Rhymes for Young Ghouls with Jess Murwin

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, everyone. We just wanted to provide a content warning
for this episode because in this discussion we talk about
and also the movie involves sexual and physical assault, child
sexual abuse, and suicide. Thank you for listening and enjoy
the episode. On the beck dol Cast, the questions asked

(00:21):
if movies have women and um, are all their discussions
just boyfriends and husbands or do they have individualism the
patriarchy zef invest start changing it with the beck Del Cast. Hi, everybody,
welcome to the back Selcast. My name is Jamie Loftus,
my name is Caitlin Toronte. I just wanted to start

(00:42):
like an MPR an episode of MPR. It's the Radio,
UM and this is our podcast where we take an
intersectional look at how how people are portrayed in your
favorite movies. It's true we use the Bechtel test sometimes
called the Becktel Wallace test as a simply a jumping

(01:04):
off point. The whole podcast isn't about that, despite common misconceptions. UM,
you know, you know everyone out there talking about the
Bechtel Cast all the time. Yeah, surely that's what happens.
It's it's not just the people say the Bechtel Cast
and then whoever else is in the room goes, what
what are you talking about? Now? Everyone's like, oh, yes,

(01:27):
I know that podcast. Well that show we all know
and listen anyway, So the Bechtel test, uh, that is
again just what we used to inspire a much larger
conversation about representation and intersectionality and inclusivity. And that is
a media metric originally created by queer cartoonist Alison Bechtel,

(01:49):
in which two people of any marginalized gender must have names,
they must speak to each other about something other than
a man for at least two lines of dialogue. That
is our particular rendition of the test. Yes, but we
have a we have a myriad tests to discuss later

(02:10):
in the episode, one created by friend of the cast. Wow.
What teaser alert? Um, And yeah, I'm really excited for
today's episode and for our guest. Yes, our guest today
is a non binary, mixed race magma artist, curator, and educator.

(02:30):
Their work focuses on reclaiming narrative space, infusing genre with
social justice, and holding space collaboration. You also might have
heard and seen them on our recent live reading of Twilight.
It is Jess Merwin. Hi, welcome, Thank you for having me.

(02:52):
I am this is like a dream come true. Quite literally,
this is wonderful. I'm so happy to be here. We're
so happy to have you. Yeah, it's it's I really like,
can't we to talk about this, this weird native movie
that nobody's heard of. We're really psyched to talk about

(03:12):
it because it was originally recommended to us by um Ali,
who spoke about it when um When when Ali came
on to discuss Frozen to a couple of months ago podcast. Canonically,
I think, what is time? I've lost all Definitely October
here is well, it's October now, this episode is coming

(03:38):
out in November sometimes so so it's no future. It's November.
Someone was making the joke that it was like March
five hundred and eighty five. In a way, it does
feel it's been March years. The CBC newscast, like the
morning newscast that I listened to, has like gives you

(03:59):
like a day only update of being like, well we're
going in to day of quarantine. You're like, oh my god,
it feels very end times yes, right, like Datalogue day
four thousand. There's still no end in sight. Iron Man
at the beginning of End Game, right the original Quarantine er. Um,

(04:27):
but yeah, Ali brought this movie to us originally, and um,
we we were kind of tipped off about this movie. Um,
I guess we should just say the name of the movie.
I don't know what we're being it's a secret about.
We were talking, of course about Rhymes for Young Girls,
a Jeff Barnaby movie from two thousand and thirteen. And

(04:51):
the reason we're talking about it with Ali was first
of all, because it's a movie that Ali is a
big fan of, but also because it was the basis
for the Alo Test, which is the test that Ali created. Yes,
and we'll talk about that in a little bit, But first, Jess,
what's your relationship with Rhymes for Young Girls? Oh Man?

(05:12):
So growing up in the eighties and nineties as a
mixed race like Magma kid, So I don't I didn't
grow up in reserve, and I'm Magma through my mother's mother,
through my grandmother, and she had been which she was
orphaned at very young age, so she didn't really grow
up in a like a traditional sort of way in

(05:35):
terms of like learning how to do a lot of
traditional Maigma things. So you know, I was growing up
with this like identity that was very unresolved in a
lot of ways, and I felt like very conflicted about
because it's you know, being white passing but also being
like I'm also an indigenous person. I didn't really know
how I like fit. And on top of that, being

(05:57):
queer and being trans and just dealing with like a
lot of other stuff meant that I ended up feeling
like I couldn't really like claim to anything. You know.
It was just sort of like it's it's too much.
You can't be queer and native and you know, mentally ill,
it's just like too many things. So so when this

(06:20):
film came out, I had just been back in Canada
for a couple of years because I spent some time
living overseas, and it was like, we have this expression
of French. It's like a like a lightning strike um
and like we use it a lot, like when you're

(06:40):
like fall in love at first sight or when you
get like an idea, And it was almost like that
for for seeing this film. You know, I was in
my sort of early twenties and and just moved back
to Canada or like recent moved back to Canada. Was
sort of like, oh, my god, here's like a film
about Migma people with people speak Magma and it's like

(07:02):
the first time that I'm ever seeing this, and all
of a sudden it sort of like this way of
starting to reconnect with Magma culture, Like all of a
sudden sort of like seeing this film and being like,
oh my god, there is this part of me that's
like that, that feels something so profound and just like
hearing people speak Magma and seeing that represented on the screen.

(07:25):
And then uh, and we'll talk about this a little bit,
but there was so much other stuff going on in
terms of like indigenous rights an indigenous culture at that time,
and so it was like this was really the catalyst
for me like reconnecting in a big way to yeah,
to to sort of like Magma on Nous. That's incredible
and one of so many examples we see of why

(07:51):
representation is so important. I think, Yeah, Um, my relationship
with this movie is it was not super on my
radar until about a few months Blood Quantum. I did
not know about Rams for Young Gal. How did you
know about Blood Quantum, Jamie, I don't know. I think

(08:11):
it was just I was paying closer attention to movies
that were coming out last year than I was in.
But then when Ali brought up Rams for Young Gals
instead of the same director, I was like, oh, and um, yeah,
I think we did have a couple of listeners as well, Um,
recommend this this movie to us. So it's it's been

(08:31):
on our kind of watch list, our list of movies
to cover. Yeah, I think for our like horror movies
last year. In the request it popped up a couple
of times, and maybe that was why I was familiar
with it. Sure, yeah, yeah, but I'm I'm happy to
have seen the movie now. I watched it three times. Um,

(08:52):
but yeah, I'm so excited to talk about it. Should
we dive into the recap? Let's do it alright, So
we open with text at the beginning, UM describing the
law in Canada that states that every Indigenous child between
the age of five and sixteen must attend an Indian

(09:14):
residential school. There are truant officers who more or less
police the schools and the community, and who are responsible
for bringing into custody more or less any child who
is absent from school, and they are allowed to use
force to do that, any force that they see necessary. Yeah.

(09:36):
So we're starting off chill legal wording. That was. Yeah,
so that's an excerpt from the Indian Act. And we
can talk a little bit more about this in terms
of like context for the film, because there's a lot
to talk about because it's it's an act that's been
around since essentially the beginning of Canada, since confederation in

(09:56):
uh eighteen s and it's still exist today. So that's
that's cool. Um, But yeah, so that that's an actual
law that essentially governs all of the federal government's interactions
with Indigenous people. So um, to say it's racist is

(10:16):
a little bit of an understatement. And this kind of
like opening package that Jeff has chosen here kind of
helps like highlight a lot of the issues with the
Indian Act. Absolutely, and I feel like we were goofy.
Americans have a tendency to really romanticize Canada as this

(10:37):
place of justice that it you know, clearly is not
um and so I mean, even just from the beginning
frame of the movie or just like yeah, no, we
are desperate to feel a way about Canada that is
not true. No, no, and it's it's it's one of
those things too that like, you know, don't get me wrong.
We have like legal weed and free healthcare, so pretty

(11:01):
you know, things are pretty good. But on the other hand, yeah,
we do still have a lot of the systemic racism
and discrimination that exists in the United States, and like
Canadians are you know, aren't necessarily all like super polite
and super you know, courteous. Like there's I think that
we have this sort of angel complex with regards to

(11:22):
the rest of the world where we're like, oh, we're perfect,
We're not the United States, and it's like, oh, the
bar is on the floor all like all the Native
people in the back are like, well, I don't I
don't know about that, Like it's like, yeah, have you
read that law lately? Yeah, or even just the fact

(11:42):
that like since this year there's been like a half
dozen high profile killings of Indigenous people, either at the
hands of police or at the hands of our medical system.
You know that since like January. Horrifying. So yeah, So
we opened on the movie. It is nineteen sixty nine.

(12:03):
We are on a fictional reserve called the Red Crow
Indian Reservation. We meet a Magma family, including young Ala.
She's a little girl who loves to draw and she
usually draws kind of like morbid horror imagery of like
zombies and ghoules and Whatnotum, she has a little brother, Tyler.

(12:27):
We meet her mother Anna and her father Joseph, as
well as her uncle Burner. They are all drug dealers
on the reserve. And then one night, the adults they're
all smoking weed, they're drinking heavily, and then a bunch
of tragic things happen kind of all at once, where

(12:47):
AILA's mother accidentally kills her little brother Tyler in a
drunk driving accident, and then her mother kills herself. Her
father takes the blame for it and is taken away
to prison. So that's in the first ten minutes of
this movie that we're talking about on a on a
humorous podcast, you know. Um, and it doesn't I think

(13:12):
that there's like a lot of stuff even in that
that we should talk about in terms of like depictions
of Indians using drugs and being broken. But again, like
all of these parentheses are kind of like paragraphs, so
it might make more sense to finish with like the
plat sumary and then get into it because otherwise, yeah,
it's like, right, we got things to say. It is

(13:35):
so much it is quite a bit of trauma in
I think ninety seconds. Yeah, it all happens very very
very quickly. Yeah, and then there continues to be trauma
after this. Oh um. Yes. So we cut to seven
years later. It is now the mid seventies. A La
played by dave Rey Jacobs is now a teenager living

(13:58):
with her uncle Berner, and we also learned that Berner
is kind of a snitch in the community where he
kind of rats out his fellow man on the reserve
to these white truant officers, the main one of those
being this guy named Popper, and Paper comes to collect
quote truant taxes, which are basically this family bribing him

(14:24):
so that the kids don't have to go to the
nearby residential school. And we will also provide a lot
of context in our discussion about residential schools and that system.
But it's know that it's a place that you don't
want to go. So ALA's friends Chilo and Angus tell

(14:47):
her that Solo had gotten robbed by Stripper and can't
pay the truant tax and Aila realizes that Popper kind
of set up this whole thing, and this I might
need a little bit of clarification on my kind of
assumption was that Popper did that kind of like orchestrated

(15:07):
this whole setup and like robbed them so that they
wouldn't be able to pay the bribe so that he
could justify sending them to the school. Is that, Yeah,
I think that's that's sort of the idea. And I
think that also has to do with the fact that
Joseph is coming out of prison. Like essentially Papper sets
up Burner in that first sort of scene where he's

(15:27):
like there at the fish Mitten and he's like, thanks
for telling us you're here, so they'll get the ship
kicked out of them by guys in the community so
that like Joseph will come home and stay in line, okay, right,
And so that's also part of like why Popper would
steal their money is because then you know, he can
get Sholo and Angus and Aila, you know, scoop them

(15:48):
up and take them to to St. Difano's to the
residential school um as sort of again like a way
of sort of being like, you know, this will keep
Joseph in line, got it, right, because he gets released
from prison and we also meet, uh serious, a kind
of grandmother figure for Ala, and she tells a story

(16:11):
about a wolf that's kind of delirious and ends a
beautiful animated series that I didn't I didn't I was.
I love when I don't see an animated sequence coming
and then it hasn't been beautiful. I loved it. There's
a one. There's one like that in Blood Quantum too.
That's really cool. And and in both of the cases,

(16:31):
like Jeff's using it as a way to sort of
like insert some of the like oral tradition UM and
like the way that like our traditional storytelling works UM
and sort of differentiate and distinguish it from the rest
of the story, you know. And it's really interesting because
like talking about the animation, you know, I also as

(16:54):
an animator, like love those sequences. And yeah, I think
I think some people sort of wh they first saw
the movie where like I don't get it. I don't
get why there's like an animated sequence, since like you
just gotta like experience it as part of the film,
you know. Like, but yeah, Serious also has a cat. Yes,
we see a live feeding a couple of times. I'm like,

