1: in general who grew up in in difficult situations, I
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 1: think that sometimes like in order to survive, you need
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 1: a kind of compartmentalizing and you need to kind of
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 1: like have a very calm, steady demeanor because there's nothing
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 1: else in your life that is that way, right, you know,
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 1: And so I think that there's like a certain amount
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 1: of that as well. And there's a certain amount of
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 1: it too that like I kind of question how realistic
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 1: it is, because I mean, I work with teenagers, um,
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: you know, and like and and they're all lovely and
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 1: none of them are going to listen to this, but
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 1: I adore them all, and you know, I think that
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 1: there is a certain amount of that that is sort
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 1: of like creative license, but it is really hard to
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 1: like place ALA's age, and it's really hard to like
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: I think that, like I more turbulent character wouldn't have
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 1: worked for the film. So I think that, like, also
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 1: from a storytelling perspective, you know, Ala being this rock
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 1: is is sort of important for the narrative, but also
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 1: sort of, um, perhaps a little bit idealized. Um I
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 1: see that, Yeah, she's and I feel like that kind
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 1: of like undo. I mean that extreme strength and ability
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 1: to compartmentalize also crosses over into how she remembers her
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 1: mother and how which was kind of another I thought,
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 1: pretty different, incredible approach by Jeff Barnaby that I totally
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 1: agree if she were acting, you know, like your average teenager,
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 1: may not have been possible. But I, I mean, it's
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 1: I forget. I think it's her uncle. I think it's Burner.
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 1: Early in the movie, once we flash forward and everything
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 1: has happened, who insults her mother in front of her
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 1: and she immediately because she has I mean this, this
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 1: understanding of the circumstance of what happened was so tragic
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: and so terrible, and even though it was a an
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 1: accident then involved her mother. You know, she's able to
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 1: kind of see the fuller picture and protect her mother's memory.
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 1: Are you talking about the moment where he like he
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 1: calls someone an old witch and then she's like, don't
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 1: call her that, and then he's like, sorry, the old lady.
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 1: I thought he was talking about Sirius. There was he
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 1: I think he might have been okay, And then I
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 1: misunderstood that because I think, yeah, he's talking about because
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 1: she seems to be Sirius seems to be sort of
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 1: it's at her house where like they're growing all the marijuana.
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 1: I think that they sell and he's so there's certain
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 1: kind of debts to her that they oh because like
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 1: she's supplying stuff and then and then yeah, so and
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 1: then they're like kind of moving the product around. But yeah,
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 1: I think he's he's talking to her. But even so,
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 1: I think your your point still valid, Jamie. Of like,
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: I mean, everyone is broken and everyone's having to kind
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 1: of compartmentalize, and it's and that's something that Aila has.
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 1: I feel like us you were touching on this a
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 1: little bit where in a world where there is not
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 1: a lot that she has control over how she views
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 1: her mother and how she holds her mother's memory is
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 1: something that she has control over. Um. And it's interesting
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 1: too because UM, I was gonna say, you know, even
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 1: though Indigenous women have been you know, a target of
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 1: colonialism and colonial violence through the Indian acting in other ways, UM,
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 1: you know, Indigenous women are also at the forefront of
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 1: a lot of activism that happens UM and is still happening.
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 1: You know. One thing that was going on when this
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 1: film UH first came out in two thousand and thirteen
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 1: was the beginning of Idle No More, which is an
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 1: indigenous rights movement here in Canada and in some parts
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 1: of the United States as well. Like it's standing rock
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 1: there res Idle No More, folks. And it was started
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 1: by four women, three Indigenous and one white, ally because
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 1: they wanted to stand up against this bill that the
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 1: government was introducing that would have changed UH not only
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 1: a lot of Indigenous rights, but also a lot of
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 1: environmental protections. So they got together and they're like, we're
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 1: not going to be idle anymore. And it's spread to
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 1: becoming this national protest movement. It spread to becoming a
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 1: bigger sort of movement for indigenous rights here in Canada,
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 1: and that was started, you know, by by four women
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 1: sort of sitting around the table in the prairies like
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 1: just like deciding, you know, we're done. So there is,
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 1: like I think, in the character veil out like in
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 1: an understanding some of like Jeff's like motivations were wanting
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 1: to create a character that way, Like I think I
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 1: understand like that he's also paying tribute to women like that,
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 1: you know, who have like held it together and who
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 1: are like trying to make change and who are in
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 1: so many ways taking all this garbage that the world
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 1: puts on them and trying to make change and do
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 1: things that are different, and also like the compassion that
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 1: it takes to take all that ship and and still
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 1: turn around and be able to say, like, you know,
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 1: I'm going to march and I'm gonna I'm going to
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 1: write letters and I'm going to do a hunger fast.
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 1: And yeah, I think that that's really really powerful. And
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 1: I think that like so I think that there's also
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 1: like that element too of of like when I say
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 1: that it is a little bit of an idealized character,
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 1: Like I think that there's also a measure of that
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 1: that's like paying tribute in like a positive way to
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 1: the role that Indigenous women play in politics and in
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 1: their communities. Mm hmm for sure. Um, there was one
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 1: thing that just kind of coming off of something that
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 1: I think you mentioned Caitlin about like the selling drugs
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 1: and like being broken. And I wanted to talk a
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 1: little bit about that because I'm so I'm interested, um
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 1: in what your first impressions of that were, because we're
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 1: so used to seeing these images of like drunk Indians
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 1: and you know that's been so prevalent in in North
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 1: American cinema since the beginning of North American cinema. Um,
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 1: so did you feel at all sort of did you
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 1: feel any kind of way, I guess like sort of
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 1: like seeing those scenes in the beginning, Like I honestly,
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 1: I mean I my first reaction was, I don't I mean,
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 1: I knew that, you know, Jeff Barnaby is an Indigenous filmmaker.
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 1: I'm like, I'm gonna I'm on this ride with him
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 1: he and I knew he was speaking to his own community.
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 1: It did like make me go oh no for for
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 1: a moment only because I don't know. I mean, like
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 1: we've all seen movies where those stereotypes have played out
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 1: and then you get no context for anything. But this
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 1: movie felt like it was all context for Like what
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 1: what led to those stereotypes being so widely perpetuated without
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 1: context entirely? So yeah, I think it. It gave me
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 1: pause for like a second, but then when it was clear,
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 1: I mean, the first frame of the movie is context. Um,
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 1: So I feel like this. And I was reading in
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 1: just this same interview with him in Muskrat magazine that
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 1: he had experienced some pushback um from other filmmakers in
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 1: the community that were just like, well, you're showing these
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 1: stereotypes and like, you know, like I don't have any
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 1: interest in seeing that portrayed on screen in any way,
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 1: and his response being something you've already referenced just where
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 1: he was just like, well, I'm showing you my community
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 1: and reflecting my own experiences growing up, So like, how
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 1: can you tell me what I can like I can't
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 1: reflect my own experience, right. It almost it's like sort
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 1: of finding a balance of like do I do a
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 1: disservice to my community by ignoring some very real truths
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 1: of what is taking place? Or do I I mean,
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 1: we talked about this a little bit on a recent
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 1: episode we recorded on the Matreon about UM what We
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 1: Do in the Shadows, where it was written and directed
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 1: by both Takeaway and Jamaine Clement, who are both Maori,
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 1: and we were talking about how cool it is to
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 1: see because there's like this kind of discussion around it
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 1: feels like there's a lot of pressure on filmmakers of
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 1: any marginalized community to only talk about that. It's like,
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 1: if you're black, you can only make movies about racism,
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 1: and like that's your expertise, so that's what you have
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 1: to make art about. And and how it was like
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 1: really cool to see this like really goofy vampire mockumentary
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 1: that's like so funny and just like so silly made
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 1: by these indigenous Maori filmmakers. But then there's also like
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 1: you know, Tyka made Boy, which is about his upbringing
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 1: in his like Maori community. I mean, and you can
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 1: speak to this as a filmmaker to jests of UM
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 1: feeling that this pressure of like do I make movies
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 1: that I want to make that are fun and silly
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 1: if that those are the movies I want to make,
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 1: or do I you know, it's like this kind of
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: ongoing dilemma, Oh for sure. And it's I mean, like
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 1: take also directed one of the thor films I think,
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 1: you know, those films, tiny little marvel mu movies that
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 1: no one's ever heard of, right, um, And it's it's
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 1: interesting because I think that, like, yeah, I feel so
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 1: acutely where Jeff is coming from, especially because you know,
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 1: we all kind of in terms of like filmmaking here
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 1: in Canada, we all kind of have to navigate the
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 1: same systems of the same funders. So you know, we're
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 1: fortunate in the sense that, like we do have public
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 1: funding for the art. You know, I wouldn't trade that
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 1: friend thing, but that also means that and and you
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 1: know this is changing a little bit now, but you know,
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 1: I've been doing this for like a decade close on
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 1: and uh, you know, a lot of the funders are
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 1: not like bipop people. They're not queer people, they're not
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 1: you know a lot of the funders are still like,
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 1: you know, a very specific type of bureaucrat. So when
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 1: you're talking about like yeah, there, it can feel sometimes
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 1: like you're you're just ticking boxes. I'm sort of like, Okay,
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 1: I want to make my film, but I want to
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 1: make it this way, and it's like, you know, a
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 1: funder is not necessarily going to be like, well, you know,
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 1: you're an indigenous filmmaker and you just want to make
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 1: like a zombie movie, like I don't know, you know,
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 1: Like so it's it's complicated some of the way that
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 1: we have to navigate that. Um. I also make Worker
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 1: and and want to continue to make work that is
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 1: also in that genre sort of space. Um. Yeah, it
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 1: can be really, it can be really difficult at times,
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 1: and there is all this kind of like pressure sometimes too, yeah,
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 1: like to to not show certain things because like it
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 1: always comes back to the reality of representation, because you know,
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 1: this is like blood Quantum. We keep talking about blood quantum.
