Latest / The Bechdel Cast / Rhymes for Young Ghouls with Jess Murwin: The Re-release

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Rhymes for Young Ghouls with Jess Murwin: The Re-release · The Bechdel Cast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: On the Bechdelcast.
• 0:02
  Speaker 2: The questions asked if movies have.
• 0:04
  Speaker 3: Women and them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands,
• 0:08
  Speaker 3: or do they have individualism? It's the patriarchy, zeph and
• 0:12
  Speaker 3: best start changing with the Bechdel Cast.
• 0:16
  Speaker 4: Hello Bechdel Cast listeners. Hello, here we are.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: Bet you didn't expect to hear us today. Well here
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: we are. Well, here we are fake holiday. So we're
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: clocking in.
• 0:28
  Speaker 4: We're clocking in, and we are re releasing an episode
• 0:32
  Speaker 4: on Rhymes fore Young Gruls, which we recorded back in
• 0:35
  Speaker 4: twenty twenty, kind of in the height of lockdown, if
• 0:38
  Speaker 4: I remember correctly.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: Yes, In fact, the day this episode originally came out,
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: I was arrested at a protest. Just to set us
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: in time and place. I had kind of a fun
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: physical response to revisiting this.
• 0:53
  Speaker 4: Episode, right, yes, oh my gosh. So yeah, we're re
• 0:56
  Speaker 4: releasing this episode on the day that a lot of
• 1:01
  Speaker 4: people still observe as American Thanksgiving, which which these days,
• 1:05
  Speaker 4: I you know. More, it is more widely understood that
• 1:09
  Speaker 4: the popular narrative around this quote unquote holiday is completely false,
• 1:16
  Speaker 4: and that it actually celebrates genocide and settler colonialism.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: Is very much in conversation with Columbus Day for that
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: same reason.
• 1:27
  Speaker 4: You know, the the.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: American celebration of genocide that is just really relentless. I
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: agree that, like people are coming around to acknowledging it,
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: but it's.
• 1:36
  Speaker 5: Still you know, it's here, it is, and I.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: We wanted to both re release an episode that we
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: really love with a guest that you if you're a
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: longtime listener of the show, you're very familiar with Jess
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: Merwin talking about an indigenous film that does not shy
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: away from these themes and is very rooted in Canadian
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: reservation schools. So if you haven't seen the movie yet,
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: this is a great week to maybe watch the movie
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: and then listen to our conversation. But we wanted to
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: just yeah, pop in at the top and make a
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: few notes in about the half decade that's passed.
• 2:18
  Speaker 4: Indeed. Yes, So during this episode we talk about a
• 2:22
  Speaker 4: media metric called the Ala Test that was inspired by
• 2:26
  Speaker 4: the main character of this movie and that was originated
• 2:30
  Speaker 4: by friend of the show, Ali Noddy. Since this episode
• 2:34
  Speaker 4: was released, that test has been renamed to the Ali
• 2:37
  Speaker 4: Naughty Test. So if you're trying to look up the
• 2:41
  Speaker 4: Ala Test or whatever, the name has changed, but it's
• 2:45
  Speaker 4: the same metric that examines representation of Indigenous women in media.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: So shout out Ali. We love Ali she Rocks.
• 2:54
  Speaker 4: Be sure to check her out on social media her
• 2:57
  Speaker 4: YouTube channel. She's doing excellent work. And then we wanted
• 3:03
  Speaker 4: to provide a content warning because both our discussion and
• 3:07
  Speaker 4: the context of the movie involve things like sexual and
• 3:12
  Speaker 4: physical violence, child sex abuse, suicide, just so listeners are
• 3:18
  Speaker 4: aware of that.
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: Absolutely, and also for what it's worth, Unfortunately, since we
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: recorded this, the filmmaker has passed. Jeff Barnaby passed away
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: a couple of years ago. Yeah, so yeah, definitely. I mean,
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: as you'll hear, it's a movie that we have a
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: lot of love for and also for what it's worth,
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: I mean, we fully intent and would love to hear
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: other Indigenous and Native filmmakers that you would like for
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: us to cover on the show. This is not something
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: that we want to just discuss once a year, and
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: so if you have requests for or just favorite indigenous filmmakers,
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: If you are an Indigenous filmmaker and would like to
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: come on the show, just reach out d m us.
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: That's honestly the easiest way to do it yeah on Instagram,
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: and yes, if you are with family today, best of
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: luck with that. And yeah, and also that we are
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: going to be making a contribution this week to the
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: Native Women's Collection. Will also you know, we can link
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: that in the description as well.
• 4:20
  Speaker 4: Absolutely. In the meantime, please enjoy this slightly abridged version
• 4:27
  Speaker 4: of this episode. I went back through and just edited
• 4:31
  Speaker 4: a little bit and made sure we really focused on
• 4:35
  Speaker 4: the movie at hand and didn't go into tirades about
• 4:39
  Speaker 4: me talking about cat nipples, for example, So that stuff
• 4:43
  Speaker 4: from the original episode has been trimmed out a bit.
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: But but listen to the original if you want the
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: full cut.
• 4:52
  Speaker 4: It's so true. But yeah, enjoy this re released episode
• 4:55
  Speaker 4: on Rhymes for Young Guls cast.
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm really excited for today's episode and for our guest.
• 5:03
  Speaker 4: Yes, our guest today is a non binary, mixed race
• 5:07
  Speaker 4: MIGMA artist, curator and educator. Their work focuses on reclaiming
• 5:12
  Speaker 4: narrative space and fusing genre with social justice and holding
• 5:16
  Speaker 4: space collaboration. You also might have heard and seen them
• 5:20
  Speaker 4: on our recent live reading of Twilight. It is Jess Merwin.
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: Hi, Hi, welcome, Thank you for having me. I this
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: is like a dream come true. Quite literally, this is wonderful.
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: I'm so happy to be here.
• 5:38
  Speaker 4: Yay, We're so happy to have you.
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I really like can't wait to talk about this,
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: this weird native movie that nobody's heard of.
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: We're really excited to talk about it because it was
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: originally recommended to us by Ali, who spoke about it
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: when Ali came on to discuss Frozen two a couple
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: of months ago podcast. Canonically, I think, what is time?
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: I've lost all.
• 6:07
  Speaker 4: Definitely is it.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: But yeah, Ali brought this movie to us originally, and
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: we were kind of tipped off about this movie.
• 6:20
  Speaker 6: I guess we should just say the name of the movie.
• 6:22
  Speaker 6: I don't know what we're being No, it's a secret
• 6:24
  Speaker 6: about We were talking, of course, about Rhymes for Young Gules,
• 6:31
  Speaker 6: a Jeff Barnaby movie from twenty and thirteen, and the
• 6:36
  Speaker 6: reason we're talking about it with Ali was first of all,
• 6:39
  Speaker 6: because it's a movie that Ali's a big fan of,
• 6:41
  Speaker 6: but also because it was the basis for the Ala Test,
• 6:46
  Speaker 6: which is the test that Ali created.
• 6:48
  Speaker 4: Yes, and we'll talk about that in a little bit,
• 6:51
  Speaker 4: But first, Jess, what's your relationship with Rhymes for Young Gules?
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: Oh Man so growing up in like the eighties and
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: nineties as a mixed race like Migma kid. So I
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: don't I didn't grow up in Reserve, and I'm Migma
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: through my mother's mother, through my grandmother, and she had
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: been she was orphaned at a very young age, so
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: she didn't really grow up in a like a traditional
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: sort of way in terms of like learning how to
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: do a lot of like traditional Magma things. So, you know,
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: I was growing up with this like identity that was
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: very unresolved in a lot of ways, and I felt
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: like very conflicted about because it's you know, being white passing,
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: but also being like I'm also an indigenous person and
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: didn't really know how I like fit. And on top
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: of that, being queer and being trans and just dealing
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: with like a lot of other stuff meant that I
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: ended up feeling like I couldn't really like claim to anything.
• 7:54
  Speaker 3: You know.
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: It was just sort of like it's it's too much.
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: You can't be queer and native and you know, mentally ill,
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: it's just like too many things. So so when this
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: film came out, I had just been back in Canada
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: for a couple of years because I spent some time
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: living overseas and it was like, we have this expression
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: of trench. It's like a kut food, like a lightning strike,
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: and like we use it a lot, like when you're
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: like fall in love at first sight or when you
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: get like an idea, and it was almost like that
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: for seeing this film. You know, I was in my
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: sort of early twenties and just moved back to Canada
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: or like recent moved back to Canada and was sort
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: of like, oh my god, here's like a film about
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: Migma people with people speaking Magma and it's like the
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: first time that I'm ever seeing this, and all of
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: a sudden it sort of is like this way of
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: starting to reconnect with Magma culture, like all of a
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: sudden sort of like seeing this film and being like,
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: oh my god, there is this part of me that's
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: like that feels something so profound in just like hearing
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: people speak Migma and seeing that represented on the screen.
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: And then and we'll talk about this a little bit,
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: but there was so much other stuff going on in
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: terms of like indigenous rights and Indigenous culture at that time,
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: and so it was like this was really the catalyst
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: for me like reconnecting in a big way to yeah,
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: to to sort of like Migmaness.
• 9:27
  Speaker 4: That's incredible and one of so many examples we see
• 9:34
  Speaker 4: of why representation is so important.
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: It's amazing.
• 9:39
  Speaker 4: Yeah, my relationship with this movie is it was not
• 9:44
  Speaker 4: super on my radar until I knew about.
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: A few months Blood Quantum. I did not know about
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: rhymes for youngl How did you.
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: Know about bood Quantum, Jamie.
• 9:54
  Speaker 4: I don't know.
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  Speaker 1: I think it was just I was paying closer attention
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: to movies that were coming out last year than I
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: was in twenty thirteen and twenty fourteen. But then when
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: Ali brought up rhymes for young gouls instead of with
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: the same director, I was like, oh and cool. Yeah.
• 10:10
  Speaker 4: I think we did have a couple listeners as well
• 10:12
  Speaker 4: recommend this movie to us, So it's been on our
• 10:16
  Speaker 4: kind of watch list, our list of movies to cover.
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think for our like horror movies last year
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: in the request it popped up a couple of times,
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: and maybe that was why I was familiar with it.
• 10:26
  Speaker 4: Yeah, but I'm happy to have seen the movie now.
• 10:30
  Speaker 4: I watched it three times. But yeah, I'm so excited
• 10:36
  Speaker 4: to talk about it. Should we dive into the recap? Yeah,
• 10:43
  Speaker 4: let's do it all, right, So we open with text
• 10:47
  Speaker 4: at the beginning describing the law in Canada that states
• 10:51
  Speaker 4: that every Indigenous child between the age of five and
• 10:54
  Speaker 4: sixteen must attend an Indian residential school. There are true
• 11:00
  Speaker 4: ruined officers who more or less police the schools and
• 11:03
  Speaker 4: the community, and who are responsible for bringing into custody
• 11:08
  Speaker 4: more or less any child who is absent from school,
• 11:11
  Speaker 4: and they are allowed to use force to do.
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: That, any force that they see necessary.
• 11:17
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yep, So we're starting off.
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: Chill legal wording that was Yeah, yep.
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: So that's an excerpt from the Indian Act. And we
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: can talk a little bit more about this in terms
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: of like context for the film, because there's a lot
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: to talk about because it's an act that's been around
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: since essentially the beginning of Canada, since confederation in eighteen
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: sixty seven, and it still exists today. So that's cool.
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: But yeah, so that's an actual law that essentially governs
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: all of the federal government's interactions with Indigenous people. So
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: to say it's racist is a little bit of an understatement.
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: And this kind of like opening package that Jeff is
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: chosen here kind of helps like highlight a lot of
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: the issues with the Indian.
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: Act, absolutely, and I feel like we goofy Americans have
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: a tendency to really romanticize Canada as this place of
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: justice that it you know, clearly is not. And so
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: I mean, even just from the beginning frame of the movie,
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: you're just like, yeah, no, we are desperate to feel
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: a way about Canada that is not true.
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: No, no. And it's one of those things too that like,
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: you know, don't get me wrong, we have like legal
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: weed and free healthcare, so pretty you know, things are
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: pretty good. But on the other hand, yeah, we do
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: still have a lot of the systemic racism and discrimination
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: that exists in the United States, and like Canadians are
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: you know, aren't necessarily all like super polite and super
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: for you know, courteous, Like there's I think that we
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: have this sort of angel complex with regards to the
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: rest of the world where we're like, oh, we're perfect,
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: We're not the United States, and it's like.
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: Oh, the bar is on the floor, like.
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: All the Native people in the back are like, m well,
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: I don't know about that.
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, have you read that law lately?
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah? Or even just the fact that like since this
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: year there's been like a half dozen high profile killings
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: of Indigenous people, either at the hands of police or
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: at the hands of our medical system. You know that
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: sins like January horrifying.
• 13:39
  Speaker 4: So yeah, So we open on the movie. It is
• 13:45
  Speaker 4: nineteen sixty nine. We are on a fictional reserve called
• 13:50
  Speaker 4: the Red Crow Indian Reservation. We meet a Migma family,
• 13:56
  Speaker 4: including young Ala. She's a little girl who loved to
• 13:59
  Speaker 4: try and she usually draws kind of like morbid horror
• 14:04
  Speaker 4: imagery of like zombies and ghoules and whatnot. She has
• 14:08
  Speaker 4: a little brother, Tyler. We meet her mother, Anna, and
• 14:12
  Speaker 4: her father Joseph, as well as her uncle Berner. They
• 14:17
  Speaker 4: are all drug dealers on the reserve. When then one night,
• 14:21
  Speaker 4: the adults they're all smoking weed, they're drinking heavily, and
• 14:26
  Speaker 4: then a bunch of tragic things happen kind of all
• 14:29
  Speaker 4: at once, where AILA's mother accidentally kills her little brother
• 14:34
  Speaker 4: Tyler in a drunk driving accident, and then her mother
• 14:38
  Speaker 4: kills herself. Her father takes the blame for it and
• 14:42
  Speaker 4: is taken away to prison.
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: So that's put in like the first ten minutes of
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: this movie that we're talking about on a humorous podcast.
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: You know, and it doesn't. I think that there's like
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: a lot of stuff even in that that we should
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: talk about in terms of like pictions of Indians using
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: drugs and being broken. But again, like all of these
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: parentheses are kind of like paragraphs, So it might make
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: more sense to finish with like the plot smur and
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: then get into it because otherwise, yeah, it's like, right,
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: we got things to say.
• 15:18
  Speaker 4: It is so much.
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: It is quite a bit of trauma in I think
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: ninety seconds. Yeah, it all happens very very very quickly.
• 15:27
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and then there continues to be trauma after this.
• 15:31
  Speaker 4: Oh yeah, yes, So we cut to seven years later.
• 15:35
  Speaker 4: It is now the mid seventies. A La played by
• 15:39
  Speaker 4: Davey Jacobs is now a teenager living with her uncle Berner,
• 15:43
  Speaker 4: and we also learned that Berner is kind of a
• 15:46
  Speaker 4: snitch in the community where he kind of rats out
• 15:49
  Speaker 4: his fellow man on the reserve to these white truant officers,
• 15:55
  Speaker 4: the main one of those being this guy named Popper,
• 15:58
  Speaker 4: and Popper comes to collect quote truant taxes, which are
• 16:04
  Speaker 4: basically this family bribing him so that the kids don't
• 16:09
  Speaker 4: have to go to the nearby residential school. And we
• 16:14
  Speaker 4: will also provide a lot of context in our discussion
• 16:17
  Speaker 4: about residential schools and that system, but it's know that
• 16:22
  Speaker 4: it's a place that you don't want to go. So
• 16:27
  Speaker 4: ALA's friends Solo and Angus tell her that Solo had
• 16:33
  Speaker 4: gotten robbed by Stripper and can't pay the truant tax,
• 16:38
  Speaker 4: and Aila realizes that Popper kind of set up this
• 16:41
  Speaker 4: whole thing. And this I might need a little bit
• 16:44
  Speaker 4: of clarification on my kind of assumption, was that Popper
• 16:48
  Speaker 4: did that kind of like orchestrated this whole setup and
• 16:52
  Speaker 4: like robbed them so that they wouldn't be able to
• 16:54
  Speaker 4: pay the bribe so that he could justify sending them
• 16:57
  Speaker 4: to the school.