(17:15):
it passes. You know. What I think is my test
is the Caitlin test. Is there a cat in a movie?
If so, it passes the Caitlin test. You've been all
you said. A few weeks ago, you said you were
never going to bring it up again, and now it's
the test. I'm sorry, I'm enabling cat talk okay live

(17:39):
for cat talk, and I was sad to see it go.
What I said was, I'm never going to bring up
cat facts again because I don't want to talk about
cats nipples anymore. But I still want to talk about cats.
They're great in general, the movie They're great. The movie
Cats Cats so clever, so funny. I love how we

(18:04):
all kind of just like we're like we sort of
been the words we can mutter along with this. I
just know the feeling again, right, Yeah. I had a
growing up. I had a Cat's soundtrack, like on the
cassette tape. So I didn't even know it was like
a musical because I just thought it was like a
concept album because none of the adults ever like explained
to me, and so like, when I found out it

(18:26):
was a musical, I was like, Oh, this makes so
much more sense, does it? Though doesn't make any sense.
I had a very similar experience with Phantom of the
Opera where my mom just like put on the c
D and left the room, and you're like, I think
I know what's happening, but I don't know what anyone
looks like. And I would just make my hunchback of
Notre Dame dolls kiss right, It's like, I don't know

(18:49):
epic kissing. Um we'll have talking about Yeah, you know,
that's all kids do anyway, And it's like, regardless of gender,
I think like all kids at some point in time
have been like, where their adults around, I'm gonna make
them spitch. Like I was straight up making my barbies
have sex with each other. So I was were you

(19:09):
like kids? It was like yes, correct, that was a
fun friend and girlfriends. So anyway, the Caitlin test, I
was like, where are we? What's happening? The cat got
here from Cat So there is a cat series has
a cat. So we hear this story about a wolf

(19:30):
that is like kind of rumming the land. Um, it's
delirious and it ends up eating itself, which I'm interested
to kind of talk about like the thematic implications of
that later on. But um, so Aila decides to steal
the money back that got robbed from them, and um
we also at this around this time revealed that Aila

(19:52):
has now gotten into this drug business ever since her
father left for prison and her dad, Joseph comes back
and is like kind of disappointed, disappointed to learn that
Burner let her get into all this. But because she's
an artist, she's like a really skilled kind of crafts
person of like rolling the joints and like flavoring them

(20:15):
and them and stuff. Yeah, I was like, she's cool. Yeah,
she's so very cool. It's also she doesn't like one
of the things that keeps coming back and like and
even one of the things that like in that scene,
you know, Burners like I've been drinking and smoking and
stuff like that. She's like, you can't roll for ship,

(20:35):
Like she doesn't she never like she doesn't smoke weed.
And that's like also part of like that gas mask
is like this idea of sort of like yeah, she's
she's also sort of like not she's part of this world,
but she's not like in that world in the same
functioning in the same way as the people around her.
She's not going to be a wolf who eats herself.

(20:57):
She's not going to destroy herself. So Ala pitches this
plan to her friend's Chilo and Angus that they break
into the nearby residential school sat dis is what they
like nickname it, and they're going to steal their money
back from Popper. So she orchestrates this heist. She draws
a map. There's this little kid, Juji who I think

(21:21):
does he attend the school and and he will kind
of be there's like the inside man. He's the man
on the inside ten. I don't know what that kid
is doing now, but oh my god, what a sweet kid,
like a star. He always calls a la boss. Yeah.
He's like, well what now boss? Um? I yeah, is

(21:42):
like um. I don't know if that would be like
his given name, because that's like a nickname in MGMA,
which means like like a little bug or little thing.
I'm a stand yeah. So meanwhile, Aila is having some
dreams and visions of her dead mother and brother, sometimes

(22:04):
as zombies, sometimes not, but this is kind of like
a recurring visual motif throughout the film. And then one
day Aila is out with her dad and they have
this violent run in with Popper and his cronies because
Berner sold them out to Popper and let them know
about Ali's plan to break into the school, so Poppers like,
you wanted to go into the school, fine, now you're

(22:26):
you're there. So he sends her there as punishment. But
if and correct me if I'm mistaken, But it feels
like that's kind of part of her plan. She gets
sent there on purpose so that she can also kind
of be on the inside. Or I might be wrong
about that. I'm not totally sure the thing, you know,
what I've gotten over the years, I've gone back and
forth on it, honestly, Caitlin, Like, I feel like, Um,

(22:47):
when I first saw the film, I was like, oh,
this is definitely like like she's improvising sort of like
this wasn't her plan. And I sort of feel like
now when I'm seeing and I'm like, I feel like
this was part of her plan in a way, because
Jiuji was to come and let her out of the hole, right, So,
like I think that it was her plan. I was
also questioning that because I was like if if that

(23:10):
was her plan? Galaxy brain genius right, like, because the
first time I watched the movie, I it didn't even
occur to me. But then on the second watch, I
was like, wait, she's so smart that it didn't even
occur to me that that might have been intentional, right,
But I also think that it sort of like speaks
to the character that Eila is and like because I

(23:32):
think in a way that she she talks about aging
a thousand years and I think that like after her
mother dies, and I think that there is a certain
wisdom in that character that's sort of outpaced with her age,
you know. And and like at the end of the film,
you know, Joseph says to her, like, you know, I
just want you to know you're a little girl, and

(23:53):
she's like, I was never a little girl. I think
that there is a certain she knows that Berner is
going to crack under press sure and wrap them out,
like and she knows that like there's a there's a
chance of that. So I think that she's kind of
got some ideas in her head. She knows that they're
not supposed to go out on the water. They've been
out on the water, you know, so I think that

(24:14):
I think it is planned. She also like engages in
that fight where she could have just like stood back,
and I think maybe, like, oh, if she if she's fighting,
that that's going to be all the more reason that
they might send her to the school. In any case
she gets sent there, they cut her hair off, they
put her in solitary confinement. That's like, that's the scene

(24:37):
that still and I've seen this film so many times
now throughout the years. I still cry every time I
watched that scene. That seems so hard to watch because
they used to do that to people, you know, and
for us, like your hair is really sacred because it's
your connection back to the earth. So I'm tearing up
now even talking about it. So like the you know,

(24:58):
that was one of the things that they always used
to do. And the kids were taken to residential schools
as they would cut off their braids. And I was
doing this project with a bunch of youth up north
here in Quebec, where we were creating this like woven tapestry,
and it was all made up of these different like
lengths of braid that were woven together into this like
five by ten tapestry. And we had this one elder

(25:22):
who came and sat with us one day and was
like telling us about her residential school experience and was
talking about how seeing all these braids woven together was
like so powerful to her because and this was not,
you know, not something I had really thought about beforehand.
But she was talking about how like, you know, you
would see all the hair too, like after all the
kids had had their hair cut off, just like swept

(25:43):
to the side, you know, like all these braids like
on the ground. Um, So it holds a lot of
cultural significance in that way. Yeah, that scene was. Yeah,
that scene was devastating. And also if you don't really
know whether she planned or not to get sent to
Stiffen as all of a sudden, you're like, our hero
is in this peril. You know, you don't know what's
going to happen to our next, right, So it's either

(26:05):
like a huge deliberate sacrifice or just her kind of
falling victim to these horrible circumstances. Yeah. So while this
is happening, her friends solo Angus and then there's another
friend of theirs who I'd never caught the name of Maytag.

(26:26):
Is that Maytag? Okay, So they are prepping for this
heist and they go into the school, they break out,
They rig up the plumbing so that literal human shit
comes out when Popper turns on the shower, which so satisfying,

(26:49):
really good stuff and like a whole bunch of like
male full frontal nudity. Not that it was like you
were wanting it, that's the same, but it's like independent
Canadian film where you get to see like a whole
lot of dick there, like to see a little bit
of shit rainting on full frontal. Right, you're just like

(27:13):
you deserve this, yeah, and it's just at the lowest
moment in that moment, and you're just like, so good
the Catharsis that's been. That's been kind of I feel
like a discussion that's been picking up in the last
couple of years of like how rare male nudity is
shown period, and then on top of that, when it
is shown, like the way it shown is never humiliating,

(27:37):
which whatever speaks to who is making most movies. But
it was that's true, right, very satisfying to see him
humiliated in such a like primal way. I don't know, Yeah,
oh totally, And especially because you've you've sort of spent
the entire movie up to this point just watching him
and his guns kick the ship at it everybody, right,

(27:58):
And it's like I remember remember seeing this So when
I originally saw this film, I saw it at a
festival and at that point in the film when Happers
like lying on the bathroom floor covered in ship just
like I'm gonna get you people that the audience were
like cheering. It was amazing, you know because like the
end of Get Up, people were like full on like

(28:19):
being like, yeah, oh my gosh, yeah, this would have
been a cool movie to see in theaters, damnit it was.
It got a really limited release, so I was coaching
to see at a festival. But we'll talk about that.
It's also something we need to like, Yeah, I think
people need to think about sometimes for sure. Yeah, definitely. Um,

(28:42):
so he's covered in ship. Meanwhile, they steal the money
out of his safe and run away. They get away
with I think twenty dollars. But when when Aila gets
back home, she finds out that her grandmother, Sarah's, has
been killed by Popper's thugs. And then when Popper comes

(29:02):
for Ala, he beats her, he's about to rape her,
but then little Juji shows up with a gun and
another very cathartic moment blows Popper's head off. AILA's father
takes the fall for it again. He gets carted off
to prison again, and then the story ends with, um,

(29:22):
a is it is that a family friend or a
relative Jisugu or juice Agu? I wasn't sure. The old
man Yeah yeah, yeah, so he's like he's like a
family friend. Okay, there's a lot of like on small reserves.
We always jerked it's like, well, everybody's related like somehow.

(29:42):
It's like they're probably related somehow, right. Yeah. He was
the guy who earlier in the story had also there
were there was talk of him having aged a thousand
years because he had gone to fight in World War
Two and came back like a thousand years older because
he had lied about his age, saying he was older
than he was to be able to fight and then um,

(30:03):
you know, experience a trauma of war and then came back. Um.
And he gives a La a really interesting piece of
advice during that conversation too that they're having when when
they talk about him being a thousand years older, because
he's the only other character that here referred to in
that way, and he says this thing that I ended
up picking up on and and I ended up reading

(30:23):
a couple of articles about it. Two of like you know,
he's like courage is sometimes moving with the dead, you know,
like as like bodies were sort of piling up, you know,
it's like you have to keep moving. And I think
that that's almost an interesting like thesis point. I think
for like what Ala is doing in a certain way
of sort of like despite everything, like having to like

(30:45):
keep moving forward, Like you know, they're going to be
casualties along the way, but it's like you have to
keep moving forward because otherwise you're one of them, you know, right.
So yeah, so he's an interesting character. Um. He pops
up a little bit Blood Quantum too. It's interesting because
Blood Quantum also takes place on the Red Crow Reserve
and but in like a parallel universe. So because of

(31:08):
the fish Mitten's Strip club is also in Blood Quantum. Yeah.
I love an expanded universe, that's all right. Yeah. So
so there's like these interesting sort of like crossover points
that kind of happened where like and a lot of
the folks I think in the film weren't actors. I
think that like some of them are just like people
who maybe had a little bit of like outside of

(31:30):
the main cast, who are like Canadian indigenous, like film Royalty. Um,
Glenn Gould has been in everything like you don't make
like you don't make a native film in Canada and
not include Glenn Gould because what are you doing? Who
plays Joseph in the film. He's incredible. I mean that
like the scene that I think like, I mean stuck

(31:50):
out to me. I'm sure everybody was. The scene at
his wife's grave was just so it's just like, yeah,
he was. He's incredible. Um Okay, So then uh, this
character shows up who we've seen here and there. Um,
it's just saying like Aila, I don't want you. I
don't want you to work in this drug trade anymore.