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 1: People are just gonna have food quantum. We just have
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 1: to do blood Quantum for Halloween next year. Absolutely, I
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 1: will come back if you want me to please. Yes,
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 1: I waited like four years for that film. Anyway, that's
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 1: another story for another day. But when you're talking about
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 1: Ryse Starnkles, it's such a singular film. You know, it's
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 1: a coming of age story, it's a heist movie. It's
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 1: our story of revenge, and it's it's taken place in
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 1: this you know, it's a historical piece as well, Like
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 1: it's such a particular thing that like when the pressure
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 1: is on you, it's like you are the one that
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 1: we are giving our small amounts of Canadian money to
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 1: to make this film. It's like not only are you
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 1: just like the only like at that point in time,
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 1: you know, like one of the most high profile like
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 1: Nigma filmmakers, one of only a handful of Indigenous filmmakers.
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 1: It's also like you know, you you've been awarded this
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 1: like highly sought after like money, you know. So yeah,
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 1: so there are all these like weird pressures sometimes. And
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 1: I just finished making a film with the NFB about
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 1: Queerness and Magma culture, um like a short personal documentary.
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 1: And that process was really interesting because the first time
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 1: I've worked with the n FC is the National Film
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 1: Board here in Canada. Sorry, I feel like I'm using
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 1: all this. I was like guessing around. I was like, okay,
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 1: I was like, is it National Film Business Board business here?
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 1: It's like sounds so vague. So the National Film Board
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 1: is is like a Canadian institution that funds and supports
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 1: film and new media production in Canada. UM. So it
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 1: was my first time working with such a big funder
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 1: that has like such a not just a storied history,
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 1: but also you know, they want oscars like it's a
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 1: big deal. And it was a very interesting process because
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 1: I definitely found myself at times like getting feedback that
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 1: I was like, well, that's not how I want to
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 1: do things, you know. And I was fortunate to work
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 1: with a production team that had worked with other Indigenous
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 1: filmmakers before and was very understanding, but like there was
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 1: also a lot of times where I had to like
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 1: be like, no, that's not how protocol works, Like that's
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 1: not how you know. When I was going into communities
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 1: and like spending time with other queer Magma folks, I
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 1: had to be like, well, I have to let them know,
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 1: like within this time delay, because like I can't just
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 1: leave it till day of like, because there's protocols, you know,
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 1: There's there's things that you have to do to be polite.
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 1: There's things that you have to prepare. You know, if
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 1: I'm going to go talk to an elder, there's a
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 1: certain amount of things that I have to do before
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 1: I go talk to that elder, like just out of respect.
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 1: It's like going to visit a foreign country. You know,
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 1: like there's just things that you have to do and
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 1: there's still a big leg even like understanding of those
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 1: things sometimes. So yeah, Si, you know, it's like you
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 1: sometimes like as an indigenous filmmaker, you can feel like
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 1: you're battling against like so many different like things that
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 1: you might have to compromise on, you know, like, Okay,
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 1: not everybody's gonna like then I'm going to show this
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 1: in this way. At the same time, am I working
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 1: with a funder who understands my nation's culture? You know?
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 1: Am I just being tokenized? Am I like wasting this
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 1: like tiny little bit of money but it's the only
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 1: money we have, you know. Like, so there's all these
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 1: different things that kind of play into that. But uh,
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 1: you know, we're starting to talk a lot more about
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 1: narrative sovereignty. Even just the idea that it should be
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 1: indigenous filmmakers making indigenous films is very new, which it
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 1: shouldn't be, but it is a very new idea in
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 1: Canada in the United States. So I'm hoping with that
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 1: that there'll just be more opportunity, as you know, and
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 1: if there are more opportunities in there can be more
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 1: people making films. Therefore, you know, the one Native person
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 1: making a film doesn't have to make a film that
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 1: represents all Native people, you know. They can just make
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 1: the one Native film that they want to make, and
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 1: then me over here, I can make the Native film
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 1: that I want to make, you know, like, and they
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 1: don't have to be the same thing, and it doesn't
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 1: have to fit into sort of like this very specific expectation,
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 1: you know, right, And they can have be all different
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 1: kinds of stories and they can span all different genres
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 1: and they it's it's almost just like, well, I'm wondering if,
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 1: like Jeff Barnemy is like, this is my one chance
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 1: to make a film, I have to just like pack
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 1: in every genre. Like it's not as though the movie
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 1: is like Fils modeled or anything like that. But it's
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 1: like we need to get to a place where there
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 1: just should never be that much pressure on a single filmmaker.
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 1: Like it just it doesn't make sense. And I'm glad
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 1: that he spoke to that issue and also just said, like,
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 1: there are indigenous filmmakers that didn't like the movie I made,
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 1: and I disagree with them, and it is what it is.
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 1: It is what it is. Yeah, And there shouldn't have
• 1:34:11
  Speaker 1: been that much pressure on his movie to represent everybody.
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 1: But like you're saying, just that there's not enough opportunities
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 1: and so that pressure is created and it just spirals
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 1: up from there, and it's I mean, I think that
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 1: like even in a broader sense like of just like
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 1: any kind of marginalized filmmaker. I mean I would even
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 1: include like female filmmakers in that. Like you know, when
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 1: you look at somebody like a Katherine Bigelow, you know,
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 1: often people are like, oh, well, she's so exemplary as
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 1: like a as a female filmmaker because she's making like
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 1: action films, you know, and it should be fine for
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 1: a woman to make an action film. It should be
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 1: fine for an African American filmmaker to make like an
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 1: experimental video work. It should be fine for an indigenous
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 1: filmmaker to make a alien movie. You know, Like it
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 1: should be fine because when assist hit like a white
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 1: straight you know, filmmaker wants to go and make a
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 1: film about I don't know, let's just pick like like
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 1: a female coming of age story, Nobody's like, well, are
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 1: you sure, are you sure that you can speak to that?
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 1: You're like, nobody, nobody scrutinizes, and I know that, like
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 1: I know, we pick on white straight men an awful lot,
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 1: and they're awful fragile, but it's true, you know, Like
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 1: I I've had conversations with like filmmaking friends, you know,
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 1: people that I absolutely adore, you know, who are male filmmakers,
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 1: and nobody questions them at that, like why they want
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 1: to make a film that they want to make. They're like, oh,
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 1: I just want to tell the story. It's like, well,
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 1: are you the person to do it? Though? Yeah? Like, well,
• 1:35:46
  Speaker 1: you know, I want to make like a film where
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 1: it's like two dudes and they travel through time. People
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 1: are like are you sure though? Are they going to
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 1: be native dudes? And You're like, you can't win, you
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 1: can't win a yeah, it's I There was a I mean,
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 1: there's a just a news item from this past week
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 1: where there is that conversation where Lu lu Wang was
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 1: critical of Ron Howard because Ron Howard's like, I want
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 1: to make a film about Chinese pianist Lang Lang, and
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 1: he's Ron Howard, so he can just do he can
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 1: just do anything he fucking wants. And Lu lu Wang
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 1: basically made the argument and and just that's my first
• 1:36:30
  Speaker 1: time coming up hearing that term narrative sovereignty. But I
• 1:36:34
  Speaker 1: love it because that's essentially the argument she's making of, like, well,
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 1: why the fund does Ron Howard get to do this?
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 1: And I think that, you know, not even picking on
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 1: Ron Howard specifically, but that is such a trend. But
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 1: it's like, well, no one has really been allowed, like
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 1: no one has been allowed to ask those questions until
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 1: so recently that like, yeah, however you feel about Ron Howard,
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 1: what the fucking titles him to make him to me
• 1:37:00
  Speaker 1: about something? Like it's just and and that should just
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 1: be a basic question as opposed to it. Oftentimes it
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 1: gets construed as like an attack and like like brought
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 1: out to her for like speaking out about that, because
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 1: I think she's brilliant, but like, like it's also Ron Howard,
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 1: Like I feel like he has so much cultural cache
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 1: that we didn't even very recent memory, this would be
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 1: a piece that wouldn't even like it would be a
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 1: non issue, Like nobody would run this piece because it's like,
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 1: well who are you you know, like yeah, you know,
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 1: just like fund the movie, don't direct it, like if
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 1: you can help get it made by a Chinese filmmaker,
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 1: do that, don't direct it like you don't, And then
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 1: I mean, gosh, I mean your your example, Jess, I
• 1:37:46
  Speaker 1: feel like you perhaps were referring to Eighth Grade, which
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 1: is a movie that I love and I hate it.