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: Is that Yeah, I think that's that's sort of the idea.
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: And I think that also has to do with the
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: fact that Joseph is coming out of prison. Like essentially
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: Popper sets up Burner in that first sort of scene
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: where he's like they're at the fish Mitten and he's like,
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: thanks for telling us you're here, so they'll get the
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: shit kicked out of him by guys in the community,
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: so that like Joseph will come home and stay in line, okay, right,
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: And so that's also part of like why Popper would
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: steal their money is because then you know, he can
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: get Scholo and Angus and Aila, you know, scoop them
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: up and take them to the to Saint Demfinas to
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: the residential school. That's sort of again like a way
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: of sort of being like you know, and this will
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: keep Joseph in.
• 17:41
  Speaker 4: Line, got it right, because he gets released from prison.
• 17:46
  Speaker 4: And we also meet Cyrus, a kind of grandmother figure
• 17:52
  Speaker 4: for Aila, and she tells a story about a wolf
• 17:56
  Speaker 4: that's kind of delirious and ends a beautiful animal.
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah right, but I didn't. I didn't.
• 18:03
  Speaker 4: I was.
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: I love when I don't see an animated sequence coming
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: and then it hasn't been beautiful. I loved it.
• 18:09
  Speaker 4: There's one. There's one like that in Blood Quantum too.
• 18:11
  Speaker 4: That's really cool.
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: Oh cool.
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: And in both of the cases, like Jeff's using it
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: as a way to sort of like insert some of
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: the like oral tradition and like the way that like
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: our traditional storytelling works and sort of differentiate and distinguish
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: it from the rest of the story.
• 18:32
  Speaker 4: Right, you know.
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: And it's really interesting because like talking about the animation, I,
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: you know, I also as an animator, like love those sequences,
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: and yeah, I think I think some people sort of
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: when they first saw the movie were like, I don't
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: get it. I don't get why there's like an animated sequence.
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: It's like, nah, you just got to like experience it
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: as part of the film, you know.
• 18:49
  Speaker 4: Like, Yeah, so we hear this story about a wolf
• 18:52
  Speaker 4: that is like kind of ruaming the land. It's delirious
• 18:56
  Speaker 4: and it ends up eating itself, which I'm interested to
• 18:59
  Speaker 4: kind of talk about like thematic implications of that later on.
• 19:03
  Speaker 4: But so Aila decides to steal the money back that
• 19:07
  Speaker 4: got robbed from them, and we also at this around
• 19:12
  Speaker 4: this time, reveal that Aila has now gotten into this
• 19:16
  Speaker 4: drug business ever since her father left for prison, and
• 19:20
  Speaker 4: her dad, Joseph, comes back and is like kind of disappointed,
• 19:24
  Speaker 4: disappointed to learn that Berner let her get into all this.
• 19:27
  Speaker 4: But because she's an artist, she's like a really skilled
• 19:31
  Speaker 4: kind of crafts person of like rolling the joints and
• 19:35
  Speaker 4: like flavoring them and like lacing them and stuff.
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I was like, damn, she's cool.
• 19:41
  Speaker 4: Yeah, she's so very cool.
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: It's also she doesn't like one of the things that
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: keeps coming back, like and even one of the things
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: that like in that scene, you know, Berner's like been
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: drinking and smoking and stuff like that. She's like, you
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: can't roll for shit, Like she doesn't. She never, like
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: she doesn't spoke weed. And that's like also part of
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: like that gas mask is like this idea of sort
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: of like yeah, she's she's also sort of like not
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: she's part of this world, but she's not like in
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: that world in the same functioning, in the same way
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: as the people around her.
• 20:15
  Speaker 4: She's not gonna be a wolf who eats herself. She's
• 20:19
  Speaker 4: not gonna destroy herself. Yeah. So Ala pitches this plan
• 20:24
  Speaker 4: to her friend's Sholoh and Angus that they break into
• 20:27
  Speaker 4: the nearby residential school Saint Dez is what they like
• 20:31
  Speaker 4: nickname it, and they're gonna steal their money back from Popper.
• 20:35
  Speaker 4: So she orchestrates this heist. She draws a map. There's
• 20:39
  Speaker 4: this little kid, jujij who I think does he attend
• 20:43
  Speaker 4: the school? Yeah, and and he will kind of be
• 20:46
  Speaker 4: theres like the inside man. He's the man on the inside.
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: I think he's like ten.
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: I don't know what that kid is doing now, but
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: oh my god, what a sweet kid, like I know,
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: a star.
• 20:57
  Speaker 4: He always calls a La boss.
• 20:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: He's like, well, what now, boss, I yeah, and Tuci
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: is like, A, I don't know if that would be
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: like his given name, because that's like a nickname mgma
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: oh okay, which means like like little bug or little thing.
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: Ah, I'm as stand yeah.
• 21:18
  Speaker 4: So meanwhile, Ala is having some dreams and visions of
• 21:23
  Speaker 4: her dead mother and brother, sometimes as zombies, sometimes not,
• 21:28
  Speaker 4: but this is kind of like a recurring visual motif
• 21:30
  Speaker 4: throughout the film. And then one day Ala is out
• 21:33
  Speaker 4: with her dad and they have this violent run in
• 21:36
  Speaker 4: with Popper and his cronies because Berner sold them out
• 21:40
  Speaker 4: to Popper and let them know about ALA's plan to
• 21:43
  Speaker 4: break into the school. So Popper's like, you wanted to
• 21:46
  Speaker 4: go into the school, fine, now you're you're there. So
• 21:48
  Speaker 4: he sends her there as punishment, but and correct me
• 21:51
  Speaker 4: if I'm mistaken, But it feels like that's kind of
• 21:54
  Speaker 4: part of her plan. She gets sent there on purpose
• 21:57
  Speaker 4: so that she can also kind of be on the inside.
• 21:59
  Speaker 4: Or I might be wrong about that. I'm not totally sure.
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: The thing, you know what I've gone over the years,
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: I've gone back and forth on it, honestly. Caitlin like
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: I feel like when I first saw the film, I
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: was like, Oh, this is definitely like like she's improvising,
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: sort of like this wasn't her plan. And I sort
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: of feel like now when I'm seeing it, I'm like,
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: I feel like this was part of her plan in
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: a way, because Jiuji knows to come and let her
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: out of the hole. Uh huh, right, yeah, So like
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: I think that it was her plan, right.
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: I was also questioning that because I was like, if
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: if that was her plan? Galaxy brain genius, right, like,
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: because the first time I watched the movie, it didn't
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: even occur to me. But then on the second watch,
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: I was like, wait, she's so smart that it didn't
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: even occur to me that that might have been intentional.
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: Right, But I also think that it sort of like
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: speaks to the character that Aila is, and like because
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: I think in a way that she she talks about
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: aging a thousand years, and I think that like after
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: her mother, and I think that there is a certain
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: wisdom in that character that's sort of outpaced with her age,
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: you know, And and like at the end of the film,
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: you know, Joseph says to her, like, you know, I
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: just want you to know, you're a little girl. Yeah,
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: and she's like, I was never a little girl. I
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: think that there is a certain she knows that Berner
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: is gonna crack under pressure and wrap them out, like yeah,
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: and she knows that like there's a there's a chance
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: of that. So I think that she's kind of got
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: some ideas in her head. She knows that they're not
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: supposed to go out on the water. They've been out
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: on the water, you know, so I think that I
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: think it is planned.
• 23:37
  Speaker 4: Mm hmmmmm. She also like engages in that fight where
• 23:41
  Speaker 4: she could have just like stood back, and I think maybe, like,
• 23:43
  Speaker 4: oh if she if she's fighting there, that's going to
• 23:46
  Speaker 4: be all the more reason that they might send her
• 23:48
  Speaker 4: to the school. For sure. In any case she gets
• 23:52
  Speaker 4: sent there, they cut her hair off, they put her
• 23:55
  Speaker 4: in solitary confinement.
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: That's it. Like that's the scene that still and I've
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: seen this film so many times now throughout the years,
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: I still cry every time I watch that scene. That
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: scene is so hard to watch because they used to
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: do that to people, you know, yeah, and for us,
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: like your hair is really sacred because it's your connection
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: back to like the earth, so I'm tearing up now
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: even talking about it. So like the you know, that
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: was one of the things that they always used to
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: do when the kids were taking to residential schools, as
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: they would cut off their braids. And I was doing
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: this project with a bunch of youth up north here
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: in Quebec, where we were creating this like woven tapestry,
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: and it was all made up of these different like
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: lengths of braid that were woven together into this like
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: five x ten tapestry. And we had this one elder
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: who came and sat with us one day and was
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: like telling us about her residential school experience and was
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: talking about how seeing all these braids woven together was
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: like so powerful to her because and this was not,
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: you know, not something I had really thought about beforehand,
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: but she was talking about how like, you know, you
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: would see all the hair too, like after all the
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: kids had had their haircut off, just like swept to
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: the side, you know, like all these braids like on
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: the ground. So it holds a lot of cultural significance
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: in that way.
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that scene was Yeah, that scene was devastating.
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: And also if you don't really know whether she planned
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: or not to get sent to Saint Diffin as all
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: of a sudden, You're like, our hero is in this peril.
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: You know, you don't know what's going to happen to
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: her next.
• 25:25
  Speaker 4: Right, so it's either like a huge deliberate sacrifice or
• 25:30
  Speaker 4: just her kind of falling victim to these horrible circumstances.
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 25:36
  Speaker 4: Yeah, So while this is happening, her friend's sholo Angus.
• 25:42
  Speaker 4: And then there's another friend of theirs who I'd never
• 25:45
  Speaker 4: caught the name of Maytag. Is that Maytag? Okay? Yeah,
• 25:50
  Speaker 4: so they are prepping for this heist and they go
• 25:55
  Speaker 4: into the school, they break Ala out, they rig up
• 25:58
  Speaker 4: the plumbing so that literal human shit comes out when
• 26:03
  Speaker 4: Papper turns on the shower, which satisfying.
• 26:07
  Speaker 6: Yeah, so satisfying, really good stuff, and like a whole
• 26:14
  Speaker 6: bunch of like male full frontal nudity.
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: Not that it was like you were wanting it, that's sailing,
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: but it's like this independent Canadian film where you get
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: to see like a whole lot of dick there.
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: Like to see a little bit of shit raining on
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: full frontal nudity.
• 26:31
  Speaker 4: Right, You're just like you deserve this.
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's just at the lowest moment in that
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: moment and you're just like, ah, so.
• 26:40
  Speaker 4: Good that's been.
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: That's been kind of a I feel like a discussion
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: that's been picking up in the last couple of years
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: of like how rare male nudity is shown period, and
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: then on top of that, when it is shown, like
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: the way it shown is never humiliating, which whatever speaks
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: to who making most movies. But it was that's true, right,
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: very satisfying to see him humiliated in such a like
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: primal way.
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: I don't know, yeah, oh totally, and especially because you
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: you've sort of spent the entire movie up to this
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: point just watching him and his goons kick the shit
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: at everybody, you know, and it's like I remember seeing this.
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: So when I originally saw this film, I saw it
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: at a festival, and at that point the film when
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: Hopper's like lying on the bathroom floor covered in shit
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: just like I'm gonna get you people that the audience
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: were like cheering. It was amazing, you know, it was
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: like the end of Get Out. People were like full
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: on like being like yeah.
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, yeah, this would have been a cool
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: movie to see in theaters. Yeah, god damn it.
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: It was. It got a really limited release. So I
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: was fortuned to see end a festival. But we'll talk
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: about that. That's that's also something we need to like, Yeah,
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: I think people need to think about sometime for sure.
• 28:01
  Speaker 4: Yeah, definitely. So he's covered in shit. Meanwhile, they steal
• 28:06
  Speaker 4: the money out of his safe and run away. They
• 28:09
  Speaker 4: get away with I think twenty thousand dollars. But when
• 28:13
  Speaker 4: Aila gets back home, she finds out that her grandmother, Sarahs,
• 28:18
  Speaker 4: has been killed by Popper's thugs. And then when Popper
• 28:22
  Speaker 4: comes for Aila, he beats her. He's about to rape her,
• 28:28
  Speaker 4: but then little Jujij shows up with a gun and
• 28:32
  Speaker 4: another very cathartic moment blows Popper's head off. AILA's father
• 28:37
  Speaker 4: takes the fall for it again. He gets carted off
• 28:40
  Speaker 4: to prison again, and then the story ends with a
• 28:44
  Speaker 4: it is that a family friend or a relative juicegu
• 28:48
  Speaker 4: or juicegu? I wasn't sure. Oh the old man, Yeah.
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so he's like he's like a family friend. Okay,
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: there's a lot of like on small reserves. We always
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: joked that it's like, well, everybody's related like somehow. It's
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: like they're probably related.
• 29:05
  Speaker 4: Somehow, like right, Yeah, he was the guy who earlier
• 29:07
  Speaker 4: in the story had also there was talk of him
• 29:10
  Speaker 4: having aged a thousand years because he had gone to
• 29:13
  Speaker 4: fight in World War Two and came back like a
• 29:17
  Speaker 4: thousand years older because he had like lied about his age,
• 29:20
  Speaker 4: saying he was older than he was to be able
• 29:22
  Speaker 4: to fight and then you know, experience a trauma of
• 29:26
  Speaker 4: war and then came back.
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: And he gives Aila a really interesting piece of advice
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: during that conversation too that they're having when they talk
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: about him being a thousand years older, because he's the
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: only other character that we here referred to in that way,
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: and he says this thing that I ended up picking
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: up on and I ended up reading a couple of
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: articles about it too, of like, you know, he's like
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: courages sometimes moving with the dead, you know, like as
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: like bodies were sort of piling up. You know, it's
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: like you have to keep moving. And I think that
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: that's almost an interesting like thesis point, I think, or
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: like what AILA's doing in a certain way of sort
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: of like despite everything, like having to like keep moving forward,
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: Like you know, they are going to be casualties along
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: the way, but it's like you have to keep moving forward.
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: Because otherwise you're one of them, you know, right. So yeah,
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: so he's an interesting character. He pops up a little
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: bit in Blood Quantum too. It's interesting because Blood Quantum
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: also takes place on the Red Crow Reserve and yes,
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: but in like a parallel universe.
• 30:29
  Speaker 4: So because the Fish Mittens Strip Club is also in
• 30:33
  Speaker 4: Blood Quantum.
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I love an expanded universe, that's the right.
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So so there's like these interesting sort of like
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: crossover points that kind of happen where like and a
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: lot of the folks I think in the film weren't actors.
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: I think that like some of them are just like
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: people who maybe had a little bit of like outside
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: of like the main cast, who are like Canadian indigenous,
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: like Film Royalty. Glenn Gould has been in everything like
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: you don't make it like you don't make a Native
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: film in Canada and not include Glenn Gould because what
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: are you doing? Who plays Joseph in the film.
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: He's incredible. I mean that like the scene that I think, like,
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: I mean stuck out to be I'm sure everybody was.
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: The scene at his wife's grave was just so oh
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: holy shit, It's just like, yeah, he was, He's incredible.