(32:12):
And she's like, good, I don't want to either. And
then um Jujis the little Boy comes back and he's
like Okay, now what do we do boss? And she's
like I don't know. And that's how the movie ends. Um,
let's take a quick break and then we'll come back
for discussion and we're back. Yes, where shall we begin? Well,

(32:42):
I think it's probably helpful to to provide some historical
context for the residential school system, because you really have
to have an understanding of what that is to appreciate
the events of this film and why the characters are
doing everything that they do to not have to go
to a residential school for sure. And I think that

(33:04):
would be good to to talk a little bit about
the a little bit about reserves, and a little bit
about the Indian Act, because I think that there's like
there's layers to this, right, It's not just the residential school.
It's like it's everything you know, and um, this time
watching it through too, I was thinking a lot about
like the violence in the film and thinking about how

(33:26):
it's sort of it's incessant, like it's it's just like
around every corner, like it was just biking down the
road at one point, and like somebody like comes out
of nowhere and punches her and like and that's, you know,
such a visual metaphor for I think what it feels
like sometimes to be a like a marginalized person, whether
it's you know, your your black, Indigenous or like a

(33:47):
person of color, or whether you're trans or whether you're
differently abled. Like I think that there's like a sense
sometimes of like things can come out of nowhere and
kind of like knock you on your ass. Um So, yeah,
just to talk a little bit about and and like
feel free to jump into um. But yeah, so talk
to talk a little bit about the Indian Act, because

(34:08):
that's kind of where it all starts off, right. So
the Indian Act was officially passed in eighteen seventies six.
I hope there's no like Canadian history buffs who are
like like to check in my because like it's the
one like I can remember meeting a person ten years
ago for like fifteen minutes, but I cannot remember dates
for the life Most of our most of our listenership

(34:30):
are Canadian history scholars. So but I do believe that
data is correct. Yes, okay, I have that in my
notes as well. Awesome. Yeah, so the but before that,
there had been sort of a patchwork of different colonial
laws that had existed, and then sort of when Canada
became like a country as opposed to sort of different

(34:51):
like sort of colonies, you know, like between like New
France and Upper Canada and Lower Canada, that it was
sort of brought into law and a sort of more
official sense. And the Indian Act. The short version of
the Indian Act is that it was legislation that was
designed to very literally like legislate out of existence indigenous people,

(35:12):
and it did that through a number of ways. So
the residential schools which we're talking more about, we're part
of the Indian Act, this idea that you'll civilize and
abusing air quotes, you'll civilize Indian genious children and assimilate
them into Canadian society. The Indian Act also, you know,

(35:33):
targeted women. Uh So, if you were an Indigenous woman
and you married a non indigenous man, you lost your
status and indigenous status, our native status, which exists in
the United States as well, uh is sort of like
your only pathways for being able to access things like
on reserve housing, like certain like educational like scholarships and

(35:57):
benefits and things like that are only accessible through your
status card. There's other services and things like that that
are only accessible through your status card. So losing your status,
you know, it was a big deal, and so we
often referred to when women married on indigenous men. It's
happened a lot in the you know, early days of
Canada as marrying out because it was essentially like, well,

(36:18):
now you're out of the culture, goodbye, one less Indian.
And you know, there were other other things like the
the Indian Act did you couldn't leave the reserve to
get a higher education. You couldn't just like leave the
reserve to go see a doctor. There was a whole
system of passes that Indigenous people had to have for
a long time. Like it was essentially like a passport

(36:40):
that said like okay, I'm leaving my reserve now, and
that you know, there was no thought given to It's
like okay, well we don't have a hospital on reserve,
I have to leave the reserve to go to the hospital.
Or even just like I want to go visit a
friend on a different reserve, like you'd have to like
have that passport signed off on by the Indian age
it who could also say no. So people's movement was

(37:04):
really controlled. People's lives were really controlled, and like I said,
you know, disproportionately. The Indian Act targeted children and women
through things like the residential school system, through things like
losing status if you married out, which wasn't applied to men.
If men, if Indigenous men married non Indigenous women, they're
non indigenous wives would get status and all their children

(37:26):
would get status and they were able to remain a
part of their communities. Jesus Christ. So it's it's like
it's not even like, uh, it's so blatant. It's almost
like a Bond villain who's like, and then I'm going
to set up the laser and then it's going to
catch you in half, and then I'm going to take
over the world. It's like the Canadian government essentially said

(37:48):
from the beginning, we don't want any more Indigenous people,
and this is what we're gonna do to get rid
of them. Um. However, the double edged sword of the
Indian of the Indian Act, you know, and you're I
can imagine it's sort of like, well, if it's so
terrible and so sexist and so racist, just get rid
of it. Unfortunately, it's really one of the major legislative

(38:12):
tools that we have in Canada as Indigenous people to
be able to hold the federal government accountable because it
defined what an Indigenous person is so which is just
like magnitudes of frustrating absolutely so. Originally, and this this

(38:32):
ties into the film. In nineteen sixty nine, Pierre Elliott Trudeau,
who's Justin Trudeau's daddy, was Prime Minister at the time
and he introduced this essentially this act that would have
gotten rid of the Indian Act this is so this
is the nineteen nine This paper ended up becoming called

(38:52):
the White Paper, and it was this really catalyzing moment
for a lot of what we call red power or
like an indigenous like civil rights movement sort of stuff
began happening because, you know, people were really hit to
the idea that like, if we get rid of the
status of Indian, which is what it would have been
called at the time, then the government doesn't legally have

(39:15):
any enforceable responsibility towards Indians. If Indians don't exist, they
don't exist. Does that make sense right, Yes, it makes
sense the way you're explaining. It's just that that's so
there's so many layers of mind fuckery going on. Oh yeah,
it's it's a whole. Like it's a whole. Taramis Sioux

(39:37):
of like fucked up, which is terrible. I shouldn't do
that to Taramisious. Termisus was like taramistous will recovery. Taramisus
has got a good rap people looking can come back
from this. But yeah, so so what the solution has
sort of become, you know, is because we can't get
rid of the Indian Acts, sort of amend it and

(39:59):
a lot of these are endments, I think sort of
the most recent big push of amendments. There's little things
going through all the time, but I think two thousand
and two was like a big push of like a
whole bunch of amendments to it. In the eighties, we
had a big push of amendments that allowed women who
had lost their status through marriage to get their status back,
which was a huge thing. Um. You know, I had

(40:21):
a I have a friend who you know, at that
point in time, was already you know, like a teenager,
and she talks about how important it was like that
moment when her mom gets status back, which meant that
she could get status and like because even though it
isn't like like having status is not what makes you
an indigenous person, sure it still can feel like a

(40:43):
very significant thing in terms of belonging. Yeah, so it's
is this whole sort of mess. Unfortunately, um and the
Indian agents, like we see paper in the film, were
the enforcers of this incredibly racist law. So Indian agents
had total, like unchecked control. It was like even worse
in some ways than sort of like you know how

(41:04):
we talk about like, oh, you know, the sheriffs in
the Old West, and you know, they could sort of
make up the rules as they go along. Indian agents
were sort of that, except they were white, racist assholes.
So you know, I've read different things over the years
about like people talking about how like, oh well as
Popper's attitude and behavior a little bit extreme, it's like, well,
like some of the stuff did happen, Like some of

(41:26):
the stuff we know has happened because we've heard stories
from people and it's also been documented. You know, by
the time that we get to the late sixties early seventies,
the Indian agents were starting to be phased out because
we were starting to move into a new period in
terms of like the Indian acting. Like I said, some
of those like, um, big changes that were to come

(41:47):
in the eighties, but at the time we still had
Indian agents that were quite sort of literally allowed to
do whatever the funk they wanted with impunity. Um, you
had Indian agents in the States as l and they
were this maybe chuckle, not because it's funny, but because
it's sort of again macavillian. The original Indian agents were

(42:11):
under the U. S. War Department initially, which is like
very blatantly like, could you be any less like clear
about how you feel? Yeah, Jesus Christ. Yeah. So so,
but what happened with the Indian Agans and the States
is as we moved through the eighteen hundreds and into

(42:31):
the nineteen hundreds, they sort of transitioned into being superintendents
for what the American equivalent of residential schools is the
Indian boarding school system, and they were that position. Shifted
into more of a civilian role later on, but yeah,
it was it was like a government Department of war position.

(42:52):
It was essentially, like I brought up in the Twilight Reading,
it was to swindle people out of their land whatever
way you could. And uh, yeah, it was it was
about like this idea of like manifest destiny. You know,
it's like, well, we've we've arrived and now it's ours.
Like yeah. So that's a little bit of a background
on on the Indian Act. And so, like I said,

(43:13):
the resident social system was established as part of the
Indian Act under the mandate of killed the Indian and
educate the child sort of thing um, which is just
like a real cool, chill sentiment to have. And so
they started out, you know, we had Jesuit schools, especially

(43:34):
UM coming into like New France, so sort of what
is like Nova Scotia and New Brunswick like part of Quebec,
like New England sort of area. So we would have
had like early Jesuit schools and like you know, those
were a little bit less rigorously sort of organized, and
those were mostly we're in the sixteen hundreds, some in
the seventeen hundreds, but like I said, it functioned a

(43:56):
lot more sort of like uh, what's that where as
a missionary sort of effort, Like it was like we're
going to go on christianize this. There's nothing colonial about this, No,
We're just talking about Jesus. And it's really interesting because
we from that the Magma converted to Christianity in sixteen
o four, and like a lot of that had to

(44:18):
do with the presence of like Jeesuit missionaries in MCMAGI
and MGMA territory at the time. But moving out of
that period, moving into the moving into the nineteenth century,
UM is when we sort of get officially into the
like what we call the residential school period. And these
were schools that we're government funded, managed by Christian churches,

(44:43):
So there was like different denominations that were involved in The
The Roman Catholic Church was a big one of course,
but like there were Presbyterians, um, I think Anglican Anglicans. Yeah,
the Church of England was very big, just kind of
not facilitating getting all ripped up on my words, but
like essentially administering the schools, so like they were all

(45:03):
run by nuns and priests and and like Lake Herd
Clergy as sort of like the the only attendance at
the school. And and we estimate that about a hundred
and fifty thousand children Indigenous children in Canada went to
residential school And is it is it safe to I?
I just um for our listeners who are not fully

(45:24):
clear and what the intent was the intent of the
school is to take your culture from you and replace
it with something else. Yeah, it was essentially that it
was this idea that like like I said, you know,
like it's the the idea of like killing the Indian
through education. So you'd be taken away from your community,
you'd be taken out of your language, so you only

(45:45):
spoke English at residential school. Um, they would cut off
your braids much like we see in the movie. You
would be wearing Western clothing. Um, you'd only be educated educated, uh,
and sort of like European centric, like his story and
like customs and mannerisms. Um. In the States more than
in Canada, there was also like this idea of vocational training.

(46:09):
But yeah, it was it was about westernizing indigenous indigenous
kids because they were seen as being savages. Yeah, I
like it was forced assimilation. Um. And then in addition
to that, it was also the like officials at these
schools inflicting severe amounts of emotional, physical, and sexual abuse

(46:32):
upon the children. A lot of children died in the
residential school system throughout the years. There was a lot
of like malnutrition I read I even read some cases
of like experiments being done on the children. Yeah, and
there was just like not really much education happening. It
was just abuse. No. And that's sort of the problem, right,

(46:55):
is that their primary goal was was forced assimilation. You know,
they're goal wasn't a sort of build young people up
so that they'd be able to stand in the world afterwards,
you know, like um, like one would hope that the
education system does to some degree. It was it was
really about like you are bad, you are dirty. We're
going to make you clean and pure and you know,

(47:18):
we can't bleach you, but we'll make you as white
as possible. Um. You know, it estimated now that about
six thousand children died as a result of the regidential
school system. However, those numbers don't take into account. Well one,
you know, the records are not complete. A lot of
schools as they were shutting down, you know, especially in

(47:41):
the eighties and nineties, you know, burned records just like
wholesale got rid of stuff. Was like we don't know,
graves were often not marked. So there's been a whole
pro process even now sort of like trying to figure
out like people trying to figure out where their relatives
are buried. Conditions in school were really terrible, you know,

(48:01):
so kids were not only dying of like malnutrition, but
also disease, also of abuse. Like at times the abuse
would be so severe, Like there was one case that
I was reading about where the children were routinely like
electrocuted and like small doses, and sometimes they would die
because they were like as a punishment being electrocuted. And

(48:24):
that doesn't even take into account the I think what
we see through ALA's parents is like the after effects
of that abuse and how if you do make it out,
what is life like after that, you know, coping with
all that? Yeah trauma, Oh exactly. And you know that's
just it too. Like how many people, you know, their

(48:45):
whole lives have had to struggle with you know, the
weight of that abuse have you know, people who have
died by suicide, Like, yeah, it's it's it's a very
hard thing to put a number on, you know, the
fatalities of of people coming up through the residential school
system because it was this terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible machine

(49:05):
that just like like I said, you know, it was
meant to get rid of what the prime minister at
the times for John and McDonald, which was he was
like very famous Canadian prime minister from my back when
Canada was sort of created as a country. You know,
like he was like the Indian problem that people were
seeing as a problem. It was like, oh, well, we'll
just get rid of them. You know. You know when