• 1:37:54
  Speaker 1: Pisces me off that I love it so much because
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 1: I'm like Bo Burnham, what do you know? And it
• 1:37:59
  Speaker 1: turned out well, But I'm just like, damn it, that
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 1: wasn't your story to tell and how did you get
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 1: it so right? Well? I mean, I love that movie too,
• 1:38:07
  Speaker 1: but I think even just like going off this conversation
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 1: we're having, that movie was held up so quickly as
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 1: a classic of the genre in a way that may
• 1:38:17
  Speaker 1: not have been true for someone that would have, you know,
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 1: an actual familiarity of of that character's experience, where it's
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 1: just like, well, you know, Bo Burnham, love him. And
• 1:38:28
  Speaker 1: again it's like framing it as not an attack but
• 1:38:31
  Speaker 1: just a valid question of like why does this work
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 1: get elevated to instant classic of a female coming of
• 1:38:37
  Speaker 1: age story? And so many women can't even get their
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 1: fucking movie made, you know, Like it's just no absolutely,
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 1: and and like I wasn't thinking of a specific I
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 1: didn't have a specific film in mind, but I feel
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 1: like there's so many examples, right, you know, and it
• 1:38:52
  Speaker 1: and it drives me off the wall because I see
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 1: so much talent and I and I work, you know,
• 1:38:57
  Speaker 1: like I said, I work a lot with with teens,
• 1:38:59
  Speaker 1: especially teens who are interested in art and are interested
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 1: in filmmaking and are interested in animation. And truly, there
• 1:39:06
  Speaker 1: is so much talent out there, and there's so much
• 1:39:08
  Speaker 1: brilliance out there, you know, like especially with how accessible
• 1:39:11
  Speaker 1: technology is now. Like I didn't learn how to use
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 1: photoshop until I was in university, and like I will
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 1: be talking to like a thirteen year old that's like,
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 1: oh yeah, look at this like cool thing I made
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 1: in Photoshop the other day, and I'm like, all right,
• 1:39:24
  Speaker 1: you know, like my cousin, my my nephew, my my
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 1: cousin's son is thirteen and he's already like making little
• 1:39:32
  Speaker 1: animated films. I'm like, that's amazing, you know, Like I
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 1: want to see more of that, not less of it.
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 1: And I feel like we're fed this this idea of scarcity,
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 1: this idea of like it has to be you know,
• 1:39:45
  Speaker 1: like these like select few people who get to have
• 1:39:48
  Speaker 1: the keys to the kingdom and it's just not it's
• 1:39:52
  Speaker 1: just not true and and like and so any shift
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 1: away from that that we can have, I think it's
• 1:39:56
  Speaker 1: a positive thing. I mean, it's unfortunate, but you know,
• 1:39:58
  Speaker 1: we're talking so much about like Jeff's work, you know,
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 1: and like seeing his films and things like that, and
• 1:40:05
  Speaker 1: I feel like, as brilliant as this film is, in
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 1: so many ways, more people have probably seen Pocahonas, more
• 1:40:10
  Speaker 1: people have probably seen Dances with Wolves, more people have
• 1:40:14
  Speaker 1: probably seen Dead Man. You know, these films that like
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 1: are super dubious and do a lot of damage in
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 1: terms of like the representation of Indigenous people. And yet
• 1:40:23
  Speaker 1: when I'm like, oh, hey, you want to talk indigenous cinema,
• 1:40:25
  Speaker 1: people are sort of like, I don't know what that is,
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 1: or they might know, they might know Tayka. But that's
• 1:40:33
  Speaker 1: like it, you know, which is better than nothing. But
• 1:40:38
  Speaker 1: it's not enough, certainly not enough. Well that I should
• 1:40:41
  Speaker 1: be more Indigenous filmmakers who are household names period periods.
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 1: According to and I don't know exactly how accurate this
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 1: number is, but according to box office Mojo dot com
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 1: ever heard of it? Uh this I do consult it
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 1: a lot. Just makes me think of Austin Powers. I know,
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 1: I'm just like, um, make you become a bombshell and
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 1: that makes me want to die. Oh gosh. But this
• 1:41:12
  Speaker 1: movie earned at the box office one thousand, five hundred
• 1:41:17
  Speaker 1: dollars and like four dollars or something like that, basically
• 1:41:22
  Speaker 1: dollars um because of its very limited distribution and exhibitions.
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 1: So yeah, I mean, I think that's why a lot
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 1: of people haven't seen this movie. A lot of people
• 1:41:32
  Speaker 1: haven't heard of this movie. Admittedly, we were not familiar
• 1:41:35
  Speaker 1: with it until quite recently. Um, Jamie and Izo. It's
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 1: just a matter of there and I don't even know
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 1: exactly how to fix this of like getting the word
• 1:41:47
  Speaker 1: out there. I mean, hopefully this episode of this podcast
• 1:41:50
  Speaker 1: encourages people to watch this movie. It's it's accessible. I
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 1: watched it on filion Hoopla and like um Canopy, which
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 1: is free if you have a library car, you can
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 1: rent it anywhere and rent it if you want to
• 1:42:02
  Speaker 1: some money back. Yes, yeah, I rented it on YouTube
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 1: like it was. It's easily accessible, you know, and and
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 1: increasingly easily accessible. I own a copy of this film
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 1: because that's the only way that I could like keep
• 1:42:17
  Speaker 1: watching it after I saw it, you know, in festival. Um,
• 1:42:21
  Speaker 1: but yeah, people can see this movie. It's it's I mean,
• 1:42:24
  Speaker 1: so I would say that we have to do this,
• 1:42:26
  Speaker 1: like we have to go old school on this. So
• 1:42:31
  Speaker 1: this is the plan that I've come up with in
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 1: the last like five seconds. And I don't know why
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 1: it's particularly old school except for um, So, everybody listening
• 1:42:39
  Speaker 1: to the podcast, you have to watch the movie and
• 1:42:41
  Speaker 1: you have to tell five friends about the movie, or
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 1: you'll be haunted by an ancient Indian burial ground. That's
• 1:42:48
  Speaker 1: how we bring it around, invoke the burial ground. It's
• 1:42:53
  Speaker 1: a pyramid scheme for good. Yeah, exactly right. Oh my gosh.
• 1:42:57
  Speaker 1: Remember those emails though, right back in twenty four hours
• 1:43:01
  Speaker 1: and send it to five friends or else you'll be killed. Yeah.
• 1:43:07
  Speaker 1: I feel like aunties always send those along that were
• 1:43:11
  Speaker 1: the number one perpetrator of the year about and it
• 1:43:14
  Speaker 1: was like, I'm your niece, Why are you sending me
• 1:43:16
  Speaker 1: this emails? And I'm going to be murderer? Like I
• 1:43:19
  Speaker 1: don't know twenty five people. I'm seven, like like I'm
• 1:43:25
  Speaker 1: the test. It's like I think sometimes like it's just
• 1:43:28
  Speaker 1: like yeah, I sort of miss stuff like that sometimes
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 1: because it's weird, Like it's sort of like it's paranormal
• 1:43:35
  Speaker 1: in a weird way, but like yeah, Aunties being like,
• 1:43:38
  Speaker 1: you gotta pass this one on and like all your
• 1:43:40
  Speaker 1: wishes will come true. You're like, right, your crush will
• 1:43:43
  Speaker 1: fall in love with you if you've send this, but
• 1:43:46
  Speaker 1: if you don't, you'll die. You'll be it's murdered tonight, okay, Annie, Debbie.
• 1:43:54
  Speaker 1: Isn't that what the Purge is about? Though? Oh? Is?
• 1:43:56
  Speaker 1: I still have not seen any of the Purge movies.
• 1:43:58
  Speaker 1: It's that email or a movie, and that's what the
• 1:44:03
  Speaker 1: movie is. I don't I've never seen the Purse, but
• 1:44:07
  Speaker 1: like I have a feeling that it's like they didn't
• 1:44:09
  Speaker 1: respond to the email, and now it's like, well now
• 1:44:11
  Speaker 1: it's perch time. The email comes to life. I actually
• 1:44:15
  Speaker 1: would really enjoy watching that movie. Let's write it. Yeah,
• 1:44:19
  Speaker 1: an evil chain email comes to life and like almost
• 1:44:25
  Speaker 1: in like a like final destination he kind of way
• 1:44:29
  Speaker 1: like the Internet's the villain seen and then and then
• 1:44:33
  Speaker 1: it's like there's all these moments that it's like society
• 1:44:36
  Speaker 1: and you're like, you also, you could also shoot it
• 1:44:39
  Speaker 1: the way that like Unfriended or like Searching is shot
• 1:44:44
  Speaker 1: where it's just like all on a computer screen. Wow,
• 1:44:46
  Speaker 1: this is a this is a billion dollar idea right here.
• 1:44:50
  Speaker 1: Perfect and you don't you like you'd spend like to
• 1:44:54
  Speaker 1: make it? Yeah, it's got to be so cheap. Let's
• 1:44:58
  Speaker 1: talk about the a litt Oh yes, yes, really quickly.
• 1:45:02
  Speaker 1: And I wanted to talk to about Ala being a
• 1:45:04
  Speaker 1: two spirit character, but we can do that after Oh
• 1:45:06
  Speaker 1: yeah absolutely. Um So the AL Test we obviously talked
• 1:45:11
  Speaker 1: talked with the creator of the test, but the Alt
• 1:45:17
  Speaker 1: Test just as a reminder to all of our listeners.
• 1:45:20
  Speaker 1: We discussed it on the Frizden two episodes, but the
• 1:45:22
  Speaker 1: Alt Test was inspired by the back Both Test and
• 1:45:25
  Speaker 1: Ali wrote it and named it after Ala from rhymes
• 1:45:29
  Speaker 1: for Young Girls. The ALT Test asks three questions about
• 1:45:33
  Speaker 1: a film's character. Is she an indigenous or Aboriginal woman
• 1:45:37
  Speaker 1: who was a main character, She cannot fall in love
• 1:45:40
  Speaker 1: with a white man, and third, does not end up
• 1:45:43
  Speaker 1: raped or murdered at any point in the story. So
• 1:45:47
  Speaker 1: obviously this movie passes the ALT Test, or wouldn't be
• 1:45:51
  Speaker 1: called that. But I wanted to just um for people
• 1:45:57
  Speaker 1: who are looking for more movies the past the Alt Test.