• 31:22
  Speaker 4: Yeah, okay, So then this character shows up who we've
• 31:27
  Speaker 4: seen here, and there is just saying like Aila, I
• 31:30
  Speaker 4: don't want you. I don't want you to work in
• 31:32
  Speaker 4: this drug trade anymore. And she's like, good, I don't
• 31:35
  Speaker 4: want to either. And then Juji the little Boy comes
• 31:40
  Speaker 4: back and he's like, okay, now what do we do boss?
• 31:42
  Speaker 4: And she's like, I don't know. And that's how the
• 31:45
  Speaker 4: movie ends. Let's take a quick break and then we'll
• 31:49
  Speaker 4: come back for discussion, and we're back.
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: Yes, where shall we begin?
• 32:06
  Speaker 4: Well, I think it's probably helpful to provide some historical
• 32:10
  Speaker 4: context for the residential school system, because you really have
• 32:15
  Speaker 4: to have an understanding of what that is to appreciate
• 32:18
  Speaker 4: the events of this film and why the characters are
• 32:22
  Speaker 4: doing everything that they do to not have to go
• 32:26
  Speaker 4: to a residential school for sure.
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: And I think that it'd be good too to talk
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: a little bit about the a little bit about reserves,
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: and a little bit about the Indian Act, because I
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: think that there's like there's layers to this, right, It's
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: not just the residential school, it's like it's everything, you know,
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: And this time watching it through too, where I was
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: thinking a lot about like the violence in the film
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: and thinking about how it's sort of it's incessant, like
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: it's just like around every corner, like ALA's just biking
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: down the road at one point and like somebody like
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: comes out of nowhere and punch and like yeah, and
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: that's you know, such a visual metaphor for I think
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: what it feels like sometimes to be a like a
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: marginalized person, whether it's you know, your you're black, Indigenous,
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: or like a person of color, or whether you're trans
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: or whether you're I think that there's like a sense
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: sometimes of like things can come out of nowhere and
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: kind of like knock you on your ass. So uh, yeah,
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: just to talk a little bit about and like feel
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: free to jump in too. But yeah, so talk to
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: talk a little bit about the Indian Act because that's
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: kind of where it all starts off, right. So the
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: Indian Act was officially passed in eighteen seventy six. I
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: hope there's no like Canadian history buffs who are like
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: like checking my because like it's the one like I
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: can remember meeting a person ten years ago for like
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: fifteen minutes, but I cannot rumber dates.
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: For the life well most of our most of our
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: listenership are Canadian history scholars.
• 33:55
  Speaker 4: So yes, but I do believe that date is correct. Yes,
• 34:00
  Speaker 4: I have that in my notes as well.
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: Awesome. Yeah So, but before that there had been sort
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: of a patchwork of different colonial laws that had existed,
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: and then sort of when Canada became like a country
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: as opposed to sort of different like sort of colonies,
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: you know, like between like New France and Upper Canada
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: and Lower Canada, then it was sort of brought into
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: law in a sort of more official sense. And the
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: Indian Act. The short version of the Indian Act is
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: that it was legislation that was designed to very literally
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: like legislate out of existence indigenous people, and it did
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: that through a number of ways. So the residential schools,
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: which we'll talk more about, were part of the Indian Act.
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: This idea that you'll civilize and, abusing air quotes, you'll
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: civilize indiangenous children and assimilate them into Canadian society. The
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: Indian Act also, you know, targeted women. So if you
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: were an Indigenous woman and you married a non indigenous man,
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: you lost your status and indigenous status our native status
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: which exists in the United States as well, is sort
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: of like your only pathway for being able to access
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: things like on reserve housing, like certain like educational scholarships
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: and benefits and things like that are only accessible through
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: your status card. There's other services and things like that
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: that are only accessible through your status card. So losing
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: your status, you know, was a big deal, and so
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: we often refer to when women married non indigenous men
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: has happened a lot in the you know, early days
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: of Canada as marrying out because it was essentially like, well,
• 35:41
  Speaker 2: now you're out of the culture, goodbye, one less Indian.
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: And you know, there were other things like the Indian
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: Act did. You couldn't leave the reserve to get a
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: higher education. You couldn't just like leave the reserve togotiate
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: a doctor. There was a whole system of passes that
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: Indigenous people had to have for a long time, Like
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: it was essentially like a passport that said like okay,
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: I'm leaving my reserve now, and that you know, there
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: was no thought given to It's like okay, well we
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: don't have a hospital on reserve. I have to leave
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: the reserve to go to the hospital, or even just
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: like I want to go visit a friend on a
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: different reserve, like you'd have to like have that passport
• 36:21
  Speaker 2: signed off on by the Indian agent, who could also
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: say no. So people's movement was really controlled. People's lives
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: were really controlled. And like I said, you know, disproportionately.
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: The Indian Act targeted children and women through things like
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: the residential school system, through things like losing status if
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: you married out, which wasn't applied to men. If men,
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: if Indigenous men married non Indigenous women, their non Indigenous
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: wives would get status and all their children would get status.
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: Oh and they were able to remain a part of
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: their communities. Yeah, Jesus Christ.
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: So like it's not even like, uh, it's so blatant.
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: It's almost like a bond villain who's like, and then
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: I'm going to set up the laser and then it's
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: going to catch you in half, and then I'm going
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: to take over the world. It's like the Canadian government
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: essentially said from the beginning, we don't want any more
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: Indigenous people, and this is what we're gonna do to
• 37:17
  Speaker 2: get rid of them. However, the double edged sword of
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: the Indian of the Indian Act, you know, and you're
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: I can imagine it's sort of like, well, if it's
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: so terrible and so sexist and so racist, just get
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: rid of it. Unfortunately, it's really one of the major
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: legislative tools that we have in Canada as Indigenous people
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: to be able to hold the federal government accountable because
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: it defines what an Indigenous person is, so which is
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: just like magnitudes of frustrating.
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely so.
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: Originally, and this ties into the film. In nineteen sixty nine,
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: Pierre Elliott Trudeau, who Justin Trudeau's daddy, was Prime Minister
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: at the time, and he introduced this essentially this act
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: that would have gotten rid of the Indian Act. This
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: is so this is nineteen sixty nine. This paper ended
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: up becoming called the White Paper, and it was this
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: really catalyzing moment for a lot of what we call
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: red power or like an Indigenous like civil rights movement
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: sort of stuff began happening because you know, people were
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: really hit to the idea that like, if we get
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: rid of the status of Indian, which is what it
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: would have been called at the time, then the government
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: doesn't legally have any enforceable responsibility towards Indians. If Indians
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: don't exist, they don't exist. Does that make sense right?
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: I'm sure, yes, it makes sense the way you're explaining it.
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: It's just okay that that's so. There's so many layers
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: of mind fuckery going on.
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it's a whole like it's a whole terror
• 38:59
  Speaker 2: issue of like fucked up, which is terrible. I shouldn't
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: do that to Terra Massu Taaramasus.
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: Delightful will recovery.
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: Tarasu's got a good rap, you know, I feel like
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: it can come back from this. But yeah, so so
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: what the solution has sort of become, you know, is
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: because we can't get rid of the Indian Act, it's
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: sort of amend it and a lot of these amendments,
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: I think sort of the most recent big push of amendments.
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: There's little things going through all the time, but I
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: think two thousand and two was like a big push
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: of like a whole bunch of amendments to it. In
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: the eighties, we had a big push of amendments that
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: allowed women who had lost their status through marriage to
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: get their status back, which was a huge thing. You know.
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: I had I have a friend who you know, at
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: that point in time, was already you know, like a
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: teenager and she talks about how important it was like
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: that moment when her mom gets status back, which meant
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: that she could get status, and like because even though
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: it isn't like like having status is not what makes
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: you an indigenous person, sure it still can feel like
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: a very significant thing in terms of belonging. Sure, you know,
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: of course, yeah, so is this whole sort of mess. Unfortunately,
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: and the Indian agents, like we see Popper in the film,
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: were the enforcers of this incredibly racist law. So Indian
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: agents had total, like unchecked control. It was like even
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: worse in some ways than sort of like you know
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: how we talk about like, oh, you know, the sheriff
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: and the Old West, and you know, they could sort
• 40:31
  Speaker 2: of make up the rules as they go along. Indian
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: agents were sort of that, except they were white, racist assholes. So,
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: you know, I've read different things over the years about
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: like people talking about how like, oh, well, is Popper's
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: attitude and behavior a little bit extreme. It's like, well,
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: like some of the stuff did happen, Like some of
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: the stuff we know has happened because we've heard stories
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: from people and it's also been documented. You know, By
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: the time that we get to the late sixties early seventies,
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: the Indian agents were starting to be phased out because
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: we were starting to move into a new period in
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: terms of like the Indian Act, and like I said,
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: some of those like big changes that were to come
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: in the eighties, but at the time, we still had
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: Indian agents that were quite sort of literally allowed to
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: do whatever the fuck they wanted with impunity. You had
• 41:21
  Speaker 2: Indian agents in the States as well, and they were
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: this may be chuckle, not because it's funny, but because
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: it's sort of again Macavelian. The original Indian agents were
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: under the US War Department initially, which is like very blatantly.
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: Like could you be any less like clear about how
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: you feel? Yeah, Jesus Christ.
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So so, But what happened with the Indian agents
• 41:51
  Speaker 2: and the States is as we moved through the eighteen
• 41:53
  Speaker 2: hundreds and into the nineteen hundreds, they sort of transitioned
• 41:56
  Speaker 2: into being superintendents for what the AMIC equivalent of residential
• 42:01
  Speaker 2: schools is the Indian boarding school system, and they were
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: that position shifted into more of a civilian role later on,
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: but yeah, it was it was like a government Department
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: of War position. It was essentially like I brought up
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: in the Twilight Reading it was to swindle people out
• 42:19
  Speaker 2: of their land whatever way you could, And yeah, it
• 42:24
  Speaker 2: was it was about like this idea of like manifest destiny.
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: You know, it's like, well, we've we've arrived and now
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: it's ours. Like yeah, So that's a little bit of
• 42:34
  Speaker 2: a background on the Indian Act and so, like I said,
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: the residential school system was established as part of the
• 42:39
  Speaker 2: Indian Act under the mandate of kill the Indian and
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: educate the child sort of thing, which is just like
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: a real cool, chill sentiment to have. And so they
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: started out, you know, we had Jesuit schools, especially coming
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: into like New France, oh sort of what is like
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: Nova Scotia and Brunswick like part of Quebec, like New
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: England sort of area. So we would have had like
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: early Jesubit schools, and like you know, those were a
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: little bit less rigorously sort of organized than those that
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: are mostly we're in the sixteen hundreds, some in the
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: seventeen hundreds. But like I said, it functioned a lot
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: more sort of like what's that word as a missionary
• 43:23
  Speaker 2: sort of effort. Like it was like we're gonna go
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: on Christianize.
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: Sure, there's nothing colonial about this, No.
• 43:31
  Speaker 2: We're just talking about Jesus. And it's really interesting because
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: we from that the Migmah converted to Christianity in sixteen
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: oh four, and like a lot of that had to
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: do with the presence of like Jesuit missionaries in Mgmagi
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: in Migma Terratory at the time. But moving out of
• 43:47
  Speaker 2: that period, moving into the moving into the nineteenth century
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: is when we sort of get officially into the like
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: what we call the residential school period. And these were
• 43:59
  Speaker 2: schools that were government funded, managed by Christian churches. So
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: there was like different denominations that were involved. The Roman
• 44:08
  Speaker 2: Catholic Church was a big one of course, but like
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: there were Presbyterians, I think, Anglican Anglicans. Yeah, the Church
• 44:16
  Speaker 2: of England was very big just kind of not facilitating
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: getting all tripped up on my words, but like essentially
• 44:25
  Speaker 2: administering the school. So like they were all run by
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: nuns and priests and like layered clergy as sort of
• 44:32
  Speaker 2: like the only attendance at the school. And we estimate
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: that about one hundred and fifty thousand children Indigenous children
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: in Canada went to residential school.
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: And is it safe to I just for our listeners
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: who are not fully clear and what the intent was.
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: The intent of the school is to take your culture
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: from you and replace it with something else.
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was essentially that it was this idea that like,
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: like I said, you know, like it's the idea of
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: like killing the Indian through education. So you'd be taken
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: away from your community, you'd be taken out of your language,
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: so you only spoke English. At residential school. They would
• 45:11
  Speaker 2: cut off your braids much like we see in the movie.
• 45:13
  Speaker 2: You'd be wearing Western clothing. You'd only be educated, educated
• 45:20
  Speaker 2: in sort of like European centric like history and like
• 45:23
  Speaker 2: customs and mannerisms. In the States more than in Canada,
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: there was also like this idea of vocational training. But yeah,
• 45:33
  Speaker 2: it was about westernizing indigenous Indigenous kids because they were
• 45:38
  Speaker 2: seen as being savages.
• 45:40
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I like it was forced assimilation. And then in
• 45:44
  Speaker 4: addition to that, it was also the like officials at
• 45:47
  Speaker 4: these schools inflicting severe amounts of emotional, physical, and sexual
• 45:54
  Speaker 4: abuse upon the children. A lot of children died in
• 45:58
  Speaker 4: the residential schoo system. Yeah. Throughout the years, there was
• 46:03
  Speaker 4: a lot of like malnutrition. I read I even read
• 46:06
  Speaker 4: some cases of like experiments being done on the children. Yeah,
• 46:11
  Speaker 4: and there was just like not really much education happening.
• 46:14
  Speaker 4: It was just abuse.
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: No, And that's sort of the problem, right, is that
• 46:19
  Speaker 2: their primary goal was forced assimulation.
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 46:22
  Speaker 2: Their goal wasn't to sort of build young people up
• 46:26
  Speaker 2: so that they'd be able to stand in the world afterwards,
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: you know, like like one would hope that the education
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: system does to some degree. It was it was really
• 46:34
  Speaker 2: about like, you are bad, you are dirty. We're going
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: to make you clean and pure, and you know, we
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: can't bleach you, but will make you as white as possible.
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: You know. It decimated now that about six thousand children
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: died as a result of the regidential school system. However,
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: those numbers don't take into account well one, you know,
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: the records are not complete. A lot of schools as
• 47:01
  Speaker 2: they were shutting down, you know, especially in the eighties
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: and nineties, you know, burned records just like wholesale got
• 47:08
  Speaker 2: rid of stuff. Was like we don't know, graves were
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: often not marked. So there's been a whole process even
• 47:16
  Speaker 2: now sort of like trying to figure out like people
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: trying to figure out where their relatives are buried. Conditions
• 47:22
  Speaker 2: in the school were really terrible. You know, so kids
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: were not only dying of like malnutrition, but also disease,
• 47:28
  Speaker 2: also of abuse. Like at times the abuse would be
• 47:33
  Speaker 2: so severe, Like there was one case that I was
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: reading about where the children were routinely like electrocuted and
• 47:40
  Speaker 2: like small doses, and sometimes they would die because they
• 47:43
  Speaker 2: were like as a punishment being electrocuted.
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: And that doesn't even take into account the I think
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: what we see through al as parents is like the
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: after effects of that abuse and how if you do
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: make it out, what is life like after that, know,
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: coping with all that Yeah, trauma, Oh exactly.