(49:27):
we talked about this a little bit before the phone call,
you know, YouTube were sort of saying, like, you didn't
learn anything about this in school. I learned a little
bit about this in school, but it's really only been
the last couple of generations that we've even started talking
about this openly. So the last residence of school in
Canada closed in nine, you know, so like there are

(49:50):
people my age whose like parents went to residential school
you know, and their aunties and uncles, and like we're
really directly impacted by that. Uh yeah, and we just
didn't talk about it. I didn't talk about it. We'd
like there was a sense that for a really long time,
even like in two thousand nine, the Prime Minister of Canada,

(50:10):
Stephen Harper, was like, Canada doesn't have a colonial history,
you know, like we don't where everything's great, you know,
when we start looking at like the time in which
the rhyme for term googles is coming out. In a
lot of ways, it was like a big piece of
media that was made about this terrible, terrible system. And yeah,
and and and so I think that a lot of

(50:31):
the violence and stuff that you see in the film
was really done with the idea of like trying to
convey just how destructive this was. You know, was there anything, Caitlyn,
I I don't know if like you had mentioned that
you had like a specific timeline for residential schools. I
don't I kind of jumped all over the place, I'm sure,
and I mean I think what you covered was was

(50:54):
really helpful context. I have just some kind of dates
scattered through and some additional numbers. For example, like the
sixties scoop was this u moment in history that was
actually several decades long where I think an estimated twenty
Indigenous children were taken from their families and placed into

(51:18):
um foster care or adoption homes, often with non Indigenous families.
This was happening from like the late fifties into the
nineteen eighties. UM. So, I I know folks who were
scooped and like, which is a weird way of putting it,
but in some cases it was literally like oh, you know,
these social workers arrived at your house and they loaded

(51:39):
you and your siblings in a car and then you
never saw your siblings again because you were all adopted
by different families, which you know, the term that we
would use for this now is child trafficking, you know,
um absolutely, And this was a government this was government
mandate that this was like government endorsed. Um. So that's
another way in which like the Indian Act has been

(51:59):
used to sort of um separate children from Indigenous communities,
right is through things like the sixties and seventies scoop um,
which really could be called like you said, like the
start in the fifties and went until the eighties. And
now another thing too that has become that's gotten a
lot more attention in recent years and and is something
that there's been a lot of call to abolish is

(52:21):
we call them birth alerts. So what can happen, unfortunately,
is that like social workers can essentially sees a newborn
from an Indigenous mother if they deem her to be
potentially not a good parent in some way. Um it
was a couple of provinces have abolished these like birth

(52:41):
alert systems, but it's still upheld in Saskatchewan and I
believe Alberta as well here. So yeah, so if you're
an Indigenous woman, giving birth in a hospital can be
very risky because if you're not if they're like, oh
you're kind of young, you know, or are you a
single mother? You know, like essentially the staff will alert

(53:02):
UM Child Services and then will come and take your
child before even like the drugs have worn off from
the birth. You know, Like it's a really really horrific system. Um,
I also wanted to this was Unfortunately, as as I
was watching this, I was reminded of news item that
I read not too long ago in September around um

(53:26):
just issues that would have certainly been affecting a LA,
in particular forced sterilization as well, which when I did
a little more research, I found it peaked in the
years that this movie is covering. Peach between nineteen sixty
six and nineteen seventies six, over a thousand Indigenous women

(53:47):
in Canada were forced to be sterilized. And the reason
that the story is relevant right now is because it's
still happening. Yeah, like you said, you know, it is
still happening. Um, there's still a lot of pressure in
terms of and you know, and in California as well,
Like there were a lot of Indigenous women sterilized in
California during the sixties and seventies. Not that I'm picking

(54:07):
on California. It just happened to know this California, but yeah,
it's it's it's still going on today. There's still a
lot of pressure, especially if women like have any sort
of even minor health concerns. Like a lot of times
like there still is this pressure of like, wow, we
could just like you know, sterilize you. Um, if women

(54:28):
are incarcerated, there's also pressure. Um yeah, you know, it
disproportionately affects the Indigenous community of course, because of colonialism,
because there is still huge bias unfortunately with regards to
with regards to Indigenous people. Absolutely. Oh, I was gonna
say in top of the sixties, Scoop, if you want

(54:49):
to be some other set statistics, I feel like we're
just like, oh, and this thing that's also really depressing.
So today talking to about the birth alart system. You know,
even though the last residential school closed here in Canada
in the in the nineties, which like spoiler alert, we
were all alive. Then wait, how old do you Jamie?

(55:10):
We were all It's like Jamie's young, Jamie's James scrappy.
But yeah, so it's within our lifetimes, you know, And
I think that that's a really important thing to remember. However,
a lot of Indigenous folks will argue that the child
weft for a system has taken over the place of
the residential schools in terms of like taking kids out
of communities. You know, you have the birth alert system.

(55:31):
You also just have like tremendous like scrutiny and surveillance
of Indigenous families. And you know what should be shocking
up setting to people is the fact that Indigenous children
represent fifty of the children in foster care in Canada,
even though they only represent seven percent of the youth
population UM in Quebecet's estimated that one out of every

(55:54):
Indigenous family has a child that's in foster care with
like non Indigenous people UM and it's endemic. It's it's
just like, you know, if it's not something you have
experienced directly, it's something that like you know other people
who have and when you start looking at things like that,
you know, with regards to kids and the child great

(56:15):
resistant with regards to you know, suicidality, with regards to incarceration,
you know, with regards to like drug abuse, like all
the things that we sort of see in this movie.
You know, you can draw a straight line from one
to the other and it can't be an accident. At
this point, you know, there's just so much like paperwork
and documentation of how things have intentionally been done, you know,

(56:38):
throughout the years to make that this is the case.
At a certain point, in time, you have to kind
of be like, well, it's not even a conspiracy anymore,
because you know it have documented and to speak to
your point from earlier, that's just the documentation that still exists,
right what what was burned and what was destroyed in

(57:00):
and what was lost and you know, and what will
not come to light you know for whatever reason, and
on and on and on. Unfortunately, let's take a quick
break and then we'll come back and we'll discuss how
this context informs the film, shall we and we're back? Um.

(57:26):
I wanted to, uh, if it's cool with everybody's share, um,
some quotes from Jeff Barnaby please about the production of
this movie and just kind of his motivation behind writing
it and where I'm sort of where he was at.
I still, I mean, especially after watching this movie a
couple of times, it I can't believe that he is

(57:49):
not a more mainstream name. Like it's so he wrote, directed,
and edited this movie, which is fucking unbelievable. I'm like, God,
imagine having three skills I hand he well, he he
did the same for Blood Quantum and then I think
he also co wrote the score to that film. Yes
he did. Yeah, So he's a composer as well, and
he also has a small cameo in Rhymescrey on Ghoules,

(58:14):
which which he's the priest who puts a lot in
the hole. I was in the film for like three seconds.
And it's funny because I've I've met Jeff sort of
like subsequently, just through like Montreal film sort of stuff,
and it's very like I totally agree, I think he
should be a household name, but it sort of touches

(58:36):
on some of the ways that like it can be
really hard to make a film when you're not a
straight white man, you know. And for Blood Quantum, he
was working on that project for years, and like different
things were shot at different times, and you know, there
was like self funding at different points, and like well
even for Rhymesprey on Ghoules, there was like you sort

(58:59):
of get to see it's like all of the Canadian
film funders contributed because it's like we have tiny little
bits of money that we can give you, so it's
you know, it's it's unfortunately still like an uphill battle
in a lot of ways just to like have have
a film made and then to get people to see it,
you know, and this I mean, this movie's budget was
only a million, five hundred thousand, which I mean for

(59:20):
a movie, it certainly uses that budget to its fullest extent.
It looks incredible. And we had we had sort of
a similar conversation not too long ago in our girl
Walks Home Alone at Night episode, And just like the
number of barriers that are put in front of filmmakers
who are not straight, white male, and how many different

(59:43):
avenues you have to go for funding, and even when
you have this finished product and it's incredible and it's
you know, very exciting and different, distribution becomes a whole issue.
And so if you're listening right now and you haven't
watch the Barnaby Canon, get on it. But I really

(01:00:04):
liked There was an interview he did, I believe around
the time this movie was first coming out in festivals
um with musk Rat magazine, and he was asked by
the interviewer, let me get their name, Jemis DaCosta Um.
He was asked why he chose to have a female
protagonist for this story, so I thought relevant to our interests, uh,

(01:00:28):
And here is how he replied. He said, my nation
is a matriarchal society and paying respect to that archetype
of a woman and the strength that is there, particularly
in First Nations women. It's imperative for me, as a
First Nations man who loves his mom and loves his
wife and loves his sisters, to pay reverence to their
struggle and their strength. I think women are awesome. Ga.

(01:00:52):
My mom had me and a straight up there with
our Robert Eggers. Oh yes, women, I've heard of them. Um,
Jeff Party thinks women are awesome. My mom had me
at such a young age and didn't have a lot
of support around her, but still managed to make it work.
She and my stepmom were a big influence, along with

(01:01:13):
my sisters, and seeing what they went through at such
a young age gave me a measuring stick in terms
of the things you can complain about in life. And
then he said, um, kind of going off of that,
why he chose the era in residential schools that he chose.
I believe this movie is set in the year that
he was born, in nineteen seventy six, but he says

(01:01:34):
about that in the same interview quote, I thought, if
there was ever a point in time that this residential
school was going to crumble, it would have been in
the seventies. It just made sense to me to have
a young Native girl bring this institution of ugliness to
its knees. It made sense to me because First Nations
women are the language and cultural keepers. They are the
epicenter of our matriarchal society. I've mostly only known strength

(01:01:55):
to come from the women in my life, which isn't
to say that men haven't been influential, but the rock
state power that doesn't waiver seems to only come from women,
and which I think he compliments his wife for a
long time. It's nice, but I'm not going to read
the wife is really lovely, too very nice. Well, I
think you see that in the film, this this like

(01:02:17):
ideology with like of Ayla's peers, who seemed to be
entirely boys, she is the smartest and most competent of them,
not even of just her peers, of all the like
adult men around her. She seems to have kind of
the most awareness of what is going around, because like

(01:02:38):
there's scenes where like Soholo and Angus are just like, oops,
I got robbed by a stripper, dough like Tither kind
of laughing about it. You know, It's like, oh, well, no,
big deal. We'll just sell some bottles. We'll get the
money back that way, and ailes like no, like, do
you see what's happening? Do you see what we have
to do? And she's by far the most competent, and

(01:02:59):
and like why is this? We talked about sort of
having to age prematurely almost and having to be wise
beyond your years, not in a like precocious child dropey
way that we you know, always take guph with on
the podcast, but in a when you're growing up in
these horrible, like systematic oppression situations, there's no other choice.

(01:03:23):
You can't like it's that's just it hardens you. And
it and the fact that the story of the wolf
eating itself that becomes so important um to how she
views herself and how we view her as the audience
comes from really the only other woman that we get
to know besides her mother in the movie of like

(01:03:45):
she I mean, I guess, going off of um what
Jeff Barnaby said, she was the keeper of that wisdom
and passed it along for sure. And I was going
to say to that just like a little bit of
like added magma context. Um, there is this huge reverence
in our culture for not just women, although you know,
like Jeff says, you know, it's a it's a very matriarchal,

(01:04:07):
matrilineal culture, but also grandmother is in particular are really revered,
um you know, as elders, as elder women. There's a
lot of stories of glose Cap who's are are sort
of um how to describe glose Cap. He's a trickster

(01:04:28):
figure and he's within traditional storytelling, but he's also like
a protector figure for the Maigma. You know, he was
sort of helped when creator made the Bigma at the beginning.
You know, it's a shapeful landscape. So he plays this
really important role through all of our our traditional stories.
And there's a lot of stories about glues Cap just
like doing stuff with his grandmother. Um. And even the

(01:04:49):
word that we use her grandmother, nogu midge comes from
what glose Cap calls his grandmother, which is nukumi. And
that like that j on the end is like how
you sort of like talk about like something being smaller,
like we talked about Jiuji is like a small bug,
so like our grandmothers are like a small version of

(01:05:11):
Bluecaps grandmother, you know, And there's also a lot of
reverence in Um in Nigma culture for figures like Santa Anne.
There's a very important a cathedral called sant and de
beau Prey where a lot of Magma folks do pilgrimages too.
It's like I said, we converted very early on, so
Christianity has gotten very tied into our traditional culture. And

(01:05:33):
Sant Anne in the Bible. Now I'm talking about my
ass a little bit. I'll be at and I cannot
help you because I have never read the Bible, but
sant Anne is is Jesus's grandmother and so uh, you know,
she she remains very symbolic and very important for the
Magma in that sense. So the fact that Sarah's is