• 1:46:00
  Speaker 1: Have a list from the Ala Test tumbler that names
• 1:46:05
  Speaker 1: off some of um some movies where there are characters
• 1:46:08
  Speaker 1: that pass this test, so really quick. Obviously Ala from
• 1:46:11
  Speaker 1: Rhymes for Young Ghouls. Let's see Annie Shorty from Edge
• 1:46:15
  Speaker 1: of America, Seven from Apocalypto, Cheetah the Fragile from Mad Max,
• 1:46:20
  Speaker 1: Fury Road, Eva Benitez from Freedom Writers, Wilma man Killer
• 1:46:26
  Speaker 1: from the Cherokee Word for Water, Moat from Avatar, question Mark,
• 1:46:32
  Speaker 1: Susie Song from Smoke Signals, um j Shaun Winters from
• 1:46:36
  Speaker 1: Songs My Brother Taught Me. It's a criminally short list, um,
• 1:46:41
  Speaker 1: But if you're looking for other movies to pass the
• 1:46:43
  Speaker 1: a LA test, at least in regards to one character, um,
• 1:46:47
  Speaker 1: those are some options. Was Molanna on the list? Oh,
• 1:46:52
  Speaker 1: that's because there's a separate category for animation, because Lelo
• 1:46:55
  Speaker 1: and Nanni from Lelo and Stitch also pass that. So
• 1:46:58
  Speaker 1: Moana Lilo, not Nanni. Qatara from Avatar, The Last Airbender,
• 1:47:03
  Speaker 1: Cora from the Legend of Cora, Alisa Maza from Gargoyles
• 1:47:08
  Speaker 1: never watched Gargoyles from Brother Bear to UM. Yeah, sorry,
• 1:47:12
  Speaker 1: there was a separate animation category, but definitely Malana excellent.
• 1:47:17
  Speaker 1: I was gonna say too if people should definitely all
• 1:47:20
  Speaker 1: watch those movies and tell five friends to watch those
• 1:47:23
  Speaker 1: movies or you'll be haunted because this is how we
• 1:47:28
  Speaker 1: changed the world. Also, looking at um, there's also a
• 1:47:31
  Speaker 1: lot of characters that that appear in comics. Um. There's
• 1:47:35
  Speaker 1: a really fabulous mostly indigenous press here in Canada called
• 1:47:39
  Speaker 1: High Water Comics, and they release a lot of comics
• 1:47:41
  Speaker 1: that are either featuring Indigenous characters or Indigenous focused and
• 1:47:48
  Speaker 1: they're all really awesome. That what The one series I
• 1:47:50
  Speaker 1: really like, it's following this girl named Echo and it's
• 1:47:53
  Speaker 1: called The Pemmican Wars and it's a series. I think
• 1:47:57
  Speaker 1: there's maybe about five books in it now, but they're
• 1:48:01
  Speaker 1: really fantastic and I always recommend them to my students
• 1:48:03
  Speaker 1: because Echo is like a very similar character to Eila,
• 1:48:07
  Speaker 1: you know, sort of like a teen girl. She's growing
• 1:48:09
  Speaker 1: up in an urban setting in Winnipeg, and it's just
• 1:48:12
  Speaker 1: they're just fantastic. They're very immersive. Um. There's also some
• 1:48:15
  Speaker 1: video games to that future indigenous characters and storylines that
• 1:48:19
  Speaker 1: past the Ala test Um. So there is media out there,
• 1:48:23
  Speaker 1: but you're right, it is like criminally small and and
• 1:48:26
  Speaker 1: a lot of these are from white directors and creators
• 1:48:30
  Speaker 1: as well. But in any case, um, if you want
• 1:48:34
  Speaker 1: to continue following, we love Ali Naddy and you can
• 1:48:38
  Speaker 1: follow all the updates on media that passes the ALA
• 1:48:41
  Speaker 1: test because they do also discuss graphic novels and comics
• 1:48:44
  Speaker 1: and video games and TV and books even all all
• 1:48:50
  Speaker 1: of which are things we've never heard of in our lives.
• 1:48:52
  Speaker 1: So books, we not big readers that read like everyone's.
• 1:48:58
  Speaker 1: In a while, a listener is going to be like,
• 1:49:00
  Speaker 1: would you read a book, and we were like, we
• 1:49:02
  Speaker 1: would not read a book. Sometimes I get really self conscious.
• 1:49:05
  Speaker 1: I'm like, oh no, I bet listeners of the Betel
• 1:49:07
  Speaker 1: Cast actually think we like never read books, and I
• 1:49:09
  Speaker 1: do want everyone to know that is not true. We
• 1:49:12
  Speaker 1: just the anti buck. We don't cover, but we don't
• 1:49:16
  Speaker 1: have the time to read books. It literally just because
• 1:49:20
  Speaker 1: of the Lord of the Rings episode where they're like,
• 1:49:22
  Speaker 1: you know, you didn't read five trillion pages? Were like,
• 1:49:25
  Speaker 1: I simply didn't. I just I couldn't. I was listening.
• 1:49:28
  Speaker 1: I'm listening to Nicole Buyer and Lauren lap Kiss is
• 1:49:31
  Speaker 1: Newcomers right now and they're talking about Lord of the
• 1:49:34
  Speaker 1: Rings and they're talking about the Hobbit and I read
• 1:49:37
  Speaker 1: that book, and I still like I read that book,
• 1:49:39
  Speaker 1: I watched those movies and like listening to Lauren and
• 1:49:42
  Speaker 1: Nicole talk about I feel like I'm like on the
• 1:49:45
  Speaker 1: same page as then I'm like, Yeah, who are all
• 1:49:47
  Speaker 1: these people? Like? What's that guy's name? What's he doing here? Um? Also,
• 1:49:53
  Speaker 1: just the fact that, like Nicole habitually calls Billboard diplow
• 1:49:59
  Speaker 1: is very good, very choice. I haven't started listening to
• 1:50:03
  Speaker 1: The Lord of the Rings office. I listened to all
• 1:50:04
  Speaker 1: the Star Wars episodes and it's just a great UM.
• 1:50:09
  Speaker 1: But you can for all media. The ALA tests, like
• 1:50:13
  Speaker 1: the backbo test, can be applied to any kind of
• 1:50:15
  Speaker 1: narrative media. UM. And you can find the full list
• 1:50:18
  Speaker 1: in all the updates that the dash ala dash test
• 1:50:21
  Speaker 1: dot tumbler dot com, and and follow Ellie on Twitter.
• 1:50:27
  Speaker 1: She's at Ali naughty n A h d ees how
• 1:50:30
  Speaker 1: you spell her last name? So listen to the Frozen
• 1:50:33
  Speaker 1: two episode you know what to do and then tell
• 1:50:36
  Speaker 1: five people, and then tell five people. Is there anything
• 1:50:40
  Speaker 1: else anyone wants to talk about regarding I mean, I
• 1:50:47
  Speaker 1: still have pages and pages of terrible set statistics, but
• 1:50:51
  Speaker 1: we don't have to get into those. I did want
• 1:50:53
  Speaker 1: to just add that one of the things that I've
• 1:50:55
  Speaker 1: come to appreciate about Ala is that I think that,
• 1:51:00
  Speaker 1: whether it's intentional or not, I think she can be
• 1:51:02
  Speaker 1: read as a queer character. And a lot of that
• 1:51:04
  Speaker 1: has to do with some interpretations of two spirit, which
• 1:51:09
  Speaker 1: is a pen Indigenous term that was adopted in the
• 1:51:12
  Speaker 1: early nineties to describe l g B t Q plus
• 1:51:16
  Speaker 1: indigenous folks. One of the interpretations of two spirit is
• 1:51:21
  Speaker 1: coming out of sort of like an a Jibway perspective,
• 1:51:24
  Speaker 1: is that like you have male and female energy and
• 1:51:27
  Speaker 1: they're balanced. Another interpretation of it, coming more sort of
• 1:51:31
  Speaker 1: from like Eastern Woodlands sort of like more sort of
• 1:51:34
  Speaker 1: like Nigma and show any traditions, is that you walk
• 1:51:37
  Speaker 1: between worlds and that's what it means to be too spirit.
• 1:51:40
  Speaker 1: And so you see that a lot in this film
• 1:51:42
  Speaker 1: where a less sort of doesn't have like stricted boundaries
• 1:51:47
  Speaker 1: in terms of like like the visions that she's having
• 1:51:49
  Speaker 1: of her mom and you know, the dreams that she's having,
• 1:51:53
  Speaker 1: and also you know she sees Tyler at one point
• 1:51:56
  Speaker 1: termed brother. You know, she's sort of having these moments
• 1:52:00
  Speaker 1: where you know, worlds are not. Um. Yeah, she's passing
• 1:52:04
  Speaker 1: sort of between worlds. She's also shape shifting, which is
• 1:52:08
  Speaker 1: also a part of some of the conversations around queer
• 1:52:12
  Speaker 1: identity and from a traditional perspective. Um, so she goes
• 1:52:17
  Speaker 1: from having long braids to having very short hair. She's
• 1:52:22
  Speaker 1: wearing costumes. At one point, she has like that which
• 1:52:25
  Speaker 1: is face like on the back of her head, which
• 1:52:28
  Speaker 1: is like also a very interesting sort of like duality
• 1:52:32
  Speaker 1: in a sense. So, as I've grown with this movie,
• 1:52:37
  Speaker 1: and as I you know, continue to watch it and
• 1:52:40
  Speaker 1: continue to grow in terms of two like my my
• 1:52:42
  Speaker 1: own identity as like a queer trans indigenous person, I
• 1:52:47
  Speaker 1: like understand her better now as also an indigenous character.