• 48:04
  Speaker 2: And you know that's just it too. Like how many people,
• 48:07
  Speaker 2: you know, their whole lives have had to struggle with,
• 48:10
  Speaker 2: you know, the weight of that abuse. Have you know,
• 48:14
  Speaker 2: people who have died by suicide, Like, yeah, it's it's
• 48:18
  Speaker 2: it's a very hard thing to put a number on,
• 48:20
  Speaker 2: you know, the fatalities of people coming in through the
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: residential school system because it was this terrible, terrible, terrible,
• 48:27
  Speaker 2: terrible machine that just like like I said, you know,
• 48:30
  Speaker 2: was meant to get rid of what the Prime Minister
• 48:34
  Speaker 2: at the times for John A. MacDonald, which was he
• 48:36
  Speaker 2: was like very famous Canadian prime minister from my back
• 48:40
  Speaker 2: when Cannon was sort of created as a country. You know,
• 48:42
  Speaker 2: like he was like the Indian problem, Like people were
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: seen as a problem. It was like, oh, well, we'll
• 48:48
  Speaker 2: just get rid of them, you know. You know, we
• 48:50
  Speaker 2: talked about this a little bit before the phone call,
• 48:52
  Speaker 2: you know, YouTube were sort of saying, like, you didn't
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: learn anything about this in school. I learned a little
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: bit about this in school, but it's really only been
• 49:00
  Speaker 2: the last like couple generations that we've even started talking
• 49:03
  Speaker 2: about this openly. So the last residents of school in
• 49:07
  Speaker 2: Canada closed in nineteen ninety six. Yeah, you know, so
• 49:12
  Speaker 2: like there are people my age whose like parents went
• 49:17
  Speaker 2: to residential school, you know, and their aunties and uncles
• 49:20
  Speaker 2: and like we're really directly impacted by that. Yeah, and
• 49:24
  Speaker 2: we just didn't talk about it. We just didn't talk
• 49:25
  Speaker 2: about it. We'd like there was a sense that for
• 49:28
  Speaker 2: a really long time, even like in two thousand and nine,
• 49:32
  Speaker 2: the Prime Minister of Canada, Stephen Harper, was like Canada
• 49:35
  Speaker 2: doesn't have a colonial history, you know, like we don't
• 49:39
  Speaker 2: where everything's great, you know, when we start looking at
• 49:42
  Speaker 2: like the time in which the rhyme thrown guls is
• 49:45
  Speaker 2: coming out in a lot of ways. It was like
• 49:47
  Speaker 2: a big piece of media that was made about this terrible,
• 49:49
  Speaker 2: terrible system. And yeah, and so I think that a
• 49:54
  Speaker 2: lot of the violence and stuff that you see in
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: the film was really done with the idea of like
• 49:58
  Speaker 2: trying to convey just how distructive this was. You know,
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: was there anything, Caitlyn, I don't know if, like you
• 50:08
  Speaker 2: had mentioned that you had like a specific timeline for
• 50:10
  Speaker 2: residential schools. I kind of jumped all over the place.
• 50:13
  Speaker 4: Oh sure, And I mean I think what you covered
• 50:16
  Speaker 4: was really helpful context. I have just some kind of
• 50:21
  Speaker 4: dates scattered through in some additional numbers. For example, like
• 50:25
  Speaker 4: the sixties scoop was this moment in history that was
• 50:31
  Speaker 4: actually several decades long where I think an estimated twenty
• 50:35
  Speaker 4: thousand Indigenous children were taken from their families and placed
• 50:40
  Speaker 4: into foster care or adoption homes, often with non Indigenous families.
• 50:47
  Speaker 4: This was happening from like the late fifties into the
• 50:50
  Speaker 4: nineteen eighties.
• 50:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so I know folks who were scooped and like,
• 50:55
  Speaker 2: which is a weird way of putting it, but in
• 50:57
  Speaker 2: some cases it was literally like oh, you know, these
• 51:00
  Speaker 2: social workers arrived at your house and they loaded you
• 51:02
  Speaker 2: and your siblings in a car and then you never
• 51:03
  Speaker 2: saw your siblings again because you were all adopted by
• 51:06
  Speaker 2: different families, which you know, the term that we would
• 51:09
  Speaker 2: use for this now is child.
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: Trafficking, you know, right absolutely.
• 51:14
  Speaker 2: And this was a government this was government mandate that
• 51:17
  Speaker 2: this was like government endorsed. So that's another way in which,
• 51:21
  Speaker 2: like the Indian Act has been used to sort of
• 51:24
  Speaker 2: separate children from Indigenous communities, right is through things like
• 51:27
  Speaker 2: the sixties and seventies scoop, which really could be called
• 51:31
  Speaker 2: like you said, like started in the fifties and went
• 51:33
  Speaker 2: until the eighties.
• 51:35
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 51:35
  Speaker 2: And now another thing too that has become that's gotten
• 51:38
  Speaker 2: a lot more attention in recent years and is something
• 51:41
  Speaker 2: that there's been a lot of call to abolish is
• 51:44
  Speaker 2: we call them birth alerts. So what can happen, unfortunately,
• 51:49
  Speaker 2: is that like social workers can essentially seize a newborn
• 51:54
  Speaker 2: from an Indigenous mother if they deem her to be
• 51:58
  Speaker 2: potentially not a good parent some way. It was a
• 52:02
  Speaker 2: couple of provinces have abolished these like birth alert systems,
• 52:06
  Speaker 2: but it's still upheld in Saskatchewan and I believe Alberta
• 52:09
  Speaker 2: as well here. So, yeah, so if you're an Indigenous woman,
• 52:12
  Speaker 2: giving birth in a hospital can be very risky because
• 52:14
  Speaker 2: if you're not, if they're like, oh you're kind of young,
• 52:18
  Speaker 2: you know, or are you a single mother? You know,
• 52:21
  Speaker 2: like essentially the staff will alert child Services and then
• 52:26
  Speaker 2: will come and take your child before even like the
• 52:29
  Speaker 2: drugs have worn off from the birth. You know, Like
• 52:32
  Speaker 2: it's a really, really horrific system.
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: I also wanted to this was Unfortunately, as I was
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: watching this, I was reminded of a news item that
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: I read not too long ago in September around just
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: issues that would have certainly been affecting in particular forced
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: sterilization as well, which when I did a little more research,
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: I found out it peaked in the years that this
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: movie is covering. It peaked between nineteen sixty six and
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: nineteen seventy six. Over a thousand Indigenous women in Canada
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: were forced to be sterilized. And the reason that the
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: story is relevant right now is because it's still happening.
• 53:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, like you said, you know, it is still happening.
• 53:20
  Speaker 2: There's still a lot of pressure in terms of and
• 53:23
  Speaker 2: you know, in California as well, like there were a
• 53:25
  Speaker 2: lot of Indigenous women sterilized in California during the sixties
• 53:28
  Speaker 2: and seventies. Not that I'm picking on California. It just
• 53:31
  Speaker 2: happened to know these statistics of California. But yeah, it's
• 53:36
  Speaker 2: it's still going on today. There's still a lot of pressure,
• 53:38
  Speaker 2: especially if women like have any sort of even minor
• 53:42
  Speaker 2: health concerns. Like a lot of times, like there still
• 53:45
  Speaker 2: is this pressure of like, well you could just you know,
• 53:48
  Speaker 2: sterilize you. If women are incarcerated, there's also pressure. Yeah,
• 53:55
  Speaker 2: you know, it disproportionately affects the indigenous community of course
• 53:58
  Speaker 2: because of colonialism, because there is still huge bias unfortunately
• 54:04
  Speaker 2: with regards to with regards to Indigenous people.
• 54:08
  Speaker 3: Mm hmm.
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: Absolutely.
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: Oh, I was gonna say in top of the sixties scoop,
• 54:11
  Speaker 2: if you want to know some other said statistics. I
• 54:13
  Speaker 2: feel like we're just like, oh, and this thing that's
• 54:16
  Speaker 2: also really depressing. So today talking to about the birth
• 54:20
  Speaker 2: alert system. You know, even though the last residential school
• 54:24
  Speaker 2: closed here in Canada in the in the nineties and
• 54:26
  Speaker 2: nineteen ninety six, which like spoiler alert, we were all alive.
• 54:31
  Speaker 2: Then wait, how.
• 54:32
  Speaker 4: Old are you, Jamie?
• 54:33
  Speaker 2: We were all alive. Then it was like Jamie's young, jamie'
• 54:36
  Speaker 2: J's scrappy.
• 54:38
  Speaker 4: I was there, but yeah.
• 54:39
  Speaker 2: So it's within our lifetimes, you know, and I think
• 54:41
  Speaker 2: that that's a really important thing to remember. However, a
• 54:44
  Speaker 2: lot of Indigenous folks will argue that the child deutrour
• 54:47
  Speaker 2: system has taken over the place of the residential schools
• 54:50
  Speaker 2: in terms of like taking kids out of communities. You know,
• 54:52
  Speaker 2: you have the birth alert system. You also just have
• 54:55
  Speaker 2: like tremendous like scrutiny and surveillance of Indigenous families. And
• 55:00
  Speaker 2: you know, what should be shocking and upsetting to people
• 55:02
  Speaker 2: is the fact that Indigenous children represent fifty three percent
• 55:07
  Speaker 2: of the children in foster care in Canada, even though
• 55:09
  Speaker 2: they only represent seven percent of the youth population in
• 55:14
  Speaker 2: Quebecutt's estimated that one out of every Indigenous family has
• 55:19
  Speaker 2: a child that's in foster care with like non Indigenous people,
• 55:24
  Speaker 2: and it's endemic. It's just like, you know, if it's
• 55:27
  Speaker 2: not something you have experienced directly, it's something that like
• 55:31
  Speaker 2: you know other people who have and when you start
• 55:34
  Speaker 2: looking at things like that, you know, with regards to
• 55:37
  Speaker 2: kids in the child retro system, with regards to you know, suicidality,
• 55:40
  Speaker 2: with regards to incarceration, you know, with regards to like
• 55:44
  Speaker 2: drug abuse, like all the things that we sort of
• 55:46
  Speaker 2: see in this movie. You know, you can draw a
• 55:48
  Speaker 2: straight line from one to the other and it can't
• 55:51
  Speaker 2: be an accident. At this point, you know, there's just
• 55:54
  Speaker 2: so much like paperwork and documentation of how things of
• 55:59
  Speaker 2: intentionally been done, you know, throughout the years to make
• 56:02
  Speaker 2: that this is the case. At a certain point in time,
• 56:05
  Speaker 2: you have to kind of be like, well, it's not
• 56:07
  Speaker 2: even a conspiracy anymore, because.
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: You know it happened documented and to speak to your
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: point from earlier, that's just the documentation that still exists.
• 56:18
  Speaker 4: Right what what was burned and what was destroyed and.
• 56:22
  Speaker 2: What was lost, and you know, and what will not
• 56:26
  Speaker 2: come to light, you know, for whatever reason, and on
• 56:30
  Speaker 2: and on and on.
• 56:31
  Speaker 4: Unfortunately, Let's take a quick break and then we'll come
• 56:36
  Speaker 4: back and we'll discuss how this context informs the film.
• 56:40
  Speaker 4: Shall we will? And we're back.
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: I wanted to, if it's cool with everybody's share some
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: quotes from Jeff Barnaby please about the production of this
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: movie and just kind of his motivation behind writing it
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: and sort of where he was at. There was an
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: interview he did, I believe around the time this movie
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: was first coming out in festivals with musk Rat magazine,
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: and he was asked by the interviewer, let me get
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: their name, Jamais DaCosta. He was asked why he chose
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: to have a female protagonist for this story, so I
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: thought relevant to our interests, and here is how he replied.
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: He said, my nation is a matriarchal society and paying
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: respect to that archetype of a woman and the strength
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: that is there, particularly in First Nations women. It's imperative
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: for me, as a First Nation's man who loves his
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: mom and loves his wife and loves his sisters, to
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: pay reverence to their struggle and their strength. I think
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: women are awesome.
• 57:55
  Speaker 4: Great ques Wow.
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: My mom had me as a T shirt a new
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: merg stright up there with our Robert Eggers quote. Ah, Yes, women,
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: I've heard of them. Jeff Farvey thinks women are awesome.
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: My mom had me at such a young age and
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: didn't have a lot of support around her, but still
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: managed to make it work. She and my stepmam were
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: a big influence, along with my sisters and seeing what
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: they went through at such a young age gave me
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: a measuring stick in terms of the things you can
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: complain about in life. And then he said, kind of
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: going off of that, why he chose the era in
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: residential schools that he chose. I believe this movie is
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: set in the year that he was born, in nineteen
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: seventy six, but he says about that in the same
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: interview quote, I thought, if there was ever a point
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: in time that this residential school was going to crumble,
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: it would have been in the seventies. It just made
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: sense to me to have a young Native girl bring
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: this institution of ugliness to its knees. It made sense
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: to me because First Nations women are the language and
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: cultural keepers. They are the epicenter of our matriarchal society.
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: I've mostly only known strength come from the women in
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: my life, which isn't to say that men haven't been influential,
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: but the rock steady power that doesn't waiver seems to
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: only come from women, and which I think. He compliments
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: his wife for a long time. It's nice, but I'm
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: not gonna read the whole His wife is really lovely.
• 59:15
  Speaker 4: To very nice. Well, I think you see that in
• 59:20
  Speaker 4: the film, this this ideology with like, of AILA's peers,
• 59:25
  Speaker 4: who seem to be entirely boys, she is the smartest
• 59:30
  Speaker 4: and most competent of them, not even of just her peers,
• 59:33
  Speaker 4: of all the like adult men around her. She seems
• 59:38
  Speaker 4: to have kind of the most awareness of what is
• 59:40
  Speaker 4: going around, because like there's scenes where like Sholo and
• 59:44
  Speaker 4: Angus are just like, oops, I got robbed by a stripper.
• 59:47
  Speaker 4: Dough like t either kind of laughing about it. You know,
• 59:50
  Speaker 4: He's like, oh, well, no big deal, We'll just sell
• 59:52
  Speaker 4: some bottles. We'll get the money back that way. And
• 59:55
  Speaker 4: AILA's like, no, like, do you see what's happening? Do
• 59:58
  Speaker 4: you see what we have to do? And she's by
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 4: far the most competent, and and like why is this
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 4: We talked about sort of having to age prematurely almost
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 4: and having to be wise beyond your years, not in
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 4: a like precocious child tropey way that we you know,
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 4: always take guff with on the podcast, but when you're
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 4: growing up in these horrible, like systematic oppression situations, there's
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 4: no other choice. You can't like, it's that's just it
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 4: hardens you. And it and the fact.
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: That the story of the wolf eating itself that becomes
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: so important to how she views herself and how we
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: view her as the audience comes from really the only
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: other woman that we get to know besides her mother
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: in the movie of like She I mean, I guess,
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: going off of what Jeff Barnaby said, she was the
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: keeper of that wisdom and passed it along for sure.
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 2: And I was going to say too that just like
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 2: a little bit of like added Magma context. There is
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 2: this huge reverence in our culture for not just women,
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 2: although you know, like Jeff says, you know, it's a
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 2: it's a very matriarchal, matrilineal culture, but also grandmother is
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 2: in particular are really revered, you know, as elders, as
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 2: elder women. There's a lot of stories of gluse Cap
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 2: whose are our sort of how to describe glose Cap.
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 2: He's a trickster figure and he's within traditional storytelling, but
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 2: he's also like a protector figure for the Migma. You know,
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 2: he was sort of helped when Creator made the Magma
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 2: at the beginning, you know, to shape the landscape. So
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 2: he plays this really important role throughout all of our
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 2: traditional stories. And there's a lot of stories about Gluscap
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 2: just like doing stuff with his grandmother. And even the
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 2: word that we use for grandmother, nugumige, comes from what
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 2: goluse Caap calls his grand which is nukumi and jij
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 2: that like adding that ja on the end is like
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 2: how you sort of like talk about like something being
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 2: smaller like we talk about is like a small bug.