(01:05:56):
really the only female figure that we know in the film,
I think is like is very emblematic of like Magma culture.
And you know, and I love those scenes so much
because they're actually speaking Magma. Oh there's my cat. Wow.
This episode of the Bechtel Cast passes the Caitlin test
because a cat is pleasant. I was going to say,

(01:06:19):
but yeah, I love those sections with Sarah's because they're
speaking in Migma. She's making Bannock, you know, she's doing
like all these things that like are so familiar and
are so like grounding. And when we're in Sarah's house too,
you have a sense of like Ala doesn't have to
be you know, the smartest, you know, most sort of
like aware person. She can just kind of be there

(01:06:42):
and like is comforting. It feels like the closest scenes
to where she feels like being a kid, because it's
really easy to forget that she's a kid because she
has the weight of the world and then some on
her shoulders. But yeah, and those scenes with Staras and
I think like part of why it's devastating to see
that Sarah's has been murdered is because that's why, I mean,

(01:07:08):
one of the only times you sort of see Ela
relax the smallest bit and just feel, like you said, comfortable, yeah,
big time, you know. And it's also interesting because what
you're saying to about her, like I think, like I
really see it as after her mother's death and her
father is in prison, you know, Ela kind of has

(01:07:28):
to become the adult, has to become the parent, you know,
and like you know, you both mentioned like that's not rare,
unfortunately for kids who grow up in circumstances where there
is like subtance abuse, or there's like a parent absent
um for whatever reason, you know. And I really refer
to I always think about like all the men in

(01:07:48):
the film kind of as like lost boys in a sense,
because there is sort of like this waywardness, this sort
of sense of like there's not like any other kind
of like parent like chy relationships really depicted. And sometimes
it can kind of like feel like that in In
Circumstances Um, you know, where there is so much intergenerational traumas,

(01:08:09):
like everyone's kind of like lost and everyone's kind of
like separated from each other, you know. And so I
thought that that was really interesting the way that they
treated that in film. Yeah, particularly with ALA's relationship with
her father, which I thought was the way that that
was developed was I mean it really emotionally effective, but
really interesting too, where it's I don't know, every character

(01:08:34):
in this movie is so multidimensional and so complex, where
it's like I can be mad at ALA's dad in
one scene and then in the next scene be like, oh,
but I but but I understand where he's coming from.
Where I mean, when we flash forward, Ala is essentially
her uncle's boss. She's clearly the brains behind the operation,

(01:08:56):
and her dad is not able to you, like, I
don't know, get emotionally where he needs to be. And
and the anger sort of is lashed out towards her
when it is his anger with the circumstance, not with her.
And seeing them navigate that relationship and reach i mean,

(01:09:18):
go full circle in the best and the worst way
by the end was just so so so impactful. It
was just yeah, so beautifully written. Yeah, and and and
sort of you know, you're right and sort of like
seeing that full There's a lot of like circular sort
of narratives that happened in the film, and I think
that that's very intentional in the sense of like kind

(01:09:40):
of being caught in systemic racism can often feel like
you can't escape this vicious circle that you're in, right,
like any kind of systemic oppression. But we sort of
we opened the movie with her father going to prison,
we close the movie with her father going to prison.
You know, the amount of journey that he has to
do in between, you know, in terms of his relationship

(01:10:01):
with Ala is huge. Mm hmmm. So im my cats
eating my notes um as I am trying to read
them uh, you know, is absolutely huge, you know. And
I think that exchange at the end of the film
where where Joseph like just comes out and says, you know,
like you're still a kid. I want you to be
a kid. You know. I think that that you finally

(01:10:22):
understand in that moment what the stakes are for him,
and like the fact that like, you know, he understands
even though he's like, I want you to be a kid,
he understands that like they can never really be a kid,
you know, like that's just not on the table. And
I think that's kind of interesting in terms of like
looking at this film as like in comparison with like
other films about like teenage girls, because I think there

(01:10:45):
could be an argument made that in some ways Rhymes
is a coming of age story. But it's just like,
you know, you look at that and then you look
at something like a book smart and you're like, oh,
you know, you guys talk so much abou like how
you know, oftentimes teen movies take place in a very
like narrow sort of class Oh yeah, um, And you know,

(01:11:07):
it's sort of interesting to see the way that this
film steps kind of outside of that, you know, to
tell this like story of It's like, well, you know,
sometimes coming of age means having to be your own parents,
you know, absolutely a teenager. Yeah, I mean, and I
feel like I would I would qualify this movie is
I wrote down all the different genres I felt like

(01:11:27):
this movie touched on at different points, which is another
thing that I loved about. It was like, there's just
there were whole sequences that were a highest movie. There
were whole sequences that were very much drama. There were
whole sequences. But it feels like a coming of age
movie to me. Yeah, And I don't know, I mean,

(01:11:47):
maybe not at first glance, because it's not an experience
that we usually see reflected on screen, but we definitely
see her her come of age. Um and right, It's like,
I mean, so it's almost like you might not necessarily
immediately recognize it as a coming of age story because
there's no party at a rich kid's house, so maybe

(01:12:09):
that's where, right, there's no like oops, I smoked weed
for the first time and now I'm tripping at my
at my friend's mansion that I'm hanging out at. Right,
It's like, but but it's like, yeah, a movie about
a young indigenous teen girl in the nineteen seventies in Canada,

(01:12:33):
like that is what coming of age would look like, absolutely,
you know, and even I think that, like, you know,
there were even things like like I think that in
my own coming of age that like I like resonated
with me in terms of the film. You know, like
I said, I didn't grow up in a REVS, but
I did grow up with two parents who had serious

(01:12:55):
substance of these issues. And yeah, there are definitely things
about like Ale's story that resonated so so strongly with me,
like on this very profound level. And I think that's important.
I think that's so important in the media that like
young people can see. You know, I was older than
Ala when I saw than Aila would have been then

(01:13:17):
when I saw the film. But it's a film that
like I try and like show young people too, because
it's important, you know, we're talking about like representation. You know,
it's important to sort of see like, yes, it is
this very brutal, violent, I don't think particularly optimistic story.
But Jeff Barnaby talks a lot about this idea of
like wanting to portray the res in you know, in

(01:13:39):
a way that's like true to his experience, you know,
And I think that, like whether you're indigenous or not,
if you're a young person who is living in like
in a precarious situation where the you know that's because
you know it's always because of things like that you
can't control, then I think that there's things you're going
to relate to. In terms of ALA's story, Yeah, absolutely,

(01:14:00):
I mean even getting back to the relationship with her dad.
I mean just navigating a complicated relationship with I had
a number of people in my family who had substance
abuse problems, but you love them and you feel like
it's not especially when you're still a kid, you can't
really sever that chord and I I don't know, it's

(01:14:23):
it's something you almost never see in teen movies, and
if you do, it's kind of framed like a joke
instead of you know, a problem that is something you know,
very sensitive that needs to be navigated, and another thing
that kind of I guess I'm curious that what you
both felt about this, But I also was really affected

(01:14:44):
by the I don't like Ala is so mature in
ways that I'm like, I currently don't even know if
I could be where the amount of grace and understanding
that she's able to extend to both of her parents consistently,
even when she is, particularly with her dad, who she's

(01:15:07):
often piste off at the decision she's making. She realizes
he's lashing out, he's compartmentalizing, he's not able to fully to,
you know, deal with what's in front of him. But
she has this very I mean, there's that scene with
her and her uncle where she says, the jail didn't
break him, we did, which is her putting more blame

(01:15:29):
on her you know, we we know as a viewer
she's putting a lot of undue blame on herself. But
just the amount of grace that she extends the people
in her life because she has such a thorough understanding
of how circumstantial a lot of their problems are, I
thought was like really cool. And and again just something

(01:15:50):
you don't see that subtlety expressed in this genre really ever.
And something you mentioned about the there's this kind of
ongoing discussion throughout the movie about characters kind of having
to age two rapidly on a maturity and kind of
emotional and psychological level. There's also this idea of um

(01:16:12):
characters being broken, and there is that discussion between um
Aila and Berner talking about Joseph saying, you know, like
you said Jamie, like Aila thinks that like we we
broke him, And it's not necessarily clear if she means
like we as the family or we us a community
or what exactly. But then there's another quick interaction between

(01:16:34):
Aila and Joseph at the end when he's saying the
whole like you you're just a little girl, and she's like,
I was never a little girl. And then he says,
you know, your your mother was broken way before what happened,
meaning like way before the accident that killed her brother.
And this has nothing to do with you, and that,
you know, is a reference to them becoming broken, being

(01:16:55):
survivors of this residential school system and and and of
this systemic oppression and racism of being you know, forced
into reserve life, and it's it's just heartbreaking. Yeah, And
I think that in some ways, And I was thinking
about this, I think a little bit closer this time,
because I was thinking about the podcast, and I was

(01:17:16):
thinking about other films that you've discussed that that have
like teenage female protagonists, and and I think that Ala
has a certain amount of like as portrayed as having
a certain amount of stoicism and a certain amount of
like restraint, and a certain amount of like ability to
see the larger picture that you kind of see crack
at the end when she's like, you know, right before Popularize,

(01:17:38):
when she's crying after she's found Sarah's and she sort
of says, you know, the for the you know, the
last rule of surviving in the Kingdom of the Crow
has never let your emotional guard down. And I think
that sometimes for kids who grow up or people just
in general who grew up in in difficult situations, I
think that sometimes like in order to survive, you need

(01:18:00):
a kind of compartmentalizing and you need to kind of
like have a very calm, steady demeanor because there's nothing
else in your life that is that way, right, you know,
And so I think that there's like a certain amount
of that as well. And there's a certain amount of
it too that like I kind of question how realistic
it is, because I mean, I work with teenagers, um,

(01:18:22):
you know, and like and and they're all lovely and
none of them are going to listen to this, but
I adore them all, and you know, I think that
there is a certain amount of that that is sort
of like creative license, but it is really hard to
like place ALA's age, and it's really hard to like
I think that, like I more turbulent character wouldn't have

(01:18:45):
worked for the film. So I think that, like, also
from a storytelling perspective, you know, Ala being this rock
is is sort of important for the narrative, but also
sort of, um, perhaps a little bit idealized. Um I
see that, Yeah, she's and I feel like that kind
of like undo. I mean that extreme strength and ability

(01:19:07):
to compartmentalize also crosses over into how she remembers her
mother and how which was kind of another I thought,
pretty different, incredible approach by Jeff Barnaby that I totally
agree if she were acting, you know, like your average teenager,

(01:19:27):
may not have been possible. But I, I mean, it's
I forget. I think it's her uncle. I think it's Burner.
Early in the movie, once we flash forward and everything
has happened, who insults her mother in front of her
and she immediately because she has I mean this, this

(01:19:48):
understanding of the circumstance of what happened was so tragic
and so terrible, and even though it was a an
accident then involved her mother. You know, she's able to
kind of see the fuller picture and protect her mother's memory.
Are you talking about the moment where he like he

(01:20:09):
calls someone an old witch and then she's like, don't
call her that, and then he's like, sorry, the old lady.
I thought he was talking about Sirius. There was he
I think he might have been okay, And then I
misunderstood that because I think, yeah, he's talking about because
she seems to be Sirius seems to be sort of
it's at her house where like they're growing all the marijuana.

(01:20:29):
I think that they sell and he's so there's certain
kind of debts to her that they oh because like
she's supplying stuff and then and then yeah, so and
then they're like kind of moving the product around. But yeah,
I think he's he's talking to her. But even so,
I think your your point still valid, Jamie. Of like,
I mean, everyone is broken and everyone's having to kind

(01:20:53):
of compartmentalize, and it's and that's something that Aila has.
I feel like us you were touching on this a
little bit where in a world where there is not
a lot that she has control over how she views
her mother and how she holds her mother's memory is
something that she has control over. Um. And it's interesting

(01:21:14):
too because UM, I was gonna say, you know, even
though Indigenous women have been you know, a target of
colonialism and colonial violence through the Indian acting in other ways, UM,
you know, Indigenous women are also at the forefront of
a lot of activism that happens UM and is still happening.