• 1:52:51
  Speaker 1: That's so cool. Yeah, And it's it's like it's interesting,
• 1:52:55
  Speaker 1: Like it's it's something that like I don't think I'll
• 1:52:58
  Speaker 1: have to ask Jeff about um, but I don't think
• 1:53:02
  Speaker 1: it was ever intentional because it's never mentioned in anything.
• 1:53:05
  Speaker 1: But yeah, it sort of fits really interestingly in that
• 1:53:07
  Speaker 1: way with a lot of traditional beliefs. I love growing
• 1:53:12
  Speaker 1: with movies. That's the best. There's so many things that
• 1:53:17
  Speaker 1: don't hold up anymore, so it's really nice when you
• 1:53:19
  Speaker 1: can like watch something that's so cherished and you're like, oh, yeah,
• 1:53:28
  Speaker 1: I could still love you. Something interesting too to think
• 1:53:34
  Speaker 1: about in the context of this film is the idea
• 1:53:37
  Speaker 1: of unsettling. Um. So we talked about unsettling in terms
• 1:53:42
  Speaker 1: of like something that disturbs us, right, but we also
• 1:53:45
  Speaker 1: talk about unsettling as the process of decolonizing. You know,
• 1:53:49
  Speaker 1: you're becoming You're not a settler, you're becoming unsettled. And
• 1:53:53
  Speaker 1: I think that this film is such an interesting and
• 1:53:56
  Speaker 1: interesting representation of that of sort of like Jeff Barna
• 1:54:00
  Speaker 1: is leaning into all this very spooky imagery and all
• 1:54:03
  Speaker 1: this very like you know, very graphic imagery, even um
• 1:54:07
  Speaker 1: you know, like you really do see Popper get his
• 1:54:09
  Speaker 1: head blown off, like there's a big check of his
• 1:54:11
  Speaker 1: head missing. Yeah. So there's this sense of sort of
• 1:54:14
  Speaker 1: like this desire to disturb and kind of like upset,
• 1:54:18
  Speaker 1: but also that that's a path to kind of like
• 1:54:22
  Speaker 1: interrupt and get some movement in what can be of
• 1:54:26
  Speaker 1: sometimes a very stagnant conversation with regards to Canadian history
• 1:54:29
  Speaker 1: and indigenous history and in the country. So it's like
• 1:54:33
  Speaker 1: it's it's interesting that that exists in this film in
• 1:54:35
  Speaker 1: that way. And there's also a conversation to have around
• 1:54:38
  Speaker 1: the idea of like revenge or reconciliation. You know, I
• 1:54:42
  Speaker 1: think that, you know, Indigenous people aren't a monolith. There's
• 1:54:45
  Speaker 1: always going to be people who, you know, like we
• 1:54:47
  Speaker 1: were talking about earlier, aren't going to like, you know,
• 1:54:50
  Speaker 1: the type of films that Jeff Barnaby is making, um,
• 1:54:53
  Speaker 1: and there's going to be you know, people who do
• 1:54:55
  Speaker 1: like them that don't like other types of films. And
• 1:54:57
  Speaker 1: then like there's going to be certain types of discourse
• 1:55:00
  Speaker 1: that like certain Indigenous people are going to really support,
• 1:55:02
  Speaker 1: and there's going to be other ones that they don't
• 1:55:04
  Speaker 1: agree with, you know. But it's very interesting this conversation
• 1:55:07
  Speaker 1: is sort of about like revenge versus reconciliation because in
• 1:55:11
  Speaker 1: an interesting way, we can only really decide what we
• 1:55:15
  Speaker 1: ourselves as individuals are going to do. And because of that, Yeah,
• 1:55:19
  Speaker 1: there's so many questions that kind of exist out there
• 1:55:22
  Speaker 1: about like whether that is even like meaningful, you know,
• 1:55:26
  Speaker 1: if it's just like an individual sort of thing. But
• 1:55:29
  Speaker 1: I don't know, I'm a big believer in that, like,
• 1:55:32
  Speaker 1: our individual actions are important. So whether we go to
• 1:55:35
  Speaker 1: the revenge side of things or the reconciliation side of things.
• 1:55:39
  Speaker 1: It's just that we make that choice, you know ultimately
• 1:55:41
  Speaker 1: in the end. Yeah, I think that's kind of kind
• 1:55:45
  Speaker 1: of all I had to say. Oh, I do have
• 1:55:48
  Speaker 1: recommendations please, so if people are interested, and I'll talk
• 1:55:53
  Speaker 1: to you guys more about this off Mike. But if
• 1:55:56
  Speaker 1: people are interested in learning more about indigenous issue, if
• 1:56:00
  Speaker 1: like this episode is like catching you totally off guard
• 1:56:03
  Speaker 1: and you're like, I've never heard of Indians before in
• 1:56:07
  Speaker 1: my life, Um, well, welcome to I don't know where
• 1:56:13
  Speaker 1: you've been living, but congratulations, I guess. But I would
• 1:56:17
  Speaker 1: say that learning about indigenous issues is it as difficult
• 1:56:21
  Speaker 1: as we might think. So much of our school system,
• 1:56:24
  Speaker 1: you know, has been set up in a way that
• 1:56:26
  Speaker 1: maintains wait supremacy. So we have to do a lot
• 1:56:29
  Speaker 1: of the work ourselves, and that can be intimidating, especially
• 1:56:32
  Speaker 1: if you don't know where to start. For both you know,
• 1:56:36
  Speaker 1: Caitlin and you Jamie, like I feel like, you know,
• 1:56:39
  Speaker 1: the process of learning about residential schools this past week,
• 1:56:41
  Speaker 1: even though it's important, like history to learn about I
• 1:56:44
  Speaker 1: imagine it was also very very taxing, because it is
• 1:56:47
  Speaker 1: very taxing because it should be. It's genocide, you know,
• 1:56:52
  Speaker 1: it's not a fun thing to learn about. It's not
• 1:56:54
  Speaker 1: a fun thing to discuss, but it's a necessary thing
• 1:56:56
  Speaker 1: for us to learn about because we have to stop it.
• 1:56:59
  Speaker 1: It's active least still happening, and we have to you know,
• 1:57:03
  Speaker 1: make that decision, that personal decision whether we are are
• 1:57:06
  Speaker 1: going to be with it or against it in the sense.
• 1:57:09
  Speaker 1: So with all that in mind, there are a ton
• 1:57:12
  Speaker 1: of resources out there that exists for folks who are
• 1:57:15
  Speaker 1: interested in learning that are really easy to access free
• 1:57:19
  Speaker 1: even you know, um, and I will uh, you know,
• 1:57:23
  Speaker 1: put together some of those. Um, maybe we can time
• 1:57:26
  Speaker 1: it so that like we'll put like put a bunch
• 1:57:28
  Speaker 1: together for like the release of this episode. We can
• 1:57:31
  Speaker 1: release a resource guide the whole thing for sure, because
• 1:57:33
  Speaker 1: there's like there's so much stuff out there, even like
• 1:57:35
  Speaker 1: really little things like there's an app that you can
• 1:57:38
  Speaker 1: download for free called native Land dot c a um.
• 1:57:41
  Speaker 1: It's a world map and like you essentially use it
• 1:57:45
  Speaker 1: like Google Maps, you look at different locations and it
• 1:57:47
  Speaker 1: tells you whose traditional territory you're living on. And just
• 1:57:50
  Speaker 1: even like little gestures like that are really really important
• 1:57:52
  Speaker 1: because there needs to be that recognition, there needs to
• 1:57:56
  Speaker 1: be that starting point, you know, I think that a
• 1:57:59
  Speaker 1: lot of us feel very attached to the places that
• 1:58:01
  Speaker 1: we grew up in different ways, you know, whether we
• 1:58:03
  Speaker 1: spent physically long periods of time there or whether it's
• 1:58:05
  Speaker 1: a sentimental sort of attachment, and just being able to
• 1:58:09
  Speaker 1: recognize that it's like Okay, that's Migma territory, or that's
• 1:58:12
  Speaker 1: Lenape territory, or that's oh Sage territory, that's you know,
• 1:58:16
  Speaker 1: Sue territory. Then even just understanding that all of a
• 1:58:20
  Speaker 1: sudden can be such an opening of a door, because
• 1:58:23
  Speaker 1: then it's like, oh, when you hear about like protests
• 1:58:27
  Speaker 1: happening at Standing Rock, it's not like, oh, those are nameless,
• 1:58:30
  Speaker 1: faceless like indigenous people protesting. We're not sure what it's like, Oh,
• 1:58:35
  Speaker 1: I get it. Those are like the Coda and Lakoda suit.