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 2: So like our grandmothers are like a small version of
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 2: Gluscap's grandmother, you know. And there's also a lot of
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 2: reverence in Bigma culture for figures like sant Anne. There's
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 2: a very important UH cathedral called sant Enne de Beaupre
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 2: where a lot of Migma folks do pilgrimages too, because,
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 2: like I said, we converted very early on, so Christianity
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 2: has gotten very tied into our traditional culture. And St
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 2: Anne in the Bible. I'm now I'm talking at my
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 2: ass a little bit. I'll be anest.
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 4: I cannot help you because I have never read the Bible.
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 2: But San Anne is is Jesus's grandmother, and so you
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 2: know she she remains very symbolic and very important for
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 2: the Migma in that sense. So the fact that Sarah's
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 2: is really the only female figure that we know in
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 2: the film, I think is like is very emblematic of
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 2: like Migma culture, you know. And I love those scenes
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 2: so much because they're actually speaking Migma. She's making Bannick,
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 2: you know, she's doing like all these things that like
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 2: are so familiar and are so like grounding. And when
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 2: we're in Sarah's house too, you have a sense of
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 2: like Aila doesn't have to be you know, the smartest,
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 2: you know, most sort of like aware person. She can
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 2: just kind of be there and like is comforting.
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: It feels like the closest scenes to where she feels
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: like being a kid, because it's really easy to forget
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: that she's a kid because she has the weight of
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: the world and then some on her shoulders. But yeah,
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: in those scenes with Sarah's and I think like part
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: of why it's so devastating to see that Sarah's has
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: been murdered is because that's I mean one of the
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: only times you sort of see Aila relax the smallest
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: bit and just feel, like you said, comfortable.
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, big time, you know. And it's also interesting because
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 2: what you're saying too about her, I really see it
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 2: as after her mother's death and her father's in prison,
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 2: you know, Aila kind of has to become the adult,
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 2: has to become the parent, you know, and like, you know,
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 2: you both mentioned like that's not rare, unfortunately for kids
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 2: who grow up in circumstances where there is like substance
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 2: abuse or there's like a parent absence for whatever reason,
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 2: you know. And I really refer to I always think
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 2: about like all the men in the film kind of
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 2: as like lost boys in a sense, because there is
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 2: sort of like this waywardness, this sort of sense of
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 2: like there's not like any other kind of like parent
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 2: like child relationships really depicted, and sometimes it can kind
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 2: of like feel like that in circumstances, you know, where
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 2: there is so much intergenerational traumas, like everyone's kind like
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 2: lost and everyone's kind of like separated from each other,
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 2: you know. And so I thought that that was really
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 2: interesting the way that they treated that in film.
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, particularly with AILA's relationship with her father, which I
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: thought was the way that that was developed was I
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: mean it really emotionally effective, but really interesting too, where
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: it's I don't know, every character in this movie is
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: so multi dimensional and so complex where it's like I
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: can be mad at AILA's dad in one scene and
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: then in the next scene be like, oh, but I
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: but I understand where he's coming from. Where I mean
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: when we flash forward, Aila is essentially her uncle's boss.
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: She's clearly the brains behind the operation, and her dad
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: is not able to, like I don't know, get emotionally
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: where he needs to be, and the anger sort of
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: is lashed out towards her when it is his anger
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: with the circumstances, not with her. And seeing them navigate
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: that relationship and reach i mean, go full circle in
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: the best and the worst way by the end was
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: just so so so impactful. It was just yeah, so
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: beautifully written.
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and and sort of you know, you're right and
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 2: sort of like seeing that full There's a lot of
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 2: like circular sort of narratives that happened in the film,
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 2: and I think that that's very intentional in the sense
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 2: of like kind of being caught in systemic racism can
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 2: often feel like you can't escape this vicious circle that
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 2: you're in, right, like any kind of systemic repression. But
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 2: we sort of we opened the movie with her father
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 2: going to prison, we close the movie with her father
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 2: going to prison. You know, the amount of journey that
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 2: he has to do in between, you know, in terms
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 2: of his relationship with Aila is huge. Sorry, my cat's
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 2: eating my notes as I am trying to read them,
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 2: you know, is absolutely huge, you know. And I think
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 2: that exchange at the end of the film where where
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 2: Joseph like just comes out and says, you know, like
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 2: you're still a kid. I want you to be a kid,
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 2: you know. I think that that you finally understand in
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 2: that moment what the stakes are for him, and like
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 2: the fact that like, you know, he understands even though
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 2: he's like, I want you to be a kid, he
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 2: understands that like Dayla can never really be a kid,
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 2: you know, like that's just not on the table. And
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 2: I think that's kind of interesting in terms of like
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 2: looking at this film as like in comparison with like
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 2: other films about like teenage girls, because I think there
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 2: could be an argument made that in some ways Rhymes
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 2: is a coming of age story. Yeah, but it's just like,
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 2: you know, you look at that and then you look
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 2: at something like BookSmart and you're like, oh right. You know,
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 2: you guys talk so much about like how you know,
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 2: oftentimes teen movies take place in a very like narrow
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 2: sort of class oh yeah, and you know, it's sort
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 2: of interesting to see the way that this film steps
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 2: kind of outside of that, you know, to tell this
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 2: story of it's like, well, you know, sometimes coming of
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 2: age means having to be your own parent at.
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: You know, absolutely, yeah, I mean, and I feel like
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: I would I would qualify this movie as I wrote
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: down all the different genres I felt like this movie
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: touched on at different points, which is another thing that
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: I loved about. It was like, there's just there were
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: whole sequences that were a heist movie. There were whole
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 1: sequences that were very much drama. There were whole sequences.
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: But it feels like a coming of age movie to me. Yeah,
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: And I don't know, I mean, maybe not at first glance,
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: because it's not an experience that we usually see reflected
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: on screen, but we definitely see her come of age and.
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 4: Right, it's like, I mean, it's it's almost like you
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 4: might not necessarily immediately recognize it as a coming of
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 4: age story because.
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: There's no party at a rich kid's house, so maybe
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: that's where.
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 4: Right, there's no like oops, I smoked weed for the
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 4: first time and now I'm true, I guess, so dizzy, Yeah,
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 4: at my friend's mansion that I'm hanging out at right.
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 4: It's like but but it's like, yeah, a movie about
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 4: a young Indigenous teen girl in the nineteen seventies in Canada,
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 4: Like that is what coming of age would look like.
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, yeah, you know, and even I think that, like,
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 2: you know, there were even things like like I think
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 2: that in my own coming of it that like I
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 2: like resonated with me in terms of the film, you know, like,
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 2: like I said, I didn't grow up in a res
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 2: but I did grow up with two parents who had
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 2: serious substance of these issues. And yeah, there were definitely
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 2: things about like ALA's story that resonated so so strongly
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 2: with me, like on this very prefun level. And I
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 2: think that's important. I think that's so important in the
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 2: media that like young people can see. You know, I
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 2: was older than Ala when I saw than Ayala would
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 2: have been then when I saw the film. But it's
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 2: a film that like I try and like show young
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 2: people too, because it's important. You know, we're talking about
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 2: like representation. You know, it's important to sort of see like, yes,
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 2: it is this very brutal, violent, I don't think particularly
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 2: optimistic story. But Jeff Barnaby talks a lot about this
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 2: idea of like wanting to portray the res in, you know,
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 2: in a way that's like true to his experience, you know.
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 2: And I think that, like whether you're Indigenous or not,
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 2: if you're a young person who is living in like
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 2: in a precarious situation where you know that's because you
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 2: know it's always because of things like that you can't control,
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 2: then I think that there's things you're going to relate to.
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 2: In terms of AILA's story.
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, I mean even getting back to the relationship
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 1: with her dad, I mean just navigating a complicated relationship
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: with I had a number of people in my family
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: who had sense abuse problems, but you love them and
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: you feel like it's not especially when you're still a kid,
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: you can't really sever that chord. And I don't know,
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: it's something you almost never see in teen movies, and
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: if you do, it's kind of framed like a joke
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: instead of you know, a problem that is something you know,
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: very sensitive that needs to be navigated, and another thing
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: that kind of I guess I'm curious.
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 7: At what you both felt about this, But I also
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 7: was really affected by the like Aila is so mature
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 7: in ways that I'm like, I currently don't even know if.
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: I can be where the amount of grace and understanding
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: that she's able to extend to both of her parents consistently,
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: even when she is, particularly with her dad, who she's
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: often pissed off at the decision she's making, she realized
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: as he's lashing out, he's compartmentalizing. He's not able to fully,
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: you know, deal with what's in front of him. But
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: she has this very I mean, there's that scene with
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 1: her and her uncle where she says, the jail didn't
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: break him, we did, which is her putting more blame
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 1: on her. You know, we know as a viewer she's
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: putting a lot of undue blame on herself. But just
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 1: the amount of grace that she extends the people in
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: her life because she has such a thorough understanding of
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: how circumstantial a lot of their problems are, I thought
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: was like really cool, and again, just something you don't
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 1: see that subtlety expressed in this genre really ever.
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 4: Right, And something you mentioned about the there's this kind
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 4: of ongoing discussion throughout the movie about characters kind of
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 4: having to age too rapidly on a maturity and kind
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 4: of emotional and psychological level. There's also this idea of
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 4: characters being broken, and there is that discussion between Ayla
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 4: and Berner talking about Joseph saying, you know, like you
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 4: said Jamie, like Ala thinks that like we broke him,
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 4: and it's not necessarily clear if she means like we
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 4: as the family or we as a community or what exactly.
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 4: But then there's another quick interaction between Aila and Joseph
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 4: at the end when he's saying the whole like you
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 4: you're just a little girl, and she's like, I was
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 4: never a little girl. And then he says, you know,
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 4: your mother was broken way before what happened, meaning like
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 4: way before the accident that killed her brother, and this
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 4: has nothing to do with you, and that, you know,
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 4: is a reference to them becoming broken, being survivors of
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 4: this residential school system and of this systemic oppression and
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 4: racism of being you know, forced into reserve life, and
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 4: it's it's just heartbreaking.
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think that in some ways I was
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 2: thinking about this, I think a little bit closer this time,
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 2: because I was thinking about the podcast, and I was
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 2: thinking about other films that you've discussed that have like
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 2: teenage female protagonists, and I think that Aila has a
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 2: certain amount of like is portrayed as having a certain
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 2: amount of stoicism and a certain amount of like restraint,
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 2: and a certain amount of like ability to see the
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 2: larger picture that you kind of see crack at the
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 2: end when she's like, you know, right before Popularize, when
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 2: she's crying after she's found Sarah's and she sort of says,
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 2: you know, the the you know, the last rule sort
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 2: of surviving in the Kingdom of the Crow is never
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 2: let your emotional guard down. And I think that sometimes
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 2: for kids who grow up or people just in general
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 2: who grow up in difficult situations, I think that sometimes
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 2: like in order to survive, you need to kind of
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 2: compartmentalize and you need to kind of like have a
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 2: very calm, steady demeanor because there's nothing else in your
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 2: life that is that way, right, you know, And so
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 2: I think that there's like a certain amount of that
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 2: as well. And there's a certain amount of it too
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 2: that like I kind of question how realistic it is,
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 2: because I mean, I work with teenagers, you know, and like,
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 2: and they're all lovely, and none of them are going
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 2: to listen to this, but I adore them all, and
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 2: you know, I think that there is a certain amount
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 2: of that that is sort of like creative license. But
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 2: it is really hard to like place ALA's age, and
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 2: it's really hard to like I think that, like a
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 2: more turbulent character wouldn't have worked for the film. So
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 2: I think that, like, also from a storytelling perspective, you know,
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 2: Ala being this rock is is sort of important for
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 2: the narrative, but also sort of perhaps a little bit idealized.
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: I see that, Yeah, yeah, and I feel like that
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 1: kind of like undo. I mean that extreme strength and
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: ability to compartmentalize also cross over into how she remembers
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: her mother and how which was kind of another I thought,
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: pretty different, incredible approach by Jeff Barnabet that I totally
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: agree if she were acting, you know, like your average teenager,
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 1: may not have been possible. But I mean, it's I forget.
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 1: I think it's her uncle. I think it's Berner. Early
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 1: in the movie, once we flash forward and everything has happened,
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 1: who insults her mother in front of her and she
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 1: immediately because she has I mean, this understanding of the
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 1: circumstance of what happened was so tragic and so terrible,
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 1: and even though it was an accident that involves her mother,
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 1: you know, she's able to kind of see the fuller
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 1: picture and protect her mother's memory.
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 4: Are you talking about the moment where he like he
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 4: calls someone an old wit and then she's like, don't
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 4: call her that, and then he's like, sorry, the old lady.
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 4: I thought he was talking about cirus.
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: There was he I think he might have been Okay,
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: then I misunderstood that.
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 4: Because I think, yeah, he's talking about because she seems
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 4: to be Sarah seems to be sort of it's at
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 4: her house where like they're growing all the marijuana. I
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 4: think that they sell, yeah, and he's so there's certain
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 4: kind of debts to her that they oh because like
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 4: she's supplying stuff and then and then yeah, so and
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 4: then they're like kind of moving the product around. But yeah,
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 4: I think he's talking to her. But even so, I
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 4: think your points still valid, Jamie. Of like, I mean,
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 4: everyone is broken and everyone's having to kind of compartmentalize,
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 4: and it's.
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 1: And that's something that Aila has. I feel like just
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 1: you were touching on this a little bit where in
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 1: a world where there is not a lot that she
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 1: has control over how she views her mother and how
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 1: she holds her mother's memory is something that she has
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 1: control over.
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 2: Bad time. And it's interesting too because I was going
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 2: to say, you know, even though Indigenous women have been,
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 2: you know, a target of colonialism and colonial violence through
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 2: the Indian Act and in other ways, you know, Indigenous
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 2: women are also at the forefront of a lot of
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 2: activism that happens and is still happening.
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 3: You know.
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 2: One thing that was going on when this film first
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 2: came out in twenty thirteen was the beginning of Idle
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 2: No More, which is an indigenous rights movement here in
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 2: Canada and in some parts of the United States as well.
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 2: Like It's Standing Rock, there was Idle No More, folks,
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 2: and it was started by four women, three Indigenous and
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 2: one white, ally because they wanted to stand up against
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 2: this bill that the government was introducing that would have
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 2: changed not only a lot of Indigenous rights but also
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 2: a lot of environmental protections. So they got together and
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 2: they're like, we're not going to be anymore. And it's
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 2: spread to becoming this national protest movement. It spread to
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 2: becoming a bigger sort of movement for Indigenous rights here
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 2: in Canada, and that was started, you know, by by
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 2: four women sort of sitting around a table in the
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 2: Prairies like just like deciding, you know, we're done. So
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 2: there is, like I think, in in the character Veila,
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 2: like and understanding some of like Jeff's like motivations for
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 2: wanting to create a character that way, Like I think
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 2: I understand like that he's also paying tribute to women
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 2: like that, you know, who have like held it together
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 2: and who are like trying to make change and who
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 2: are in so many ways taking all this garbage that
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 2: the world puts on them and trying to like make
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 2: change and do things that are different, and also like
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 2: the compassion that it takes to take all that shit
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 2: and and still turn around and be able to say, like,
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 2: you know, I'm going to march and I'm gonna I'm
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 2: going to write letters and I'm going to do a
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 2: hunger fast. And yeah, I think that that's really really powerful.
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 2: And I think that like so I think that there's
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 2: also like that element too, of like when I say
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 2: that Aila is a little bit of an idealized character,
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 2: like I think that there's also a measure of that
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 2: that's like paying tribute in like a positive way to
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 2: the role that Indigenous women play in politics and in
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 2: their communities.
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 4: Mm hm, for sure.