(01:21:36):
You know. One thing that was going on when this
film UH first came out in two thousand and thirteen
was the beginning of Idle No More, which is an
indigenous rights movement here in Canada and in some parts
of the United States as well. Like it's standing rock
there res Idle No More, folks. And it was started
by four women, three Indigenous and one white, ally because

(01:21:58):
they wanted to stand up against this bill that the
government was introducing that would have changed UH not only
a lot of Indigenous rights, but also a lot of
environmental protections. So they got together and they're like, we're
not going to be idle anymore. And it's spread to
becoming this national protest movement. It spread to becoming a
bigger sort of movement for indigenous rights here in Canada,

(01:22:19):
and that was started, you know, by by four women
sort of sitting around the table in the prairies like
just like deciding, you know, we're done. So there is,
like I think, in the character veil out like in
an understanding some of like Jeff's like motivations were wanting
to create a character that way, Like I think I
understand like that he's also paying tribute to women like that,

(01:22:43):
you know, who have like held it together and who
are like trying to make change and who are in
so many ways taking all this garbage that the world
puts on them and trying to make change and do
things that are different, and also like the compassion that
it takes to take all that ship and and still

(01:23:03):
turn around and be able to say, like, you know,
I'm going to march and I'm gonna I'm going to
write letters and I'm going to do a hunger fast.
And yeah, I think that that's really really powerful. And
I think that like so I think that there's also
like that element too of of like when I say
that it is a little bit of an idealized character,
Like I think that there's also a measure of that

(01:23:24):
that's like paying tribute in like a positive way to
the role that Indigenous women play in politics and in
their communities. Mm hmm for sure. Um, there was one
thing that just kind of coming off of something that
I think you mentioned Caitlin about like the selling drugs
and like being broken. And I wanted to talk a

(01:23:47):
little bit about that because I'm so I'm interested, um
in what your first impressions of that were, because we're
so used to seeing these images of like drunk Indians
and you know that's been so prevalent in in North
American cinema since the beginning of North American cinema. Um,

(01:24:10):
so did you feel at all sort of did you
feel any kind of way, I guess like sort of
like seeing those scenes in the beginning, Like I honestly,
I mean I my first reaction was, I don't I mean,
I knew that, you know, Jeff Barnaby is an Indigenous filmmaker.
I'm like, I'm gonna I'm on this ride with him
he and I knew he was speaking to his own community.

(01:24:32):
It did like make me go oh no for for
a moment only because I don't know. I mean, like
we've all seen movies where those stereotypes have played out
and then you get no context for anything. But this
movie felt like it was all context for Like what

(01:24:54):
what led to those stereotypes being so widely perpetuated without
context entirely? So yeah, I think it. It gave me
pause for like a second, but then when it was clear,
I mean, the first frame of the movie is context. Um,
So I feel like this. And I was reading in

(01:25:16):
just this same interview with him in Muskrat magazine that
he had experienced some pushback um from other filmmakers in
the community that were just like, well, you're showing these
stereotypes and like, you know, like I don't have any
interest in seeing that portrayed on screen in any way,
and his response being something you've already referenced just where

(01:25:37):
he was just like, well, I'm showing you my community
and reflecting my own experiences growing up, So like, how
can you tell me what I can like I can't
reflect my own experience, right. It almost it's like sort
of finding a balance of like do I do a
disservice to my community by ignoring some very real truths

(01:26:01):
of what is taking place? Or do I I mean,
we talked about this a little bit on a recent
episode we recorded on the Matreon about UM what We
Do in the Shadows, where it was written and directed
by both Takeaway and Jamaine Clement, who are both Maori,

(01:26:21):
and we were talking about how cool it is to
see because there's like this kind of discussion around it
feels like there's a lot of pressure on filmmakers of
any marginalized community to only talk about that. It's like,
if you're black, you can only make movies about racism,
and like that's your expertise, so that's what you have

(01:26:44):
to make art about. And and how it was like
really cool to see this like really goofy vampire mockumentary
that's like so funny and just like so silly made
by these indigenous Maori filmmakers. But then there's also like
you know, Tyka made Boy, which is about his upbringing
in his like Maori community. I mean, and you can

(01:27:07):
speak to this as a filmmaker to jests of UM
feeling that this pressure of like do I make movies
that I want to make that are fun and silly
if that those are the movies I want to make,
or do I you know, it's like this kind of
ongoing dilemma, Oh for sure. And it's I mean, like
take also directed one of the thor films I think,

(01:27:29):
you know, those films, tiny little marvel mu movies that
no one's ever heard of, right, um, And it's it's
interesting because I think that, like, yeah, I feel so
acutely where Jeff is coming from, especially because you know,
we all kind of in terms of like filmmaking here
in Canada, we all kind of have to navigate the

(01:27:50):
same systems of the same funders. So you know, we're
fortunate in the sense that, like we do have public
funding for the art. You know, I wouldn't trade that
friend thing, but that also means that and and you
know this is changing a little bit now, but you know,
I've been doing this for like a decade close on
and uh, you know, a lot of the funders are

(01:28:11):
not like bipop people. They're not queer people, they're not
you know a lot of the funders are still like,
you know, a very specific type of bureaucrat. So when
you're talking about like yeah, there, it can feel sometimes
like you're you're just ticking boxes. I'm sort of like, Okay,
I want to make my film, but I want to
make it this way, and it's like, you know, a

(01:28:34):
funder is not necessarily going to be like, well, you know,
you're an indigenous filmmaker and you just want to make
like a zombie movie, like I don't know, you know,
Like so it's it's complicated some of the way that
we have to navigate that. Um. I also make Worker
and and want to continue to make work that is
also in that genre sort of space. Um. Yeah, it

(01:28:56):
can be really, it can be really difficult at times,
and there is all this kind of like pressure sometimes too, yeah,
like to to not show certain things because like it
always comes back to the reality of representation, because you know,
this is like blood Quantum. We keep talking about blood quantum.
People are just gonna have food quantum. We just have

(01:29:16):
to do blood Quantum for Halloween next year. Absolutely, I
will come back if you want me to please. Yes,
I waited like four years for that film. Anyway, that's
another story for another day. But when you're talking about
Ryse Starnkles, it's such a singular film. You know, it's
a coming of age story, it's a heist movie. It's
our story of revenge, and it's it's taken place in

(01:29:38):
this you know, it's a historical piece as well, Like
it's such a particular thing that like when the pressure
is on you, it's like you are the one that
we are giving our small amounts of Canadian money to
to make this film. It's like not only are you
just like the only like at that point in time,
you know, like one of the most high profile like
Nigma filmmakers, one of only a handful of Indigenous filmmakers.

(01:30:04):
It's also like you know, you you've been awarded this
like highly sought after like money, you know. So yeah,
so there are all these like weird pressures sometimes. And
I just finished making a film with the NFB about
Queerness and Magma culture, um like a short personal documentary.

(01:30:27):
And that process was really interesting because the first time
I've worked with the n FC is the National Film
Board here in Canada. Sorry, I feel like I'm using
all this. I was like guessing around. I was like, okay,
I was like, is it National Film Business Board business here?
It's like sounds so vague. So the National Film Board

(01:30:50):
is is like a Canadian institution that funds and supports
film and new media production in Canada. UM. So it
was my first time working with such a big funder
that has like such a not just a storied history,
but also you know, they want oscars like it's a
big deal. And it was a very interesting process because
I definitely found myself at times like getting feedback that

(01:31:10):
I was like, well, that's not how I want to
do things, you know. And I was fortunate to work
with a production team that had worked with other Indigenous
filmmakers before and was very understanding, but like there was
also a lot of times where I had to like
be like, no, that's not how protocol works, Like that's
not how you know. When I was going into communities
and like spending time with other queer Magma folks, I

(01:31:32):
had to be like, well, I have to let them know,
like within this time delay, because like I can't just
leave it till day of like, because there's protocols, you know,
There's there's things that you have to do to be polite.
There's things that you have to prepare. You know, if
I'm going to go talk to an elder, there's a
certain amount of things that I have to do before
I go talk to that elder, like just out of respect.

(01:31:53):
It's like going to visit a foreign country. You know,
like there's just things that you have to do and
there's still a big leg even like understanding of those
things sometimes. So yeah, Si, you know, it's like you
sometimes like as an indigenous filmmaker, you can feel like
you're battling against like so many different like things that

(01:32:15):
you might have to compromise on, you know, like, Okay,
not everybody's gonna like then I'm going to show this
in this way. At the same time, am I working
with a funder who understands my nation's culture? You know?
Am I just being tokenized? Am I like wasting this
like tiny little bit of money but it's the only
money we have, you know. Like, so there's all these

(01:32:37):
different things that kind of play into that. But uh,
you know, we're starting to talk a lot more about
narrative sovereignty. Even just the idea that it should be
indigenous filmmakers making indigenous films is very new, which it
shouldn't be, but it is a very new idea in
Canada in the United States. So I'm hoping with that

(01:32:58):
that there'll just be more opportunity, as you know, and
if there are more opportunities in there can be more
people making films. Therefore, you know, the one Native person
making a film doesn't have to make a film that
represents all Native people, you know. They can just make
the one Native film that they want to make, and
then me over here, I can make the Native film
that I want to make, you know, like, and they
don't have to be the same thing, and it doesn't

(01:33:19):
have to fit into sort of like this very specific expectation,
you know, right, And they can have be all different
kinds of stories and they can span all different genres
and they it's it's almost just like, well, I'm wondering if,
like Jeff Barnemy is like, this is my one chance
to make a film, I have to just like pack
in every genre. Like it's not as though the movie

(01:33:41):
is like Fils modeled or anything like that. But it's
like we need to get to a place where there
just should never be that much pressure on a single filmmaker.
Like it just it doesn't make sense. And I'm glad
that he spoke to that issue and also just said, like,
there are indigenous filmmakers that didn't like the movie I made,

(01:34:04):
and I disagree with them, and it is what it is.
It is what it is. Yeah, And there shouldn't have
been that much pressure on his movie to represent everybody.
But like you're saying, just that there's not enough opportunities
and so that pressure is created and it just spirals

(01:34:24):
up from there, and it's I mean, I think that
like even in a broader sense like of just like
any kind of marginalized filmmaker. I mean I would even
include like female filmmakers in that. Like you know, when
you look at somebody like a Katherine Bigelow, you know,
often people are like, oh, well, she's so exemplary as
like a as a female filmmaker because she's making like
action films, you know, and it should be fine for

(01:34:45):
a woman to make an action film. It should be
fine for an African American filmmaker to make like an
experimental video work. It should be fine for an indigenous
filmmaker to make a alien movie. You know, Like it
should be fine because when assist hit like a white
straight you know, filmmaker wants to go and make a

(01:35:06):
film about I don't know, let's just pick like like
a female coming of age story, Nobody's like, well, are
you sure, are you sure that you can speak to that?
You're like, nobody, nobody scrutinizes, and I know that, like
I know, we pick on white straight men an awful lot,
and they're awful fragile, but it's true, you know, Like

(01:35:28):
I I've had conversations with like filmmaking friends, you know,
people that I absolutely adore, you know, who are male filmmakers,
and nobody questions them at that, like why they want
to make a film that they want to make. They're like, oh,
I just want to tell the story. It's like, well,
are you the person to do it? Though? Yeah? Like, well,
you know, I want to make like a film where

(01:35:49):
it's like two dudes and they travel through time. People
are like are you sure though? Are they going to
be native dudes? And You're like, you can't win, you
can't win a yeah, it's I There was a I mean,
there's a just a news item from this past week
where there is that conversation where Lu lu Wang was

(01:36:10):
critical of Ron Howard because Ron Howard's like, I want
to make a film about Chinese pianist Lang Lang, and
he's Ron Howard, so he can just do he can
just do anything he fucking wants. And Lu lu Wang
basically made the argument and and just that's my first
time coming up hearing that term narrative sovereignty. But I

(01:36:34):
love it because that's essentially the argument she's making of, like, well,
why the fund does Ron Howard get to do this?
And I think that, you know, not even picking on
Ron Howard specifically, but that is such a trend. But
it's like, well, no one has really been allowed, like
no one has been allowed to ask those questions until
so recently that like, yeah, however you feel about Ron Howard,

(01:36:58):
what the fucking titles him to make him to me
about something? Like it's just and and that should just
be a basic question as opposed to it. Oftentimes it
gets construed as like an attack and like like brought
out to her for like speaking out about that, because
I think she's brilliant, but like, like it's also Ron Howard,
Like I feel like he has so much cultural cache
that we didn't even very recent memory, this would be

(01:37:20):
a piece that wouldn't even like it would be a
non issue, Like nobody would run this piece because it's like,
well who are you you know, like yeah, you know,
just like fund the movie, don't direct it, like if
you can help get it made by a Chinese filmmaker,
do that, don't direct it like you don't, And then

(01:37:41):
I mean, gosh, I mean your your example, Jess, I
feel like you perhaps were referring to Eighth Grade, which
is a movie that I love and I hate it.
Pisces me off that I love it so much because
I'm like Bo Burnham, what do you know? And it
turned out well, But I'm just like, damn it, that