• 1:58:41
  Speaker 1: You know, I grew up on Sue Territory. Like, all
• 1:58:43
  Speaker 1: of a sudden, you have a much more personal tie
• 1:58:45
  Speaker 1: to that. There's also tons and tons and tons of
• 1:58:48
  Speaker 1: Indigenous activists at there, people like Pan Palmetter who are
• 1:58:52
  Speaker 1: doing great work and all their stuff is like on
• 1:58:54
  Speaker 1: YouTube and they're acting on social media. So there's like,
• 1:58:58
  Speaker 1: so there is hope, there's you can learn about these things.
• 1:59:01
  Speaker 1: It might be uncomfortable, as any kind of unlearning, unsettling
• 1:59:05
  Speaker 1: process is, but I would really encourage people to do
• 1:59:08
  Speaker 1: that work because you know, we've seen with this past year,
• 1:59:12
  Speaker 1: we cannot continue to live as black, Indigenous and people
• 1:59:16
  Speaker 1: of color like we carry this tremendous weight all the
• 1:59:20
  Speaker 1: time of this violence of this system. You know, even
• 1:59:24
  Speaker 1: though I'm not currently in Nova Scotia, I I am
• 1:59:29
  Speaker 1: connected to the MGMA Nova Scotia right now who are
• 1:59:31
  Speaker 1: fighting for their treaty rights. You know, I am as
• 1:59:35
  Speaker 1: an Indigenous person, I am connected to the struggles of
• 1:59:37
  Speaker 1: other Indigenous people. I'm connected the struggles of black people
• 1:59:40
  Speaker 1: because it's it's all part of the same system, you know,
• 1:59:43
  Speaker 1: And that's why you care, and that's why you have
• 1:59:45
  Speaker 1: to be mobilized, and that's why you have to educate yourself,
• 1:59:47
  Speaker 1: and that's why you have to speak out and and
• 1:59:50
  Speaker 1: try and do better. You know. My grandmother, who was
• 1:59:54
  Speaker 1: migmon Is like was like my anchor for my maigman
• 1:59:56
  Speaker 1: As for a really long time, passed away a couple
• 1:59:58
  Speaker 1: of years ago, and her dying words were I love
• 2:00:03
  Speaker 1: you all. And love is such an important value within
• 2:00:08
  Speaker 1: Magma culture that like I love you all is not
• 2:00:10
  Speaker 1: just talking about I love you all as in like
• 2:00:13
  Speaker 1: the people who are physically in the room there, but
• 2:00:16
  Speaker 1: like love is something that influences all of our actions.
• 2:00:19
  Speaker 1: You know, we have a a lot of intention and
• 2:00:23
  Speaker 1: a lot of thought that goes towards like how we
• 2:00:26
  Speaker 1: are in the world in terms of like how we
• 2:00:28
  Speaker 1: relate to everything, you know, And so yeah, like starting
• 2:00:33
  Speaker 1: to educate yourself is like starting to take responsibility is
• 2:00:37
  Speaker 1: like part of that interconnectedness. Yes, that's like a big taint. No, No,
• 2:00:44
  Speaker 1: I think as as a lot of us, who are
• 2:00:48
  Speaker 1: you know, on a pretty steep learning curve honestly, because
• 2:00:51
  Speaker 1: they're I mean, like we were saying, there's just so
• 2:00:54
  Speaker 1: much of this. I mean, this is just things I
• 2:00:57
  Speaker 1: didn't learn in school. I feel like you hit the
• 2:00:59
  Speaker 1: same three pool points in at least American public schools.
• 2:01:03
  Speaker 1: And that's kind of it. And it's like the information
• 2:01:06
  Speaker 1: is accessible, it's just making the commitment to do it
• 2:01:11
  Speaker 1: like it that is all it is. Yeah, And and
• 2:01:16
  Speaker 1: I was going to say, there's this, um, this fantastic
• 2:01:18
  Speaker 1: film that I just got to see it at the
• 2:01:21
  Speaker 1: Toronto International Film Festival. But we'll hopefully get wide release
• 2:01:25
  Speaker 1: soon and everybody can check it out. It's a documentary
• 2:01:28
  Speaker 1: based on Thomas King's book The Inconvenient Indian, which everybody
• 2:01:32
  Speaker 1: should read. But um, there's this fabulous line in the
• 2:01:35
  Speaker 1: film at the end that is I think sort of
• 2:01:39
  Speaker 1: very emblematic, kind of about this whole conversation, you know.
• 2:01:42
  Speaker 1: And it's essentially, once you know this story, you can't
• 2:01:48
  Speaker 1: unknow it. You just have to live with the fact
• 2:01:50
  Speaker 1: that you know it. Now. So now that you know
• 2:01:53
  Speaker 1: about residential schools, you can't say, oh, well, I didn't know,
• 2:01:57
  Speaker 1: you know, and and therefore it was allowed to go on.
• 2:02:00
  Speaker 1: There are still residential schools open in the United States.
• 2:02:02
  Speaker 1: By the way. I don't know if you guys found
• 2:02:04
  Speaker 1: that in your research, but I did. Yeah. So yeah,
• 2:02:10
  Speaker 1: so it's like, well, now that you know, you know,
• 2:02:12
  Speaker 1: and go forward with that, and you can do it.
• 2:02:15
  Speaker 1: I believe in you. Thanks Jazz. Um. I didn't write
• 2:02:20
  Speaker 1: this quote down, um from a YouTube video. I love
• 2:02:24
  Speaker 1: watching YouTube. I love going to box Office, Mojo dot com,
• 2:02:28
  Speaker 1: Um Classic Kitlin. Yeah. Um. Senator Murray Sinclair said, and
• 2:02:36
  Speaker 1: again I'm going to paraphrase this, but he was talking
• 2:02:39
  Speaker 1: about how people have said to him regarding oppression in
• 2:02:42
  Speaker 1: the residential school system, saying like, you know what that
• 2:02:45
  Speaker 1: was in the past, why can't you just forget it?
• 2:02:47
  Speaker 1: And his response is always why can't you remember? No,
• 2:02:51
  Speaker 1: And that's just it. And like I said, you know
• 2:02:53
  Speaker 1: um earlier in our conversation, like these things are still
• 2:02:56
  Speaker 1: impacting us today. I still have friends who, you know,
• 2:02:59
  Speaker 1: grew up in the foster care system. I still have
• 2:03:02
  Speaker 1: friends whose parents were in residential school I. You know,
• 2:03:05
  Speaker 1: this is an ancient history and that's the most fundamental
• 2:03:09
  Speaker 1: thing is that, you know, so often we portray Indigenous
• 2:03:12
  Speaker 1: people as being relics and being like of the past.
• 2:03:15
  Speaker 1: And even when I was growing up, I was like,
• 2:03:18
  Speaker 1: I feel like the most like contact I had with
• 2:03:20
  Speaker 1: Indigenous culture was like a racist diorama at like a
• 2:03:23
  Speaker 1: history museum, you know, And we have to remind ourselves
• 2:03:28
  Speaker 1: that like, Indigenous people still exist and colonialism still exists,
• 2:03:34
  Speaker 1: and ignoring it is what we have been doing and
• 2:03:38
  Speaker 1: that has not been effective. So yeah, so it it
• 2:03:41
  Speaker 1: is like it is something that like I think people
• 2:03:45
  Speaker 1: especially here in Canada, are very are starting to become
• 2:03:49
  Speaker 1: a lot more aware of. But it's it feels sometimes
• 2:03:52
  Speaker 1: like such a slow process. You know that, like I
• 2:03:55
  Speaker 1: wish everybody could get a copy of Tom King's Inconvenient
• 2:03:59
  Speaker 1: Indian and a cop you of like uh rhymes for
• 2:04:02
  Speaker 1: young ghouls and it's like this is your homework, like citizen,
• 2:04:06
  Speaker 1: you know, like this is what you have to do
• 2:04:07
  Speaker 1: this weekend. Well to speak to that, and what our
• 2:04:11
  Speaker 1: podcast is about is that, like you know, there's so
• 2:04:14
  Speaker 1: much erasure of Indigenous people in media. There's so much
• 2:04:19
  Speaker 1: just ignoring the existence of them. That because mass media
• 2:04:25
  Speaker 1: is how so many people, especially today, learn things, and
• 2:04:28
  Speaker 1: people learn things by going to the movies and seeing
• 2:04:31
  Speaker 1: a movie about a thing. That again just speaks to
• 2:04:35
  Speaker 1: why it's so important for their needing to be space
• 2:04:40
  Speaker 1: made for indigenous filmmakers to tell their stories and for
• 2:04:44
  Speaker 1: those films money invested in as well. It's important that
• 2:04:50
  Speaker 1: we eat as individuals that we are going to seek
• 2:04:53
  Speaker 1: this out, but the fact that you have to seek
• 2:04:56
  Speaker 1: it out speaks to there not being enough money behind
• 2:04:58
  Speaker 1: it either because it's I don't need to seek out,
• 2:05:02
  Speaker 1: you know, like she I don't even want to see,
• 2:05:05
  Speaker 1: like I didn't. You know, there's constantly money thrown in
• 2:05:09
  Speaker 1: our faces of things we have no interest in where
• 2:05:13
  Speaker 1: you know, to find rhymes for uncles. You have to
• 2:05:15
  Speaker 1: look for it, um, and you have to you know,
• 2:05:19
  Speaker 1: it has to be a word of mouth situation and
• 2:05:22
  Speaker 1: there needs to be yeah, an increased investment. Uh, and
• 2:05:27
  Speaker 1: and not just like these it needs to be so mad. Yeah, no,
• 2:05:31
  Speaker 1: it's it's really true. Um. Is there anything left to discuss?