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 2: There was one thing that just kind of coming off
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 2: of something that I think you mentioned Caitlin about like
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 2: the selling drugs and like being broken, And I wanted
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 2: to talk a little bit about that because I'm so
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 2: I'm interested in what your first impressions of that were,
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 2: because we're so used to seeing these images of like
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 2: drunk Indians and you know, that's been so prevalent in
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 2: North American cinema since the beginning of North American cinema. Yeah,
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 2: so did you feel at all sort of did you
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 2: feel any kind of way, I guess like sort of
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 2: like seeing those scenes in the beginning.
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 1: Like I honestly, I mean, I my first reaction was,
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: I mean, I knew that, you know, Jeff Barnaby is
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 1: an Indigenous filmmaker. I'm like, I'm gonna I'm on this
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 1: ride with him he and I knew he was speaking
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 1: to his own community. It did like make me go
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 1: oh no for for a moment, only because I don't know,
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 1: I mean, like we've all seen movies where those stereotypes
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 1: have played out and then you get no context for anything,
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 1: but this movie felt like it was all context for like,
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 1: what what led to those stereotypes being so widely perpetuated
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 1: without context entirely? So yeah, I think it gave me
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 1: pause for like a second, but then when it was clear,
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 1: I mean the first frame of the movie is context. Yeah,
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 1: So I feel like this. And I was reading in
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 1: just this same interview with him in Muskrat Magazine that
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 1: he had experienced some pushback from other filmmakers in the
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 1: community that were just like, well, you're showing these stereotypes
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 1: and like, you know, like I don't have any interest
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 1: in seeing that portrayed on screen in any way, and
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 1: his response being something you've already referenced just where he
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 1: was just like, well, I'm showing you my community and
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 1: reflecting my own experiences growing up, So like, how can
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 1: you tell me what I can? Wow? Like I can't
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 1: reflect my own experience, right.
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 4: It almost it's like sort of finding a balance of
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 4: like do I do a disservice to my community by
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 4: ignoring some very real truths of what is taking place,
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 4: or do I I mean, we talked about this a
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 4: little bit on a recent episode we recorded on the
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 4: Matreon about what we Do in the Shadows, where it
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 4: was written and directed by both take Away Titi and
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 4: Jamaine Clement, who are both Maori, and we were talking
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 4: about how cool it is to see because there's like
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 4: this kind of discussion around there's a lot of pressure
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 4: on filmmakers of any marginalized community to only talk about that.
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 4: It's like, if you're black, you can only make movies
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 4: about racism, and that's your expertise, so that's what you
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 4: have to make art about. And how it was like
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 4: really cool to see this like really goofy vampire mockumentary
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 4: that's like so funny and just like so silly made
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 4: by these indigenous Maori filmmakers. But then there's also like
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 4: you know, Taika made Boy, which is about his upbringing
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 4: in his like Maori community. I mean, and you can
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 4: speak to this as a filmmaker too, Jess, of feeling
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 4: this pressure of like do I make movies that I
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 4: want to make that are fun and stilly if if
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 4: those are the movies I want to make, or do
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 4: I you know, it's like this kind of ongoing dilemma.
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 2: Oh for sure. And it's I mean, like Taika also
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 2: directed one of the thor films I think, right, yes.
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 4: You know those films, tiny little movies that no one's
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 4: ever heard of.
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 2: Right, And it's it's interesting because I think that, like, yeah,
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 2: I feel so acutely where Jeff is coming from, especially
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 2: because you know, we all kind of in terms of
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 2: like filmmaking here in Canada, we all kind of have
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 2: to navigate the same systems of the same funders. So
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 2: you know, we're fortunate in the sense that, like we
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 2: do have public funding for the arts. You know, I
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 2: wouldn't trade that for anything, but that also means that
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 2: and you know, this is changing a little bit now,
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 2: but you know, I've been doing this for like a
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 2: decade close on, and you know, a lot of the
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 2: funders are not like bipop people. They're not queer people,
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 2: they're not you know, a lot of the funders are
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 2: still like a very specific type of bureaucrat. So when
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 2: you're talking about like yeah, it can feel sometimes like
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 2: you're just ticking boxes of sort of like Okay, I
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 2: want to make my film, but I want to make
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 2: it this way. And it's like, you know, a funder
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 2: is not necessarily going to be like, well, you know,
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 2: you're an indigenous filmmaker and you just want to make
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 2: like a zombie movie, Like I don't know, you know,
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 2: Like so it's complicated some of the way that we
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 2: have to navigate that I also make work and want
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 2: to continue to make work that is also in that
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 2: genre sort of space. Yeah, it can be really it
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 2: can be really difficult at times, and there is all
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 2: this kind of like pressure sometimes to yeah, like to
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 2: not show certain things because like it always comes back
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 2: to the reality of representation, because you know, this is
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 2: like blood Quantum. We keep talking about bloo quantum. People
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 2: are just gonna have blood quantum.
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 1: We just have to do blood Quantum for Halloween next year.
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, I will come back if you want me to, no, please, Yes,
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 2: I waited like four years for that film. Anyway, that's
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 2: another story for another day. But when you're talking about
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 2: rhymester Ingoules, it's such a singular film. It's a coming
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 2: of age story, it's a heist movie, it's a story
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 2: of revenge, and it's it's taking place in this you know,
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 2: it's a historical piece as well. Like it's such a
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 2: particular thing that like when the pressure is on you,
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 2: it's like you are the one that we are giving
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 2: our small amounts of Canadian money to to make this film.
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 2: It's like, not only are you just like the only
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 2: like at that point in time, you know, like one
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 2: of the most high profile like Migma filmmakers, one of
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 2: only a handful of indigenous filmmakers, right, it's also like
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 2: you know, you you've been awarded this like highly sought
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 2: after like money, you know. So yeah, so there are
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 2: all these weird pressures sometimes and sometimes like as an
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 2: indigenous filmmaker, you can feel like you're battling against like
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 2: so many different like things that you might have to
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 2: compromise on, you know, like, Okay, not everybody's gonna like
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 2: then I'm gonna show this in this way. At the
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 2: same time, am I working with a funder who understands
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 2: my nation's culture? You know? Am I just being tokenized?
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 2: Am I like wasting this like tiny little bit of
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 2: money but it's the only money we have, you know,
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 2: Like right, So there's all these different things that kind
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 2: of play into that. But you know, we're starting to
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 2: talk a lot more about narrative sovereignty. Even just the
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 2: idea that it should be indigenous filmmakers making indigenous films
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 2: is very new, which it shouldn't be, but is a
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 2: very new idea in Canada and the United States. So
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 2: I'm hoping with that that they'll just be more opportunities,
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 2: you know. And if there are more opportunities and there
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 2: can be more people making films therefore, you know, so
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 2: the one Native person making a film doesn't have to
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 2: make a film that represents all Native people, you know.
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 2: They can just make the one Native film that they
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 2: want to make, and then me over here, I can
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 2: make the Native film that I want to make, you know,
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 2: like exactly, and they don't have to be the same thing,
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 2: and it doesn't have to fit into sort of like
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 2: this very specific expectation, you know, right.
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 4: And they can have be all different kinds of stories,
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 4: and they can span all different genres and they it's
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 4: it's almost as like, well, I'm wondering if, like Jeff
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 4: Barnaby is like, this is my one chance to make
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 4: a film, I have to just like pack in every genre.
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 3: That I can.
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 2: Yeh.
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 4: It's not as though the movie is like feels muddled
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 4: or anything like that, but it's like we need to
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 4: get to a place where.
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 1: There just should never be that much pressure on a
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 1: single filmmaker. Yeah, like it just it doesn't make sense.
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 1: And I'm glad that he spoke to that issue and
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 1: also just said, like, there are indigenous filmmakers that didn't
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 1: like the movie I made, and I disagree with them,
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 1: and it is what it is.
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 2: It is what it is.
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and there shouldn't have been that much pressure on
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 1: his movie to represent everybody, but like you were saying,
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 1: just that there's not enough opportunities and so that pressure
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 1: is created.
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 2: And it just spirals up from there, and it's I mean,
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 2: I think that like even in a broader sense like
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 2: of just like any kind of marginalized filmmaker. I mean
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 2: I would even include like female filmmakers in that. Like
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 2: you know, when you look at somebody like a Catherine Bigelow,
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 2: you know, often people are like, oh, well, she's so
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 2: exemplary as like a as a female filmmaker because she's
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 2: making like action films, you know, And it should be
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 2: fine for a woman to make an action film. It
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 2: should be fine for an African American filmmaker to make
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 2: like an experimental video work. It should be fine for
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 2: an indigenous filmmaker to make an alien movie, you know,
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 2: like it should be fine, because when a cis hit,
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 2: like a white straight you know, filmmaker wants to go
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 2: and make a film about I don't know, let's just
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 2: pick like like a female coming of age story. Nobody's like, well,
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 2: are you sure, are you sure that you can speak
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 2: to that? You like, nobody scrutinizes, and I know that,
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 2: like I know, we pick on white straight men an
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 2: awful lot, and they're awful fragile, but it's true, you know,
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 2: Like I I've had conversations with like filmmaking friends, you know,
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 2: people that I absolutely adore, you know, who are male filmmakers,
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 2: and nobody questions them about like why they want to
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 2: make a film that they want to make. They're like, oh,
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 2: I just want to tell this story.
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 4: It's like, well, are you the person to do it? Though?
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah? So I'm like, well, you know, I want to
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 2: make like a film where it's like two dudes and
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 2: they travel through time. People are like are you sure though?
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 2: Are they going to be native dudes? And You're like,
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 2: you can't win, you can't win. And I feel like
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 2: we're fed this idea of scarcity, this idea of like
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 2: it has to be these like select few people who
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 2: get to have the keys to the Kingdom, and it's
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 2: just not it's just not true and like, and so
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 2: any shift away from that that we can have, I
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 2: think is a positive thing. I mean, it's unfortunate, but
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 2: you know, we're talking so much about like Jeff's work,
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 2: you know, and like seeing his films and things like that,
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 2: and I feel like, as brilliant as this film is,
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 2: in so many ways, more people have probably seen Pocahontas,
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 2: more people have probably seen Dances with Wolves, more people
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 2: have probably seen Dead Man. You know, these films that
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 2: like are super dubious and do a lot of damage
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 2: in terms of like the representation of Indigenous people. And
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 2: yet when I'm like, oh, hey, you want to talk
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 2: indigenous cinema, people are sort of like, ah, I don't
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 2: know what that is. Yeah, or they might know, they
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 2: might know Taika, But that's like it, you know, right,
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 2: which is better than nothing. But it's not enough.
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 4: Sure, it certainly not enough.
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 1: Well that I should be more Indigenous filmmakers who are
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 1: household names, period, period, absolutely period.
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 4: According to and I don't know exactly how accurate this
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 4: number is, but according to box Office Mojo dot com
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 4: ever heard of it, this movie. I do consult it
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 4: a lot.
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 2: Mojo just makes me think of Austin Powers.
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 4: I know, I'm just like com paint.
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 1: That makes me be a bombshell and that makes me
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 1: want to die.
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 4: Oh gosh. But this movie earned at the box office
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 4: basically fifteen hundred dollars because of its very limited distribution
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 4: and exhibitions. So yeah, I mean, I think that's why
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 4: a lot of people haven't seen this movie. A lot
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 4: of people haven't heard of this movie. Admittedly, we were
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 4: not familiar with it until quite recently, Jamie and I,
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 4: so it's just a matter of their and I don't
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 4: even know exactly how to fix this of like getting
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 4: the word out there. I mean, hopefully this episode of
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 4: this podcast encourages people to watch this movie. It's it's accessible.
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 4: I watched it on develop on Hoopla and like Canopy,
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 4: which is free if you have a library.
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 1: Card, you can rent it anywhere and rent it if
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 1: you want to make some money back. Yes, yeah, I
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 1: rented it on YouTube like it was.
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 2: It's easily accessible, you know, and and increasingly easily accessible.
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 2: I own a copy of this film because that's the
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 2: only way that I could like keep watching it after
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 2: I saw it, you know, in festival. But yeah, people
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 2: can see this movie. It's it's I mean, so I
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 2: would say that we have to do this, like we
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 2: have to go old school on this. So this is
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 2: the plan that I've come up with in the last
• 1:33:40
  Speaker 2: like five seconds. And I don't know why I particularly
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 2: old school, except for so everybody listening to the podcast,
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 2: you have to watch the movie and you have to
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 2: tell five friends about the movie, or you'll be haunted
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 2: by an ancient Indian burial ground. That's how we bring
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 2: it around, invoke the burial ground. All.
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 1: It's a pyramid scheme for good.
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly right.
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 4: Oh my gosh. Remember those emails though, right back in
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 4: twenty four hours and send it to five friends or
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 4: else you'll be killed.
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I feel like Auntie's always send those.
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 1: Alongs that were the number one perpetrator of the year
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 1: abouts And it was like, I'm your niece, Why are
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 1: you sending me this email thing? I'm going to be murdered?
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 1: Like I don't know twenty five people. I'm seven, Like.
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 4: I'm a test.
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 2: It's like I think sometimes like it's just like yeah,
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 2: I sort of miss stuff like that sometimes because it's weird.
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 2: Like it's sort of like it's paranormal in a weird way,
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 2: but like, yeah, Auntie's being like, you gotta pass this
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 2: one on and like all your wishes will come true.
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 4: You're like, right, your crush will fall in love with
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 4: you if you send this, but if you don't, you'll die.
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 1: You'll be murdered tonight, do you hear? Okay, Annie?
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 4: Did?
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about the Ala tests?
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 3: Oh?
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 1: Yes, yes, really quickly.
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 2: And I wanted to talk to about Ala being a
• 1:35:07
  Speaker 2: two spirit character, but we can do that after.
• 1:35:09
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, absolutely, so the Ala Test. We obviously talked
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 1: with the creator of the Ala Test, but the ale
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 1: test just as a reminder to all of our listeners.
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 1: We discussed it on the Frozen two episodes. But the
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 1: Ala Test was inspired by the Bechdel Test and Ali
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 1: wrote it and named it after Aila, from rhymes for
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 1: young guls. The Ala Test asks three questions about a
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 1: film's character. Is she an indigenous or Aboriginal woman who
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 1: is the main character, She cannot fall in love with
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 1: a white man, and third, does not end up raped
• 1:35:46
  Speaker 1: or murdered at any point in the story. So obviously
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 1: this movie passes the Alea Test or wouldn't be called that,
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 1: but for all media. The al test, like the beck,
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 1: can be applied to any kind of narrative media. And
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 1: you can find the full list and all the updates
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 1: that the dash Ala dash test dot tumblr dot com.
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 4: And try and follow Ellie on Twitter. She's at Ali
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 4: Noddy nahd ees how you spell her last name?
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 1: So listen to the Frozen two episode you know what
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 1: to do and then tell five people.
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 4: And then tell five people. Is there anything else anyone
• 1:36:28
  Speaker 4: wants to talk about regarding I.