(01:38:02):
wasn't your story to tell and how did you get
it so right? Well? I mean, I love that movie too,
but I think even just like going off this conversation
we're having, that movie was held up so quickly as
a classic of the genre in a way that may
not have been true for someone that would have, you know,
an actual familiarity of of that character's experience, where it's

(01:38:24):
just like, well, you know, Bo Burnham, love him. And
again it's like framing it as not an attack but
just a valid question of like why does this work
get elevated to instant classic of a female coming of
age story? And so many women can't even get their
fucking movie made, you know, Like it's just no absolutely,
and and like I wasn't thinking of a specific I

(01:38:46):
didn't have a specific film in mind, but I feel
like there's so many examples, right, you know, and it
and it drives me off the wall because I see
so much talent and I and I work, you know,
like I said, I work a lot with with teens,
especially teens who are interested in art and are interested
in filmmaking and are interested in animation. And truly, there
is so much talent out there, and there's so much

(01:39:08):
brilliance out there, you know, like especially with how accessible
technology is now. Like I didn't learn how to use
photoshop until I was in university, and like I will
be talking to like a thirteen year old that's like,
oh yeah, look at this like cool thing I made
in Photoshop the other day, and I'm like, all right,
you know, like my cousin, my my nephew, my my
cousin's son is thirteen and he's already like making little

(01:39:32):
animated films. I'm like, that's amazing, you know, Like I
want to see more of that, not less of it.
And I feel like we're fed this this idea of scarcity,
this idea of like it has to be you know,
like these like select few people who get to have
the keys to the kingdom and it's just not it's
just not true and and like and so any shift

(01:39:54):
away from that that we can have, I think it's
a positive thing. I mean, it's unfortunate, but you know,
we're talking so much about like Jeff's work, you know,
and like seeing his films and things like that, and
I feel like, as brilliant as this film is, in
so many ways, more people have probably seen Pocahonas, more
people have probably seen Dances with Wolves, more people have
probably seen Dead Man. You know, these films that like

(01:40:16):
are super dubious and do a lot of damage in
terms of like the representation of Indigenous people. And yet
when I'm like, oh, hey, you want to talk indigenous cinema,
people are sort of like, I don't know what that is,
or they might know, they might know Tayka. But that's
like it, you know, which is better than nothing. But

(01:40:38):
it's not enough, certainly not enough. Well that I should
be more Indigenous filmmakers who are household names period periods.
According to and I don't know exactly how accurate this
number is, but according to box office Mojo dot com
ever heard of it? Uh this I do consult it

(01:41:00):
a lot. Just makes me think of Austin Powers. I know,
I'm just like, um, make you become a bombshell and
that makes me want to die. Oh gosh. But this
movie earned at the box office one thousand, five hundred
dollars and like four dollars or something like that, basically

(01:41:22):
dollars um because of its very limited distribution and exhibitions.
So yeah, I mean, I think that's why a lot
of people haven't seen this movie. A lot of people
haven't heard of this movie. Admittedly, we were not familiar
with it until quite recently. Um, Jamie and Izo. It's
just a matter of there and I don't even know

(01:41:43):
exactly how to fix this of like getting the word
out there. I mean, hopefully this episode of this podcast
encourages people to watch this movie. It's it's accessible. I
watched it on filion Hoopla and like um Canopy, which
is free if you have a library car, you can
rent it anywhere and rent it if you want to
some money back. Yes, yeah, I rented it on YouTube

(01:42:07):
like it was. It's easily accessible, you know, and and
increasingly easily accessible. I own a copy of this film
because that's the only way that I could like keep
watching it after I saw it, you know, in festival. Um,
but yeah, people can see this movie. It's it's I mean,
so I would say that we have to do this,
like we have to go old school on this. So

(01:42:31):
this is the plan that I've come up with in
the last like five seconds. And I don't know why
it's particularly old school except for um, So, everybody listening
to the podcast, you have to watch the movie and
you have to tell five friends about the movie, or
you'll be haunted by an ancient Indian burial ground. That's
how we bring it around, invoke the burial ground. It's

(01:42:53):
a pyramid scheme for good. Yeah, exactly right. Oh my gosh.
Remember those emails though, right back in twenty four hours
and send it to five friends or else you'll be killed. Yeah.
I feel like aunties always send those along that were
the number one perpetrator of the year about and it

(01:43:14):
was like, I'm your niece, Why are you sending me
this emails? And I'm going to be murderer? Like I
don't know twenty five people. I'm seven, like like I'm
the test. It's like I think sometimes like it's just
like yeah, I sort of miss stuff like that sometimes
because it's weird, Like it's sort of like it's paranormal

(01:43:35):
in a weird way, but like yeah, Aunties being like,
you gotta pass this one on and like all your
wishes will come true. You're like, right, your crush will
fall in love with you if you've send this, but
if you don't, you'll die. You'll be it's murdered tonight, okay, Annie, Debbie.
Isn't that what the Purge is about? Though? Oh? Is?

(01:43:56):
I still have not seen any of the Purge movies.
It's that email or a movie, and that's what the
movie is. I don't I've never seen the Purse, but
like I have a feeling that it's like they didn't
respond to the email, and now it's like, well now
it's perch time. The email comes to life. I actually
would really enjoy watching that movie. Let's write it. Yeah,

(01:44:19):
an evil chain email comes to life and like almost
in like a like final destination he kind of way
like the Internet's the villain seen and then and then
it's like there's all these moments that it's like society
and you're like, you also, you could also shoot it

(01:44:39):
the way that like Unfriended or like Searching is shot
where it's just like all on a computer screen. Wow,
this is a this is a billion dollar idea right here.
Perfect and you don't you like you'd spend like to
make it? Yeah, it's got to be so cheap. Let's
talk about the a litt Oh yes, yes, really quickly.

(01:45:02):
And I wanted to talk to about Ala being a
two spirit character, but we can do that after Oh
yeah absolutely. Um So the AL Test we obviously talked
talked with the creator of the test, but the Alt
Test just as a reminder to all of our listeners.
We discussed it on the Frizden two episodes, but the

(01:45:22):
Alt Test was inspired by the back Both Test and
Ali wrote it and named it after Ala from rhymes
for Young Girls. The ALT Test asks three questions about
a film's character. Is she an indigenous or Aboriginal woman
who was a main character, She cannot fall in love
with a white man, and third, does not end up

(01:45:43):
raped or murdered at any point in the story. So
obviously this movie passes the ALT Test, or wouldn't be
called that. But I wanted to just um for people
who are looking for more movies the past the Alt Test.
Have a list from the Ala Test tumbler that names

(01:46:05):
off some of um some movies where there are characters
that pass this test, so really quick. Obviously Ala from
Rhymes for Young Ghouls. Let's see Annie Shorty from Edge
of America, Seven from Apocalypto, Cheetah the Fragile from Mad Max,
Fury Road, Eva Benitez from Freedom Writers, Wilma man Killer

(01:46:26):
from the Cherokee Word for Water, Moat from Avatar, question Mark,
Susie Song from Smoke Signals, um j Shaun Winters from
Songs My Brother Taught Me. It's a criminally short list, um,
But if you're looking for other movies to pass the
a LA test, at least in regards to one character, um,

(01:46:47):
those are some options. Was Molanna on the list? Oh,
that's because there's a separate category for animation, because Lelo
and Nanni from Lelo and Stitch also pass that. So
Moana Lilo, not Nanni. Qatara from Avatar, The Last Airbender,
Cora from the Legend of Cora, Alisa Maza from Gargoyles

(01:47:08):
never watched Gargoyles from Brother Bear to UM. Yeah, sorry,
there was a separate animation category, but definitely Malana excellent.
I was gonna say too if people should definitely all
watch those movies and tell five friends to watch those
movies or you'll be haunted because this is how we

(01:47:28):
changed the world. Also, looking at um, there's also a
lot of characters that that appear in comics. Um. There's
a really fabulous mostly indigenous press here in Canada called
High Water Comics, and they release a lot of comics
that are either featuring Indigenous characters or Indigenous focused and
they're all really awesome. That what The one series I

(01:47:50):
really like, it's following this girl named Echo and it's
called The Pemmican Wars and it's a series. I think
there's maybe about five books in it now, but they're
really fantastic and I always recommend them to my students
because Echo is like a very similar character to Eila,
you know, sort of like a teen girl. She's growing
up in an urban setting in Winnipeg, and it's just

(01:48:12):
they're just fantastic. They're very immersive. Um. There's also some
video games to that future indigenous characters and storylines that
past the Ala test Um. So there is media out there,
but you're right, it is like criminally small and and
a lot of these are from white directors and creators
as well. But in any case, um, if you want

(01:48:34):
to continue following, we love Ali Naddy and you can
follow all the updates on media that passes the ALA
test because they do also discuss graphic novels and comics
and video games and TV and books even all all
of which are things we've never heard of in our lives.
So books, we not big readers that read like everyone's.

(01:48:58):
In a while, a listener is going to be like,
would you read a book, and we were like, we
would not read a book. Sometimes I get really self conscious.
I'm like, oh no, I bet listeners of the Betel
Cast actually think we like never read books, and I
do want everyone to know that is not true. We
just the anti buck. We don't cover, but we don't
have the time to read books. It literally just because

(01:49:20):
of the Lord of the Rings episode where they're like,
you know, you didn't read five trillion pages? Were like,
I simply didn't. I just I couldn't. I was listening.
I'm listening to Nicole Buyer and Lauren lap Kiss is
Newcomers right now and they're talking about Lord of the
Rings and they're talking about the Hobbit and I read
that book, and I still like I read that book,
I watched those movies and like listening to Lauren and

(01:49:42):
Nicole talk about I feel like I'm like on the
same page as then I'm like, Yeah, who are all
these people? Like? What's that guy's name? What's he doing here? Um? Also,
just the fact that, like Nicole habitually calls Billboard diplow
is very good, very choice. I haven't started listening to

(01:50:03):
The Lord of the Rings office. I listened to all
the Star Wars episodes and it's just a great UM.
But you can for all media. The ALA tests, like
the backbo test, can be applied to any kind of
narrative media. UM. And you can find the full list
in all the updates that the dash ala dash test
dot tumbler dot com, and and follow Ellie on Twitter.

(01:50:27):
She's at Ali naughty n A h d ees how
you spell her last name? So listen to the Frozen
two episode you know what to do and then tell
five people, and then tell five people. Is there anything
else anyone wants to talk about regarding I mean, I
still have pages and pages of terrible set statistics, but

(01:50:51):
we don't have to get into those. I did want
to just add that one of the things that I've
come to appreciate about Ala is that I think that,
whether it's intentional or not, I think she can be
read as a queer character. And a lot of that
has to do with some interpretations of two spirit, which
is a pen Indigenous term that was adopted in the

(01:51:12):
early nineties to describe l g B t Q plus
indigenous folks. One of the interpretations of two spirit is
coming out of sort of like an a Jibway perspective,
is that like you have male and female energy and
they're balanced. Another interpretation of it, coming more sort of
from like Eastern Woodlands sort of like more sort of

(01:51:34):
like Nigma and show any traditions, is that you walk
between worlds and that's what it means to be too spirit.
And so you see that a lot in this film
where a less sort of doesn't have like stricted boundaries
in terms of like like the visions that she's having
of her mom and you know, the dreams that she's having,
and also you know she sees Tyler at one point

(01:51:56):
termed brother. You know, she's sort of having these moments
where you know, worlds are not. Um. Yeah, she's passing
sort of between worlds. She's also shape shifting, which is
also a part of some of the conversations around queer
identity and from a traditional perspective. Um, so she goes

(01:52:17):
from having long braids to having very short hair. She's
wearing costumes. At one point, she has like that which
is face like on the back of her head, which
is like also a very interesting sort of like duality
in a sense. So, as I've grown with this movie,
and as I you know, continue to watch it and

(01:52:40):
continue to grow in terms of two like my my
own identity as like a queer trans indigenous person, I
like understand her better now as also an indigenous character.
That's so cool. Yeah, And it's it's like it's interesting,
Like it's it's something that like I don't think I'll
have to ask Jeff about um, but I don't think

(01:53:02):
it was ever intentional because it's never mentioned in anything.
But yeah, it sort of fits really interestingly in that
way with a lot of traditional beliefs. I love growing
with movies. That's the best. There's so many things that
don't hold up anymore, so it's really nice when you
can like watch something that's so cherished and you're like, oh, yeah,