• 2:05:36
  Speaker 1: Are we at the test portion of the show? Well,
• 2:05:40
  Speaker 1: we know it certainly passes the ala test because it's
• 2:05:45
  Speaker 1: ala um. Although ala Uh is almost raped at the
• 2:05:52
  Speaker 1: very end of the movie, and I guess I had
• 2:05:56
  Speaker 1: this in my note where you get I mean, she's
• 2:05:59
  Speaker 1: technically rescued in that moment, but it doesn't bother me.
• 2:06:04
  Speaker 1: We know her so well, we have seen her overcome
• 2:06:08
  Speaker 1: and plant. I mean, I was totally fine with it, um,
• 2:06:13
  Speaker 1: but that didn't even occur to me as a rescue
• 2:06:15
  Speaker 1: almost like I was. It didn't just the I think, technically,
• 2:06:20
  Speaker 1: but it's so badass, it's so cool and I don't know, um,
• 2:06:25
  Speaker 1: So we know it passes the alt test for sure.
• 2:06:27
  Speaker 1: I was going to say in terms of like that
• 2:06:28
  Speaker 1: that rescue see at the end, because I had the
• 2:06:30
  Speaker 1: same thought, and I think that the reason that it's
• 2:06:32
  Speaker 1: JUGI each that shoots Popper is because he is like
• 2:06:35
  Speaker 1: an actually like a student at the school, and we've
• 2:06:38
  Speaker 1: seen like Popper talking in like the boy's dormitory about
• 2:06:41
  Speaker 1: like you know, you do this and you'll get beat,
• 2:06:43
  Speaker 1: and you do this and you'll get beat. So I
• 2:06:45
  Speaker 1: think that it had to be JUGI each in a way,
• 2:06:46
  Speaker 1: like pulling the trigger at the end as like a
• 2:06:49
  Speaker 1: symbolic thing like and so I don't necessarily see it
• 2:06:52
  Speaker 1: as a rescue either. I think you're both right on that,
• 2:06:55
  Speaker 1: and it can and that kind of completes his small
• 2:06:58
  Speaker 1: but significant arc in the story too. I love he's
• 2:07:02
  Speaker 1: just staying. I gotta find out what that kid's doing.
• 2:07:05
  Speaker 1: I know, what does he up to? Does he have
• 2:07:06
  Speaker 1: his own franchise yet? What's going on with them? And
• 2:07:10
  Speaker 1: then he gets the closing line. Anything he does passes
• 2:07:14
  Speaker 1: the Bechtel test before um. But does I believe that,
• 2:07:18
  Speaker 1: Kaitlin I I had this movie passing the Picktel test. Yes.
• 2:07:22
  Speaker 1: Between um. There's a scene at the end where Ailea
• 2:07:27
  Speaker 1: and her she's watching sort of like her own flashback
• 2:07:32
  Speaker 1: from Afar. Towards the end of the movie where she
• 2:07:35
  Speaker 1: and her mom on are painting something by firelight and
• 2:07:39
  Speaker 1: they're kind of discussing what they're painting and why and
• 2:07:42
  Speaker 1: just right. And then it also passes between Aila in
• 2:07:49
  Speaker 1: um series, I think when she relates the story about
• 2:07:53
  Speaker 1: the wolf. Yeah, in that whole conversation. So yeah, definitely
• 2:07:58
  Speaker 1: Bechtel tests passing. Yeah, it uh, And like that's another
• 2:08:03
  Speaker 1: reason that, like, I was so excited to talk about
• 2:08:06
  Speaker 1: this film because I was, like, I know that it
• 2:08:07
  Speaker 1: passes the Bechdel test because I was watching it with
• 2:08:10
  Speaker 1: that intention, you know, seven years ago. So that's that's awesome. Um.
• 2:08:17
  Speaker 1: And then that's uh, that brings us to our nipple
• 2:08:19
  Speaker 1: scales zero to five nipples based on examining the movie
• 2:08:23
  Speaker 1: from an intersectional feminist lens, and m it's gonna I
• 2:08:29
  Speaker 1: mean it's very high. I mean I feel like it
• 2:08:33
  Speaker 1: could be a five nipple situation. Yeah, I think so,
• 2:08:39
  Speaker 1: and I'm interested to hear what. I feel like I'm
• 2:08:42
  Speaker 1: tralling you guys in the video and nobody can see it.
• 2:08:46
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's five nipples for me. But I also
• 2:08:48
  Speaker 1: feel like I'm a little bit biased, because I mean,
• 2:08:52
  Speaker 1: I just this film has meant so much throughout the years,
• 2:08:54
  Speaker 1: and I love it so much, and just you know,
• 2:08:57
  Speaker 1: have a badass Migma female Harold in yeah, like yeah, yeah,
• 2:09:03
  Speaker 1: I don't really have any like notes for there's nothing
• 2:09:08
  Speaker 1: that like rubbed me wrong or and show me a
• 2:09:11
  Speaker 1: more motivated female protagonist with more autonomy's running the show
• 2:09:19
  Speaker 1: and with higher stakes. I mean this that it's wonderful
• 2:09:22
  Speaker 1: and and again that that phrase narrative sovereignty UM and
• 2:09:27
  Speaker 1: having this be an indigenous filmmaker writing, directing, editing this
• 2:09:32
  Speaker 1: amazing character. Who Yeah, I have no notes. I think
• 2:09:38
  Speaker 1: the more we talk about it, I do feel like
• 2:09:40
  Speaker 1: it is very squarely a coming of age film of sorts,
• 2:09:44
  Speaker 1: just not the tone we're used to um in that genre.
• 2:09:48
  Speaker 1: But it's it's such like you said, just it's such
• 2:09:51
  Speaker 1: a singular movie, and we are seeing a community that
• 2:09:58
  Speaker 1: is almost never represented in movies. And on top of that,
• 2:10:02
  Speaker 1: we're seeing Aila who is not just dealing with systemic
• 2:10:05
  Speaker 1: oppression and as it pertains to being indigenous, she's also
• 2:10:09
  Speaker 1: experiencing sexism within her own community and navigating that and
• 2:10:14
  Speaker 1: just navigating all this stuff. And she, you know, is
• 2:10:18
  Speaker 1: not a Mary step character. She makes mistakes. She just
• 2:10:22
  Speaker 1: I just yeah, I feel it's it's five nips for me.
• 2:10:28
  Speaker 1: The plan where they're like, you know what, We're gonna
• 2:10:31
  Speaker 1: make ship shower down upon this guy and then steal
• 2:10:35
  Speaker 1: try to steal the money. Like their plan wasn't maybe
• 2:10:38
  Speaker 1: like Danny Ocean could never never, he could never. Like
• 2:10:45
  Speaker 1: it's great, and the catharsis of it is great, but
• 2:10:48
  Speaker 1: I'm just like, like like he's right there, he knows that
• 2:10:51
  Speaker 1: you're there. Maybe like steal the money first and then
• 2:10:55
  Speaker 1: like you know, just like like teen it's like teenagers.
• 2:10:59
  Speaker 1: Of course they're going to come up with a bit
• 2:11:01
  Speaker 1: of a hair brained plan and it works. So yeah,
• 2:11:05
  Speaker 1: and it's so rewarding too, because the ship Like at
• 2:11:08
  Speaker 1: one point when they're putting the ship like in the van,
• 2:11:10
  Speaker 1: like getting ready to go to the school, they're like, yeah,
• 2:11:13
  Speaker 1: everybody contributed, and I can just like I can just
• 2:11:16
  Speaker 1: picture like everybody everybody just been like, oh, oh you
• 2:11:20
  Speaker 1: need some ship you need like yeah, And it's just
• 2:11:25
  Speaker 1: like the fact that it's like a community effort to
• 2:11:28
  Speaker 1: like shoot on this opie. The crowd starts the ship.
• 2:11:32
  Speaker 1: It's and that's sequence we didn't talk about it too much,
• 2:11:36
  Speaker 1: but that sequence is it's just like another way this
• 2:11:39
  Speaker 1: movie is so cool where there's I mean understandably. So
• 2:11:42
  Speaker 1: there's so many very very emotionally heavy scenes and the
• 2:11:47
  Speaker 1: plotlines in this movie, and then for this, I mean,
• 2:11:50
  Speaker 1: it fits very well inside of what the movie is,
• 2:11:54
  Speaker 1: but it's also this moment of like you're in Oceans
• 2:11:57
  Speaker 1: eleven for a second, but if it fits very clearly
• 2:12:00
  Speaker 1: inside this world, and it's like fun and they win
• 2:12:04
  Speaker 1: and it's exciting, and it's just that sequence is so cool.
• 2:12:10
  Speaker 1: I mean and even just like we talked about the
• 2:12:12
  Speaker 1: little bit of criticism or like some pushback that Jeff
• 2:12:15
  Speaker 1: Barnaby received, like from his own community, like are you
• 2:12:18
  Speaker 1: really going to like show these stereotypes, which again, like
• 2:12:22
  Speaker 1: I don't. I this is an exploration of what like
• 2:12:26
  Speaker 1: systemic racism and oppression does to an Indigenous community, does
• 2:12:29
  Speaker 1: to families, and does two individuals, and like that's this
• 2:12:33
  Speaker 1: is just an authentic story about this young woman, this
• 2:12:37
  Speaker 1: teenage girl, and it's just an incredibly crafted and told story.