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 2: Mean, I still have pages and pages of terrible, sad statistics,
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 2: but we don't have to get into those. I did
• 1:36:39
  Speaker 2: want to just add that one of the things that
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 2: I've come to appreciate about Aila is that I think that,
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 2: whether it's intentional or not, I think she can be
• 1:36:48
  Speaker 2: read as a queer character. And a lot of that
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 2: has to do with some interpretations of too spirit, which
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 2: is a Pandigenous term that was adopted in the early
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 2: nineties to describe LGBTQ plus indigenous folks. One of the
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 2: interpretations of too spirit is coming out of sort of
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 2: like in a Jibwei perspective, is that like you have
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 2: male and female energy and they're balanced. Another interpretation of it,
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 2: coming more sort of from like Eastern Woodlands or like
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 2: more sort of like Migma and Showny traditions, is that
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 2: you walk between worlds and that's what it means to
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 2: be too spirit And so you see that a lot
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 2: in this film, where Ala sort of doesn't have like
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 2: strict boundaries in terms of like like the visions that
• 1:37:35
  Speaker 2: she's having of her mom and you know, the dreams
• 1:37:39
  Speaker 2: that she's having, and also you know she sees Tyler
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 2: at one brother. You know, she's sort of having these
• 1:37:46
  Speaker 2: these moments where you know, worlds are not Yeah, she's
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 2: passing sort of between worlds. She's also shape shifting, which
• 1:37:54
  Speaker 2: is also a part of some of the conversations around
• 1:37:59
  Speaker 2: queer identity. Is from a traditional perspective. So she goes
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 2: from having long braids to having very short hair. She's
• 1:38:08
  Speaker 2: wearing costumes. At one point she has like that which's
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 2: face like on the back of her head. Yes, yeah,
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 2: which is like also a very interesting sort of like
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 2: duality in a sense.
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 2: So, as I've grown with this movie, and as I
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 2: you know, continue to watch it and continue to grow
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 2: in terms of too, like my my own identity as
• 1:38:29
  Speaker 2: like a queer trans indigenous person. I like understand her
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 2: better now as also an indigenous character.
• 1:38:37
  Speaker 1: That's so cool.
• 1:38:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's it's like, it's interesting, like it's it's
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 2: something that like I don't think I'll have to ask
• 1:38:45
  Speaker 2: Jeff about but I don't think it was ever intentional
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 2: because it's never mentioned in anything, right, But yeah, it
• 1:38:52
  Speaker 2: sort of fits really interestingly in that way with a
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 2: lot of traditional beliefs.
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 1: I love growing with movies. That's the best.
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, There's so many things that don't hold up anymore,
• 1:39:05
  Speaker 2: So it's really nice when you can like watch something
• 1:39:08
  Speaker 2: that's so cherished and you're like, oh.
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 1: You won't betray me.
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I could still love you. Something interesting too to
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 2: think about in the context of this film is the
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 2: idea of unsettling. So we talk about unsettling in terms
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 2: of like something that disturbs us, right, but we also
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 2: talk about unsettling as the process of decolonizing. You know,
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 2: you're becoming You're not a settler, you're becoming unsettled. And
• 1:39:40
  Speaker 2: I think that this film is such an interesting and
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 2: interesting representation of that of sort of like Jeff Barnaby's
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 2: leaning into all this very spooky imagery and all this
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 2: very like you know, very graphic imagery even you know,
• 1:39:53
  Speaker 2: like you really do see Popper get his head blown off,
• 1:39:56
  Speaker 2: like there's a big check of his head missing.
• 1:39:58
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:39:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So there's this so sort of like this desire
• 1:40:01
  Speaker 2: to disturb and kind of like upset, but also that
• 1:40:06
  Speaker 2: that's a path to kind of like interrupt and get
• 1:40:10
  Speaker 2: some movement in what can be of sometimes a very
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 2: stagnant conversation with regards to Canadian history and indigenous history
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 2: and in the country. So it's like, it's it's interesting
• 1:40:20
  Speaker 2: that that exists in this film in that way, and
• 1:40:23
  Speaker 2: there's also a conversation to have around the idea of
• 1:40:25
  Speaker 2: like revenge or reconciliation. You know, I think that, you know,
• 1:40:30
  Speaker 2: Indigenous people aren't a monolith. There's always going to be
• 1:40:32
  Speaker 2: people who you know, like we were talking about earlier,
• 1:40:35
  Speaker 2: aren't gonna like, you know, the type of films that
• 1:40:37
  Speaker 2: Jeff Barnaby is making, and there's gonna be you know,
• 1:40:41
  Speaker 2: people who do like them that don't like other types
• 1:40:43
  Speaker 2: of films. And then like there's gonna be certain types
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 2: of discourse that like certain Indigenous people are going to
• 1:40:48
  Speaker 2: really support, and there's gonna be other ones that they
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 2: don't agree with, you know, but it's very interesting. This
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 2: conversation is sort of about like revenge versus reconciliation, because
• 1:40:58
  Speaker 2: in an interesting way, we can own, we really decide
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 2: what we ourselves as individuals are going to do. And
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 2: because of that, Yeah, there's so many questions that kind
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 2: of exist out there about like whether that is even
• 1:41:10
  Speaker 2: like meaningful, you know, if it's just like an individual
• 1:41:14
  Speaker 2: sort of thing. But I don't know. I am a
• 1:41:17
  Speaker 2: big believer in that, Like, our individual actions are important.
• 1:41:21
  Speaker 2: So whether we go to the revenge side of things
• 1:41:23
  Speaker 2: or the reconciliation side of things, it's just that we
• 1:41:26
  Speaker 2: make that choice, you know, alternately in the end. Yeah,
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 2: I think that's kind of kind of all I decide. Yeah, Oh,
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 2: I do have recommendations.
• 1:41:35
  Speaker 4: Please, yes, please, So if.
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 2: People are interested, and I'll talk to you guys more
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 2: about this off mic. But if people are interested in
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 2: learning more about indigenous issues, if like this episode is
• 1:41:48
  Speaker 2: like catching you totally off guard and you're like, I've
• 1:41:50
  Speaker 2: never heard of Indians before in my life, Well, welcome
• 1:41:56
  Speaker 2: to twenty twenty. I don't know where you're been living,
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 2: but congratulations, I guess, but I would say that learning
• 1:42:05
  Speaker 2: about indigenous issues isn't as difficult as we might think.
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 2: So much of our school system, you know, has been
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 2: set up in a way that maintains weight supremacy. So
• 1:42:15
  Speaker 2: we have to do a lot of the work ourselves,
• 1:42:17
  Speaker 2: and that can be intimidating, especially if you don't know
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 2: where to start. For both, you know, Caitlin and you Jamie,
• 1:42:24
  Speaker 2: like I feel like, you know, the process of learning
• 1:42:26
  Speaker 2: about residential schools this past week, even though it's important,
• 1:42:29
  Speaker 2: like history to learn about, I imagine it was also
• 1:42:32
  Speaker 2: very very taxing because it is very taxing because it
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 2: should be. It's genocide. Yeah, you know, it's not a
• 1:42:39
  Speaker 2: fun thing to learn about. It's not a fun thing
• 1:42:41
  Speaker 2: to discuss, but it is a necessary thing for us
• 1:42:43
  Speaker 2: to learn about because we have to stop it. It's
• 1:42:46
  Speaker 2: actively still happening and we have to, you know, make
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 2: that decision, that personal decision whether we are are going
• 1:42:52
  Speaker 2: to be with it or against it in a sense.
• 1:42:56
  Speaker 2: So with all that in mind, there are a ton
• 1:42:58
  Speaker 2: of resources out there that exists for folks who are
• 1:43:01
  Speaker 2: interested in learning that are really easy to access free
• 1:43:05
  Speaker 2: even you know, and I will put together some of
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 2: those maybe we can time it so that like we'll
• 1:43:13
  Speaker 2: put like put a bunch together for like the release
• 1:43:16
  Speaker 2: of this episode.
• 1:43:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, we can release a resource guide the whole
• 1:43:18
  Speaker 1: thing for.
• 1:43:19
  Speaker 2: Sure, because there's like there's so much stuff out there,
• 1:43:21
  Speaker 2: even like really little things like there's an app that
• 1:43:24
  Speaker 2: you can download for free called native land dot Ca.
• 1:43:27
  Speaker 2: It's a world map and like you essentially use it
• 1:43:31
  Speaker 2: like Google Maps. You look up different locations and it
• 1:43:33
  Speaker 2: tells you whose traditional territory you're living on. And just
• 1:43:36
  Speaker 2: even like little gestures like that are really really important
• 1:43:39
  Speaker 2: because there needs to be that recognition. There needs to
• 1:43:42
  Speaker 2: be that starting point. You know. I think that a
• 1:43:45
  Speaker 2: lot of us feel very attached to the places that
• 1:43:47
  Speaker 2: we grew up in different ways, you know, whether we
• 1:43:50
  Speaker 2: spent physically long periods of time there or whether it's
• 1:43:52
  Speaker 2: a sentimental sort of attachment. And just being able to
• 1:43:55
  Speaker 2: recognize that it's like Okay, that's Migmap territory, or that's
• 1:43:58
  Speaker 2: Le Nape territory, or that's Osage territory, that's you know,
• 1:44:02
  Speaker 2: Soue territory. Then even just understanding that all of a
• 1:44:06
  Speaker 2: sudden can be such an opening of a door, because
• 1:44:10
  Speaker 2: then it's like, oh, when you hear about like protests
• 1:44:13
  Speaker 2: happening at Standing Rock. It's not like, oh, those are nameless,
• 1:44:17
  Speaker 2: faceless like Indigenous people protesting. We're not sure what it's like. Oh,
• 1:44:22
  Speaker 2: I get it. Those are like the Coda and Lakota Sue.
• 1:44:27
  Speaker 2: You know, I grew up on Sue territory. Like all
• 1:44:29
  Speaker 2: of a sudden, you have a much more personal tie
• 1:44:31
  Speaker 2: to that. There's also tons and tons and tons of
• 1:44:34
  Speaker 2: Indigenous activists out there, people like Pam Palmitter who are
• 1:44:38
  Speaker 2: doing great work, and all their stuff is like on
• 1:44:40
  Speaker 2: YouTube and they're active on social media. So there's like,
• 1:44:44
  Speaker 2: so there is hope, there's hope you can learn about
• 1:44:47
  Speaker 2: these things. It might be uncomfortable, as any kind of unlearning,
• 1:44:51
  Speaker 2: unsettling process is, but I would really encourage people to
• 1:44:55
  Speaker 2: do that work because you know, we've seen with this
• 1:44:57
  Speaker 2: past year we cannot continue to live is black, Indigenous
• 1:45:02
  Speaker 2: and people of color like we carry this tremendous weight
• 1:45:06
  Speaker 2: all the time of this violence of this system. You know,
• 1:45:10
  Speaker 2: even though I'm not currently in Nova Scotia, I am
• 1:45:15
  Speaker 2: connected to the MIGMN Nova Scotia right now who are
• 1:45:18
  Speaker 2: fighting for their treaty rights. You know, I am as
• 1:45:21
  Speaker 2: an Indigenous person, I am connected to the struggles of
• 1:45:24
  Speaker 2: other indigenous people. I'm connected to the struggles of black
• 1:45:26
  Speaker 2: people because it's all part of the same system, you know,
• 1:45:30
  Speaker 2: And that's why you care, and that's why you have
• 1:45:31
  Speaker 2: to be mobilized, and that's why you have to educate yourself,
• 1:45:34
  Speaker 2: and that's why you have to speak out and try
• 1:45:37
  Speaker 2: and do better.
• 1:45:38
  Speaker 3: You know.
• 1:45:39
  Speaker 2: My grandmother, who was migmn is like was like my
• 1:45:42
  Speaker 2: anchor for my mag man has for a really long
• 1:45:44
  Speaker 2: time passed away a couple of years ago, and her
• 1:45:47
  Speaker 2: dying words were, I love you all. And love is
• 1:45:53
  Speaker 2: such an important value within Migma culture that like I
• 1:45:56
  Speaker 2: love you all is not just talking about I love
• 1:45:59
  Speaker 2: you all as in like the people who are physically
• 1:46:01
  Speaker 2: in the room there, but like love is something that
• 1:46:03
  Speaker 2: influences all of our actions. You know. We have a
• 1:46:08
  Speaker 2: lot of intention and a lot of thought that goes
• 1:46:12
  Speaker 2: towards like how we are in the world in terms
• 1:46:14
  Speaker 2: of like how we relate to everything, you know, and
• 1:46:18
  Speaker 2: so yeah, like starting to educate yourself is like starting
• 1:46:22
  Speaker 2: to take responsibility as like part of that interconnectedness.
• 1:46:26
  Speaker 8: Yes, it's like a big taint, no no, no, I
• 1:46:31
  Speaker 8: think as a lot of us who are, you know,
• 1:46:34
  Speaker 8: on a pretty steep learning curve honestly, because they're I mean,
• 1:46:38
  Speaker 8: like we.
• 1:46:38
  Speaker 1: Were saying, there's just so much of this. I mean,
• 1:46:42
  Speaker 1: this is just things I didn't learn in school. I
• 1:46:44
  Speaker 1: feel like you hit the same three points in at
• 1:46:47
  Speaker 1: least American public schools. And that's kind of it. And
• 1:46:51
  Speaker 1: it's like the information is accessible, it's just making the
• 1:46:55
  Speaker 1: commitment to do it like it. That is all it is.
• 1:47:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And I was going to say, there's this fantastic
• 1:47:05
  Speaker 2: film that I just got to see it at the
• 1:47:07
  Speaker 2: Toronto International Film Festival, but we'll hopefully get why release
• 1:47:11
  Speaker 2: soon and everybody can check it out. It's a documentary
• 1:47:14
  Speaker 2: based on Thomas King's book The Inconvenient Indian, which everybody
• 1:47:18
  Speaker 2: should read. But there's this fabulous line in the film
• 1:47:22
  Speaker 2: at the end that is I think, sort of very emblematic,
• 1:47:27
  Speaker 2: kind of about this whole conversation, you know, And it's essentially,
• 1:47:31
  Speaker 2: once you know this story, you can't unknow it. You
• 1:47:36
  Speaker 2: just have to live with the fact that you know
• 1:47:37
  Speaker 2: it now. So now that you know about residential schools,
• 1:47:41
  Speaker 2: you can't say, oh, well, I didn't know, you know,
• 1:47:44
  Speaker 2: and therefore it was allowed to go on there are
• 1:47:46
  Speaker 2: still residential schools open in the United States. By the way,
• 1:47:50
  Speaker 2: I don't know if you guys found that in your research.
• 1:47:52
  Speaker 4: But I did.
• 1:47:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So yeah, so it's like, well, now that you know,
• 1:47:58
  Speaker 2: you know, and go forward with that and you can
• 1:48:01
  Speaker 2: do it. I believe in you.
• 1:48:03
  Speaker 4: Thanks Jazz. I didn't write this quote down from a
• 1:48:08
  Speaker 4: YouTube video A wh I love watching YouTube. I love
• 1:48:12
  Speaker 4: going to box office Mojo dot com classic Caitlin. Yeah.
• 1:48:18
  Speaker 4: Senator Murray Sinclair, oh yes, said and again I'm going
• 1:48:23
  Speaker 4: to paraphrase this, but he was talking about how people
• 1:48:26
  Speaker 4: have said to him regarding oppression in the residential school system,
• 1:48:31
  Speaker 4: saying like, you know what that was in the past,
• 1:48:32
  Speaker 4: why can't you just forget it? And his response is
• 1:48:35
  Speaker 4: always why can't you remember? No?