• 2:12:44
  Speaker 1: What more could ask like it? I'm so glad you're like,
• 2:12:48
  Speaker 1: because I think there's also like this nervousness on my
• 2:12:50
  Speaker 1: part of like I'm like, oh no, what if they
• 2:12:53
  Speaker 1: don't like it, I'm gonna have to sit on this
• 2:12:57
  Speaker 1: call and like explain like why it's a brilliant film.
• 2:13:01
  Speaker 1: But I'm so glad you guys liked it, and and
• 2:13:03
  Speaker 1: and yeah, and thank you so much for this opportunity
• 2:13:06
  Speaker 1: and for holding this space for indigenous film and for
• 2:13:09
  Speaker 1: me and for Ala and yeah, thank you so much.
• 2:13:13
  Speaker 1: Thank you for being here and providing all your insights,
• 2:13:19
  Speaker 1: information everything. Thank you so much, extremely grateful and just
• 2:13:24
  Speaker 1: like stoked that you're on the show. Thank you, And
• 2:13:27
  Speaker 1: do come back for Blood Quantum or any movie that
• 2:13:30
  Speaker 1: you want any time, anytime. Um, I will come back
• 2:13:34
  Speaker 1: to read for Jacob Black. I will go back to
• 2:13:37
  Speaker 1: talk about native stuff. I'll come back to talk about
• 2:13:39
  Speaker 1: non native stuff. I can talk about trands stuff too.
• 2:13:42
  Speaker 1: I can talk about horror genre stuff. I love it all.
• 2:13:46
  Speaker 1: So I can talk about films made on the East
• 2:13:49
  Speaker 1: Coast of Canada that are exclusively about fishing and or cancer. Okay,
• 2:13:54
  Speaker 1: I can talk about all of it. Um. Finally, we've
• 2:13:58
  Speaker 1: our listeners have been like, both, what about movies in
• 2:14:01
  Speaker 1: the East Coast of Canada that are about fishing or
• 2:14:04
  Speaker 1: maybe cancer? It's I say that as a joke, but
• 2:14:07
  Speaker 1: I was a programmer for the Atlantic Film Festival for
• 2:14:09
  Speaker 1: a couple of years and that is a genre all
• 2:14:12
  Speaker 1: into itself and in like the Atlantic region, you know,
• 2:14:15
  Speaker 1: is so cool. I love it well, Jess, thank you
• 2:14:21
  Speaker 1: again so much for being here. Yes, this is so fun.
• 2:14:23
  Speaker 1: Where can people follow you online? Check out your stuff?
• 2:14:26
  Speaker 1: Anything else you want to plug people can? People should
• 2:14:29
  Speaker 1: follow me on Instagram at underscore rad Underscore Babe, underscore
• 2:14:36
  Speaker 1: um where you just search Jeff Merwin. Um. That's sort
• 2:14:40
  Speaker 1: of the aggregate of like everything gets put. I don't
• 2:14:43
  Speaker 1: have Twitter anymore because people were too mean, and so
• 2:14:46
  Speaker 1: that's just that's really the only social media I do.
• 2:14:49
  Speaker 1: You know, good people should just check it out there.
• 2:14:52
  Speaker 1: I have a website Jeff Merwin dot com. But really
• 2:14:54
  Speaker 1: just check out my Instagram. I post everything on there anyway.
• 2:14:57
  Speaker 1: Cool so you get to see my cat, yes, cremlin
• 2:15:01
  Speaker 1: and icon. So your Instagram account passes the Caitlin test.
• 2:15:06
  Speaker 1: And that's really the goal at the end of the day,
• 2:15:08
  Speaker 1: you know, Yeah, we're all trying to really do. I
• 2:15:12
  Speaker 1: feel like that's it's about it, you know, can anymore?
• 2:15:20
  Speaker 1: I think I'm more I follow more cat accounts than
• 2:15:23
  Speaker 1: human accounts. I was like, Caitlin, I feel like your
• 2:15:25
  Speaker 1: your account pat well, you've plused cats. Whenever your cat sitting. Yes,
• 2:15:29
  Speaker 1: I have. All my Instagram stories are always about cats.
• 2:15:33
  Speaker 1: So my cat is having a really complicated day today.
• 2:15:36
  Speaker 1: I was like, just trying to figure him out. He
• 2:15:39
  Speaker 1: really want I think he wants another cat friend. I
• 2:15:42
  Speaker 1: think because there's neighborhood we there's a lot of alley
• 2:15:45
  Speaker 1: cats in our neighborhood, and my my neighbor like feeds them.
• 2:15:48
  Speaker 1: It's like a whole ecosystem. But we will just sit
• 2:15:51
  Speaker 1: at the door in the mornings and just me out
• 2:15:53
  Speaker 1: until a cat comes to talk to him. And I
• 2:15:56
  Speaker 1: was like, he loves other cats, he wants a cat.
• 2:15:59
  Speaker 1: Shame get an other cats. Sunny Sunny ignores him and
• 2:16:04
  Speaker 1: he's always trying to play with him, and Sonny's like
• 2:16:08
  Speaker 1: the whole thing. I think you should definitely get into
• 2:16:10
  Speaker 1: the cat. I've been thinking the same thing too though,
• 2:16:13
  Speaker 1: because I travel a lot for work and so Kremlin
• 2:16:17
  Speaker 1: Kremlin stays at home a lot of the times. Some
• 2:16:20
  Speaker 1: cats are loners, but it's but sea cat crave other
• 2:16:24
  Speaker 1: cat company is like it would be it would be
• 2:16:26
  Speaker 1: cruel because I think they live in packs, right, Like
• 2:16:29
  Speaker 1: cats in the wild tend to live in packs. So
• 2:16:31
  Speaker 1: I think I mean one cat to cat, there's not
• 2:16:34
  Speaker 1: that much difference, just you know, I think it really
• 2:16:37
  Speaker 1: only changes when you sort of get up around like five, six,
• 2:16:39
  Speaker 1: seven cats. Then it's like whoa, then you have you
• 2:16:42
  Speaker 1: might have a problem. Then it's like at that point
• 2:16:47
  Speaker 1: you very firmly know who saved two and it was
• 2:16:52
  Speaker 1: not Jesus. But like four cats are less, that's reasonable. Yeah, yeah,
• 2:17:00
  Speaker 1: cats is nothing. Although Edward Gory, the children's author, I love,
• 2:17:06
  Speaker 1: I adore him. I want to be him when I
• 2:17:08
  Speaker 1: grow up, because he just walked around in for coats
• 2:17:11
  Speaker 1: and like rings and he had always had five cats.
• 2:17:14
  Speaker 1: And he always had five cats because he said, you
• 2:17:16
  Speaker 1: have to have an uneven number of cats because otherwise
• 2:17:18
  Speaker 1: they get too organized, and you can't have more than
• 2:17:20
  Speaker 1: five cats because it just gets out of hand. So
• 2:17:24
  Speaker 1: I think that's advice to live back him. I have.
• 2:17:27
  Speaker 1: I have Edward Gory cat wine glasses. It's the whole thing.
• 2:17:30
  Speaker 1: I love him so much. Oh gosh, well, I guess
• 2:17:36
  Speaker 1: you can follow us media. Sorry we to start talking about.
• 2:17:42
  Speaker 1: Follow me at Caitlin Durante on Instagram and check out
• 2:17:45
  Speaker 1: all my saved stories because they're all cats doing funny
• 2:17:49
  Speaker 1: things set to music. That's what I want to plug today. Um.
• 2:17:54
  Speaker 1: And also you can follow the Bactel Cast on Twitter
• 2:17:56
  Speaker 1: and Instagram at bectel Cast. We've got our Patreon aka Matreon,
• 2:18:02
  Speaker 1: which is at patreon dot com slash pecktel Cast and
• 2:18:06
  Speaker 1: that is five dollars a month and that gives you
• 2:18:10
  Speaker 1: two bonus episodes every month as well as access to
• 2:18:14
  Speaker 1: the entire back catalog. And it's November, so after many
• 2:18:19
  Speaker 1: years of avoiding it, we're doing Mary Kate and Ashley
• 2:18:22
  Speaker 1: month bomb the Matreon. Amazing, amazing. My sister loved those
• 2:18:26
  Speaker 1: movies growing up. I'm like, I think I love none
• 2:18:29
  Speaker 1: of them, but and yet I've seen all of them.
• 2:18:32
  Speaker 1: Oh that's very much where I find myself. Just like,
• 2:18:35
  Speaker 1: how do I know the song the intro song to
• 2:18:37
  Speaker 1: like Mary Kate Nashley Mysteries? Right? And then you're like, wait,
• 2:18:40
  Speaker 1: I have no attachment to this, and yet it's so
• 2:18:43
  Speaker 1: osmosis onto you that you can't avoid it. We're doing it,
• 2:18:47
  Speaker 1: We're doing it, and uh yeah, our t public dot
• 2:18:50
  Speaker 1: com slash the Pectel Castle where you can get all
• 2:18:53
  Speaker 1: of our merch and be kind to each other. Get
• 2:18:57
  Speaker 1: out there, do some mutual aid educate yourselves. We will
• 2:18:59
  Speaker 1: be releasing resources at the same time as this episode.
• 2:19:04
  Speaker 1: And do the damn work and people, or you'll die,
• 2:19:10
  Speaker 1: or you will die. Something to keep in mind. Bye
• 2:19:14
  Speaker 1: bye bye