• 1:48:37
  Speaker 2: And that's just it. And like I said, you know
• 1:48:40
  Speaker 2: earlier in our conversation, like these things are still impacting
• 1:48:43
  Speaker 2: us today. I still have friends who, you know, grew
• 1:48:46
  Speaker 2: up in the foster care system. I still have friends
• 1:48:49
  Speaker 2: whose parents were in residential school I. You know, this
• 1:48:51
  Speaker 2: is an ancient history. And that's the most fundamental thing
• 1:48:56
  Speaker 2: is that, you know, so often we portray indigenous people
• 1:48:59
  Speaker 2: as being real and being like of the past. And
• 1:49:02
  Speaker 2: even when I was growing up, I was like, I
• 1:49:04
  Speaker 2: feel like the most like contact I had with Indigenous
• 1:49:07
  Speaker 2: culture was like a racist diorama at like a history museum,
• 1:49:10
  Speaker 2: you know, and we have to remind ourselves that like
• 1:49:15
  Speaker 2: Indigenous people still exist and colonialism still exists, and ignoring
• 1:49:22
  Speaker 2: it is what we have been doing and that has
• 1:49:24
  Speaker 2: not been effective. So yeah, so it is like it
• 1:49:28
  Speaker 2: is something that like I think people especially here in
• 1:49:32
  Speaker 2: Canada are very are starting to become a lot more
• 1:49:36
  Speaker 2: aware of. But it's it feels sometimes like such a
• 1:49:39
  Speaker 2: slow process, you know that, Like I wish everybody could
• 1:49:43
  Speaker 2: get a copy of Tom King's Inconvenient Indian and a
• 1:49:46
  Speaker 2: copy of like Rhymes for Young Ghouls, and it's like
• 1:49:49
  Speaker 2: this is your homework, like citizen, you know, like this
• 1:49:53
  Speaker 2: is what you have to do this weekend.
• 1:49:56
  Speaker 4: Is there anything left to discuss?
• 1:49:58
  Speaker 1: Well, we know it certainly passes the Ala test because
• 1:50:03
  Speaker 1: it's ALA, but I believe that kaylin I had this
• 1:50:07
  Speaker 1: movie passing the Bechdel test.
• 1:50:09
  Speaker 4: Yes, there's a scene at the end where Aila and
• 1:50:13
  Speaker 4: her she's watching sort of like her own flashback from Afar.
• 1:50:19
  Speaker 4: Toward the end of the movie where she and her mom,
• 1:50:21
  Speaker 4: Anna are painting something by firelight, and they're kind of
• 1:50:26
  Speaker 4: discussing what they're painting and why and.
• 1:50:28
  Speaker 1: Just weaving right.
• 1:50:32
  Speaker 4: And then it also passes between Ala in series, I
• 1:50:36
  Speaker 4: think when she relates the story about the wolf. Yep, yeah,
• 1:50:41
  Speaker 4: in that whole conversation. So yeah, definite Bechdel Test passing.
• 1:50:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And like that's another reason that, like, I was
• 1:50:51
  Speaker 2: so excited to talk about this film because I was, like,
• 1:50:53
  Speaker 2: I know that it passes the Bechdel test because I
• 1:50:55
  Speaker 2: was watching it with that intention, you know, seven years ago.
• 1:50:58
  Speaker 2: Hell yeah, So that's that's awesome. Yeah.
• 1:51:03
  Speaker 4: And then that's that brings it to our nipple scale,
• 1:51:05
  Speaker 4: So zero to five nipples based on examining the movie
• 1:51:09
  Speaker 4: from an intersectional feminist lens, and hmmm, it's gonna I
• 1:51:15
  Speaker 4: mean it's very high. Yeah, I mean I I feel
• 1:51:19
  Speaker 4: like it could be a five nipple situation. Yeah, I
• 1:51:22
  Speaker 4: think so, And I'm interested to hear.
• 1:51:25
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:51:25
  Speaker 2: I feel like I'm trolling you guys in the video
• 1:51:27
  Speaker 2: and nobody can see it. I mean, it's five nipples
• 1:51:31
  Speaker 2: for me. But I also feel like I'm a little
• 1:51:33
  Speaker 2: bit biased because I mean, I just this film has
• 1:51:37
  Speaker 2: meant so much throughout the years and I love it
• 1:51:39
  Speaker 2: so much and just you know, have a bad ass
• 1:51:42
  Speaker 2: MGMA female heroin fuck yeah, like.
• 1:51:47
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I don't really have any like notes for like,
• 1:51:51
  Speaker 4: there's nothing that like rubbed me wrong or any show.
• 1:51:55
  Speaker 1: Me a more motivated female protagonist with.
• 1:51:59
  Speaker 2: More ata like she's running the show, you know.
• 1:52:03
  Speaker 1: And with higher stakes. I mean this that it's wonderful
• 1:52:06
  Speaker 1: and again that that phrase narrative sovereignty and having this
• 1:52:12
  Speaker 1: be an indigenous filmmaker, writing, directing, editing this amazing character.
• 1:52:18
  Speaker 1: Who Yeah, I have no no, it's I think the
• 1:52:22
  Speaker 1: more we talk about it, I do feel like it
• 1:52:24
  Speaker 1: is very squarely a coming of age film of sorts,
• 1:52:28
  Speaker 1: just not the tone we're used to in that genre.
• 1:52:32
  Speaker 1: But it's it's such like you said, just it's such
• 1:52:35
  Speaker 1: a singular movie, and we are seeing a community that
• 1:52:42
  Speaker 1: is almost never represented in movies. And on top of that,
• 1:52:46
  Speaker 1: we're seeing Aila who is not just dealing with systemic
• 1:52:49
  Speaker 1: oppression as it pertains to being indigenous, she's also experiencing
• 1:52:54
  Speaker 1: sexism within her own community and navigating that and just
• 1:52:59
  Speaker 1: navigating all this stuff, and she she makes mistakes. She
• 1:53:04
  Speaker 1: just yeah, I feel it's it's five nips for me.
• 1:53:07
  Speaker 4: Mm hmm. The plan where they're like, you know what,
• 1:53:12
  Speaker 4: we're gonna make shit shower down upon this guy and
• 1:53:15
  Speaker 4: then st try to steal the money like their plan
• 1:53:19
  Speaker 4: wasn't maybe like.
• 1:53:20
  Speaker 1: Danny Ocean could never can never, he could never.
• 1:53:26
  Speaker 4: Like it's great, and the catharsis of it is great,
• 1:53:29
  Speaker 4: but I'm just like, like, he's right there, he knows
• 1:53:32
  Speaker 4: that you're there. Maybe like steal the money first and
• 1:53:36
  Speaker 4: then like you know, just like teenager it's like teenagers. Yeah,
• 1:53:40
  Speaker 4: of course they're gonna come up with a bit of
• 1:53:42
  Speaker 4: a hair brain plan and it works.
• 1:53:45
  Speaker 2: So yeah, and it's so rewarding too, because the ship
• 1:53:49
  Speaker 2: Like at one point when they're putting the ship like
• 1:53:51
  Speaker 2: in the van, like getting ready to go to the school,
• 1:53:53
  Speaker 2: they're like, yeah, everybody contributed, and I can just like
• 1:53:57
  Speaker 2: I can just picture like everybody abody just been like, oh,
• 1:54:01
  Speaker 2: oh you need some shit you need like we get that. Yeah,
• 1:54:06
  Speaker 2: And it's just like the fact that it's like a
• 1:54:07
  Speaker 2: community effort to like shit on.
• 1:54:10
  Speaker 1: This opie, the crowdsource this shit. It's love and that
• 1:54:15
  Speaker 1: sequence we didn't talk about it too much, but that
• 1:54:17
  Speaker 1: sequence is it's just like another way this movie is
• 1:54:20
  Speaker 1: so cool where there's I mean understandably so there's so
• 1:54:24
  Speaker 1: many very very emotionally heavy scenes and plotlines in this movie.
• 1:54:29
  Speaker 1: And then for this, I mean, it fits very well
• 1:54:33
  Speaker 1: inside of what the movie is, but it's also this
• 1:54:36
  Speaker 1: moment of like you're in Ocean's eleven for a second,
• 1:54:39
  Speaker 1: but if it fits very clearly inside this world, and
• 1:54:42
  Speaker 1: it's like fun and they win and it's exciting and
• 1:54:47
  Speaker 1: it's just oh, that sequence is so cool.
• 1:54:50
  Speaker 4: M hmm.
• 1:54:51
  Speaker 2: Agreed.
• 1:54:51
  Speaker 4: I mean, and even just like we talked about the
• 1:54:53
  Speaker 4: little bit of criticism or like some pushback that Jeff
• 1:54:56
  Speaker 4: Barnaby received, like from his own community, like are you
• 1:54:59
  Speaker 4: really gonna like show these stereotypes, which again like I don't.
• 1:55:03
  Speaker 4: This is an exploration of what like systemic racism and
• 1:55:07
  Speaker 4: oppression does to an Indigenous community, does to families, and
• 1:55:11
  Speaker 4: does to individuals, and like that's this is just an
• 1:55:14
  Speaker 4: authentic story about this young woman, this teenage girl, and
• 1:55:19
  Speaker 4: it's just an incredibly crafted and told story. Ask glad
• 1:55:26
  Speaker 4: you like it.
• 1:55:27
  Speaker 2: I'm so glad you're like, because I think there's also
• 1:55:29
  Speaker 2: like this nervousness on my part of like I'm like,
• 1:55:33
  Speaker 2: oh no, what if they don't like it, I'm gonna
• 1:55:37
  Speaker 2: have to sit on this call and like explain like
• 1:55:40
  Speaker 2: why it's a brilliant film. But I'm so glad you
• 1:55:42
  Speaker 2: guys liked it, and and and yeah, and thank you
• 1:55:45
  Speaker 2: so much for this opportunity and for holding this space
• 1:55:48
  Speaker 2: for indigenous film and for me and for Aila and yeah,
• 1:55:53
  Speaker 2: thank you so much.
• 1:55:54
  Speaker 4: Thank you for being and providing all your insights, information everything.
• 1:56:02
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much, extremely grateful and just like stoked
• 1:56:05
  Speaker 1: that you're on the show.
• 1:56:06
  Speaker 2: Thank you, thank you.
• 1:56:08
  Speaker 4: And there you have it. That's our re released episode
• 1:56:12
  Speaker 4: on rhymes for Young Grules. You can follow our guest
• 1:56:15
  Speaker 4: Jess on Instagram at Jess Merwin. You can follow us
• 1:56:21
  Speaker 4: at Bechdelcast, as well as subscribe to our Patreon aka
• 1:56:28
  Speaker 4: the Matreon.
• 1:56:30
  Speaker 1: We love the Matreon. It is where for five dollars
• 1:56:33
  Speaker 1: a month you can.
• 1:56:33
  Speaker 5: Get two bonus episodes with just Caitlin and myself on
• 1:56:37
  Speaker 5: a theme of usually yours and occasionally are choosing if
• 1:56:41
  Speaker 5: we didn't like what you chose, So it's.
• 1:56:45
  Speaker 1: Always a weird time to join the Matreon. It's a
• 1:56:47
  Speaker 1: really fun community of people over there. You get us
• 1:56:51
  Speaker 1: say in the episodes, you get you know, when we
• 1:56:53
  Speaker 1: go on tour, you get pre tickets, you get discounts,
• 1:56:57
  Speaker 1: you get bonus merch if you come to our live shows.
• 1:56:59
  Speaker 1: It's really fun. This upcoming month, we're going to be
• 1:57:03
  Speaker 1: covering some holiday films you've been asking us to do
• 1:57:07
  Speaker 1: for years and we're finally doing. We're doing The Family
• 1:57:09
  Speaker 1: Stone and Black Christmas over there, so.
• 1:57:11
  Speaker 4: True, so meet us over there.
• 1:57:13
  Speaker 1: The link is in the description.
• 1:57:14
  Speaker 4: It's a great way to spend five dollars. And speaking
• 1:57:17
  Speaker 4: of spending money or not spending money, the last thing
• 1:57:21
  Speaker 4: I want to say is I'd like to encourage listeners
• 1:57:26
  Speaker 4: to participate in the economic blackout that is currently happening.
• 1:57:30
  Speaker 4: I've seen different date ranges for different versions of this,
• 1:57:35
  Speaker 4: but more or less between November twenty fifth, so it's
• 1:57:39
  Speaker 4: already started to December. Tewod there's a huge economic blackout
• 1:57:44
  Speaker 4: where rather than participating in Black Friday and Cyber Monday
• 1:57:50
  Speaker 4: sales from huge corporations, exercise the power you have as
• 1:57:55
  Speaker 4: a consumer to withhold your money because that will beak
• 1:58:00
  Speaker 4: volumes if enough people do it.
• 1:58:03
  Speaker 1: Absolutely, and in addition to as we've discussed in the
• 1:58:05
  Speaker 1: show before, keeping up with and observing the BDS boycott
• 1:58:11
  Speaker 1: list as well and rerouting maybe some of that money
• 1:58:16
  Speaker 1: that you would have been spending at business Corp or
• 1:58:20
  Speaker 1: wherever the fuck you you spend your money and rerouting
• 1:58:24
  Speaker 1: at two places like the Native Women's Collective, which we
• 1:58:27
  Speaker 1: mentioned at the beginning of the episode. You can give
• 1:58:29
  Speaker 1: to them in the description or you know, in addition,
• 1:58:34
  Speaker 1: you know, get involved in it or at very least
• 1:58:37
  Speaker 1: aware of mutual aid efforts in your community. You know,
• 1:58:42
  Speaker 1: you can obviously, if you're not able to donate your money,
• 1:58:44
  Speaker 1: you can donate your time. There's just a massive, massive
• 1:58:48
  Speaker 1: need for you and whatever you are able to do,
• 1:58:52
  Speaker 1: whether that's financial, whether that's donating your time, and just
• 1:58:55
  Speaker 1: you know, get involved in your community because that's the
• 1:58:59
  Speaker 1: only way that we weather these kinds of horrific times
• 1:59:03
  Speaker 1: that we find ourselves in. So if you're able to
• 1:59:06
  Speaker 1: do it, you absolutely should, and it's just you know,
• 1:59:09
  Speaker 1: a great way to build community and focus on community.
• 1:59:13
  Speaker 4: Absolutely.
• 1:59:13
  Speaker 1: My last plug is listen to We the Unhoused. It's
• 1:59:18
  Speaker 1: a show I also produce on iHeartRadio that discusses specifically
• 1:59:22
  Speaker 1: issues that affect the unhouse, told by unhoused people and
• 1:59:27
  Speaker 1: their advocates.
• 1:59:29
  Speaker 4: There's a really great.
• 1:59:30
  Speaker 1: Episode coming out this coming Tuesday that interviews a wonderful
• 1:59:35
  Speaker 1: filmmaker named Caitlin Crenn who just released a wonderful documentary
• 1:59:41
  Speaker 1: on PBS about the queer unhoused community in New York.
• 1:59:46
  Speaker 1: It's a really great movie. It's called Outcast Nation. It's
• 1:59:49
  Speaker 1: a great interview with her and.
• 1:59:52
  Speaker 4: Yeah, amazing. That's my It's my little plug with that.
• 1:59:56
  Speaker 4: Thank you for listening. Be safe, take care of yourself,
• 2:00:00
  Speaker 4: and take care of each other. Bye bye.
• 2:00:07
  Speaker 1: The Bechdel Cast is a production of iHeartMedia, hosted and
• 2:00:10
  Speaker 1: produced by Me Jamie Loftus.
• 2:00:12
  Speaker 4: And me Caitlyn Dorante. The podcast is also produced by
• 2:00:16
  Speaker 4: Sophie Lichtermann and.
• 2:00:17
  Speaker 1: Edited by Caitlyn Dorante. Ever heard of them?
• 2:00:20
  Speaker 4: That's me and our logo and merch and all of
• 2:00:23
  Speaker 4: our artwork in fact are designed by Jamie Loftis, Ever
• 2:00:27
  Speaker 4: heard of her? Oh my God?
• 2:00:29
  Speaker 1: And our theme song, by the way, was composed by
• 2:00:32
  Speaker 1: Mike Kaplan with vocals by Katherine Voskrasinski Iconic and a
• 2:00:36
  Speaker 1: special thanks to the one and only Aristotle Acevedo.
• 2:00:40
  Speaker 4: For more information about the podcast, please visit linktree slash
• 2:00:44
  Speaker 4: Bechdel Cast