(01:53:28):
I could still love you. Something interesting too to think
about in the context of this film is the idea
of unsettling. Um. So we talked about unsettling in terms
of like something that disturbs us, right, but we also
talk about unsettling as the process of decolonizing. You know,

(01:53:49):
you're becoming You're not a settler, you're becoming unsettled. And
I think that this film is such an interesting and
interesting representation of that of sort of like Jeff Barna
is leaning into all this very spooky imagery and all
this very like you know, very graphic imagery, even um
you know, like you really do see Popper get his
head blown off, like there's a big check of his

(01:54:11):
head missing. Yeah. So there's this sense of sort of
like this desire to disturb and kind of like upset,
but also that that's a path to kind of like
interrupt and get some movement in what can be of
sometimes a very stagnant conversation with regards to Canadian history
and indigenous history and in the country. So it's like

(01:54:33):
it's it's interesting that that exists in this film in
that way. And there's also a conversation to have around
the idea of like revenge or reconciliation. You know, I
think that, you know, Indigenous people aren't a monolith. There's
always going to be people who, you know, like we
were talking about earlier, aren't going to like, you know,
the type of films that Jeff Barnaby is making, um,
and there's going to be you know, people who do

(01:54:55):
like them that don't like other types of films. And
then like there's going to be certain types of discourse
that like certain Indigenous people are going to really support,
and there's going to be other ones that they don't
agree with, you know. But it's very interesting this conversation
is sort of about like revenge versus reconciliation because in
an interesting way, we can only really decide what we
ourselves as individuals are going to do. And because of that, Yeah,

(01:55:19):
there's so many questions that kind of exist out there
about like whether that is even like meaningful, you know,
if it's just like an individual sort of thing. But
I don't know, I'm a big believer in that, like,
our individual actions are important. So whether we go to
the revenge side of things or the reconciliation side of things.
It's just that we make that choice, you know ultimately

(01:55:41):
in the end. Yeah, I think that's kind of kind
of all I had to say. Oh, I do have
recommendations please, so if people are interested, and I'll talk
to you guys more about this off Mike. But if
people are interested in learning more about indigenous issue, if
like this episode is like catching you totally off guard

(01:56:03):
and you're like, I've never heard of Indians before in
my life, Um, well, welcome to I don't know where
you've been living, but congratulations, I guess. But I would
say that learning about indigenous issues is it as difficult
as we might think. So much of our school system,

(01:56:24):
you know, has been set up in a way that
maintains wait supremacy. So we have to do a lot
of the work ourselves, and that can be intimidating, especially
if you don't know where to start. For both you know,
Caitlin and you Jamie, like I feel like, you know,
the process of learning about residential schools this past week,
even though it's important, like history to learn about I

(01:56:44):
imagine it was also very very taxing, because it is
very taxing because it should be. It's genocide, you know,
it's not a fun thing to learn about. It's not
a fun thing to discuss, but it's a necessary thing
for us to learn about because we have to stop it.
It's active least still happening, and we have to you know,
make that decision, that personal decision whether we are are

(01:57:06):
going to be with it or against it in the sense.
So with all that in mind, there are a ton
of resources out there that exists for folks who are
interested in learning that are really easy to access free
even you know, um, and I will uh, you know,
put together some of those. Um, maybe we can time

(01:57:26):
it so that like we'll put like put a bunch
together for like the release of this episode. We can
release a resource guide the whole thing for sure, because
there's like there's so much stuff out there, even like
really little things like there's an app that you can
download for free called native Land dot c a um.
It's a world map and like you essentially use it
like Google Maps, you look at different locations and it

(01:57:47):
tells you whose traditional territory you're living on. And just
even like little gestures like that are really really important
because there needs to be that recognition, there needs to
be that starting point, you know, I think that a
lot of us feel very attached to the places that
we grew up in different ways, you know, whether we
spent physically long periods of time there or whether it's
a sentimental sort of attachment, and just being able to

(01:58:09):
recognize that it's like Okay, that's Migma territory, or that's
Lenape territory, or that's oh Sage territory, that's you know,
Sue territory. Then even just understanding that all of a
sudden can be such an opening of a door, because
then it's like, oh, when you hear about like protests
happening at Standing Rock, it's not like, oh, those are nameless,

(01:58:30):
faceless like indigenous people protesting. We're not sure what it's like, Oh,
I get it. Those are like the Coda and Lakoda suit.
You know, I grew up on Sue Territory. Like, all
of a sudden, you have a much more personal tie
to that. There's also tons and tons and tons of
Indigenous activists at there, people like Pan Palmetter who are

(01:58:52):
doing great work and all their stuff is like on
YouTube and they're acting on social media. So there's like,
so there is hope, there's you can learn about these things.
It might be uncomfortable, as any kind of unlearning, unsettling
process is, but I would really encourage people to do
that work because you know, we've seen with this past year,

(01:59:12):
we cannot continue to live as black, Indigenous and people
of color like we carry this tremendous weight all the
time of this violence of this system. You know, even
though I'm not currently in Nova Scotia, I I am
connected to the MGMA Nova Scotia right now who are
fighting for their treaty rights. You know, I am as

(01:59:35):
an Indigenous person, I am connected to the struggles of
other Indigenous people. I'm connected the struggles of black people
because it's it's all part of the same system, you know,
And that's why you care, and that's why you have
to be mobilized, and that's why you have to educate yourself,
and that's why you have to speak out and and
try and do better. You know. My grandmother, who was
migmon Is like was like my anchor for my maigman

(01:59:56):
As for a really long time, passed away a couple
of years ago, and her dying words were I love
you all. And love is such an important value within
Magma culture that like I love you all is not
just talking about I love you all as in like
the people who are physically in the room there, but
like love is something that influences all of our actions.

(02:00:19):
You know, we have a a lot of intention and
a lot of thought that goes towards like how we
are in the world in terms of like how we
relate to everything, you know, And so yeah, like starting
to educate yourself is like starting to take responsibility is
like part of that interconnectedness. Yes, that's like a big taint. No, No,

(02:00:44):
I think as as a lot of us, who are
you know, on a pretty steep learning curve honestly, because
they're I mean, like we were saying, there's just so
much of this. I mean, this is just things I
didn't learn in school. I feel like you hit the
same three pool points in at least American public schools.
And that's kind of it. And it's like the information

(02:01:06):
is accessible, it's just making the commitment to do it
like it that is all it is. Yeah, And and
I was going to say, there's this, um, this fantastic
film that I just got to see it at the
Toronto International Film Festival. But we'll hopefully get wide release
soon and everybody can check it out. It's a documentary

(02:01:28):
based on Thomas King's book The Inconvenient Indian, which everybody
should read. But um, there's this fabulous line in the
film at the end that is I think sort of
very emblematic, kind of about this whole conversation, you know.
And it's essentially, once you know this story, you can't
unknow it. You just have to live with the fact

(02:01:50):
that you know it. Now. So now that you know
about residential schools, you can't say, oh, well, I didn't know,
you know, and and therefore it was allowed to go on.
There are still residential schools open in the United States.
By the way. I don't know if you guys found
that in your research, but I did. Yeah. So yeah,
so it's like, well, now that you know, you know,

(02:02:12):
and go forward with that, and you can do it.
I believe in you. Thanks Jazz. Um. I didn't write
this quote down, um from a YouTube video. I love
watching YouTube. I love going to box Office, Mojo dot com,
Um Classic Kitlin. Yeah. Um. Senator Murray Sinclair said, and

(02:02:36):
again I'm going to paraphrase this, but he was talking
about how people have said to him regarding oppression in
the residential school system, saying like, you know what that
was in the past, why can't you just forget it?
And his response is always why can't you remember? No,
And that's just it. And like I said, you know
um earlier in our conversation, like these things are still

(02:02:56):
impacting us today. I still have friends who, you know,
grew up in the foster care system. I still have
friends whose parents were in residential school I. You know,
this is an ancient history and that's the most fundamental
thing is that, you know, so often we portray Indigenous
people as being relics and being like of the past.
And even when I was growing up, I was like,

(02:03:18):
I feel like the most like contact I had with
Indigenous culture was like a racist diorama at like a
history museum, you know, And we have to remind ourselves
that like, Indigenous people still exist and colonialism still exists,
and ignoring it is what we have been doing and
that has not been effective. So yeah, so it it

(02:03:41):
is like it is something that like I think people
especially here in Canada, are very are starting to become
a lot more aware of. But it's it feels sometimes
like such a slow process. You know that, like I
wish everybody could get a copy of Tom King's Inconvenient
Indian and a cop you of like uh rhymes for

(02:04:02):
young ghouls and it's like this is your homework, like citizen,
you know, like this is what you have to do
this weekend. Well to speak to that, and what our
podcast is about is that, like you know, there's so
much erasure of Indigenous people in media. There's so much
just ignoring the existence of them. That because mass media

(02:04:25):
is how so many people, especially today, learn things, and
people learn things by going to the movies and seeing
a movie about a thing. That again just speaks to
why it's so important for their needing to be space
made for indigenous filmmakers to tell their stories and for
those films money invested in as well. It's important that

(02:04:50):
we eat as individuals that we are going to seek
this out, but the fact that you have to seek
it out speaks to there not being enough money behind
it either because it's I don't need to seek out,
you know, like she I don't even want to see,
like I didn't. You know, there's constantly money thrown in
our faces of things we have no interest in where

(02:05:13):
you know, to find rhymes for uncles. You have to
look for it, um, and you have to you know,
it has to be a word of mouth situation and
there needs to be yeah, an increased investment. Uh, and
and not just like these it needs to be so mad. Yeah, no,
it's it's really true. Um. Is there anything left to discuss?

(02:05:36):
Are we at the test portion of the show? Well,
we know it certainly passes the ala test because it's
ala um. Although ala Uh is almost raped at the
very end of the movie, and I guess I had

(02:05:56):
this in my note where you get I mean, she's
technically rescued in that moment, but it doesn't bother me.
We know her so well, we have seen her overcome
and plant. I mean, I was totally fine with it, um,
but that didn't even occur to me as a rescue
almost like I was. It didn't just the I think, technically,

(02:06:20):
but it's so badass, it's so cool and I don't know, um,
So we know it passes the alt test for sure.
I was going to say in terms of like that
that rescue see at the end, because I had the
same thought, and I think that the reason that it's
JUGI each that shoots Popper is because he is like
an actually like a student at the school, and we've
seen like Popper talking in like the boy's dormitory about

(02:06:41):
like you know, you do this and you'll get beat,
and you do this and you'll get beat. So I
think that it had to be JUGI each in a way,
like pulling the trigger at the end as like a
symbolic thing like and so I don't necessarily see it
as a rescue either. I think you're both right on that,
and it can and that kind of completes his small
but significant arc in the story too. I love he's

(02:07:02):
just staying. I gotta find out what that kid's doing.
I know, what does he up to? Does he have
his own franchise yet? What's going on with them? And
then he gets the closing line. Anything he does passes
the Bechtel test before um. But does I believe that,
Kaitlin I I had this movie passing the Picktel test. Yes.

(02:07:22):
Between um. There's a scene at the end where Ailea
and her she's watching sort of like her own flashback
from Afar. Towards the end of the movie where she
and her mom on are painting something by firelight and
they're kind of discussing what they're painting and why and

(02:07:42):
just right. And then it also passes between Aila in
um series, I think when she relates the story about
the wolf. Yeah, in that whole conversation. So yeah, definitely
Bechtel tests passing. Yeah, it uh, And like that's another

(02:08:03):
reason that, like, I was so excited to talk about
this film because I was, like, I know that it
passes the Bechdel test because I was watching it with
that intention, you know, seven years ago. So that's that's awesome. Um.
And then that's uh, that brings us to our nipple
scales zero to five nipples based on examining the movie

(02:08:23):
from an intersectional feminist lens, and m it's gonna I
mean it's very high. I mean I feel like it
could be a five nipple situation. Yeah, I think so,
and I'm interested to hear what. I feel like I'm
tralling you guys in the video and nobody can see it.

(02:08:46):
I mean, it's five nipples for me. But I also
feel like I'm a little bit biased, because I mean,
I just this film has meant so much throughout the years,
and I love it so much, and just you know,
have a badass Migma female Harold in yeah, like yeah, yeah,
I don't really have any like notes for there's nothing

(02:09:08):
that like rubbed me wrong or and show me a
more motivated female protagonist with more autonomy's running the show
and with higher stakes. I mean this that it's wonderful
and and again that that phrase narrative sovereignty UM and
having this be an indigenous filmmaker writing, directing, editing this

(02:09:32):
amazing character. Who Yeah, I have no notes. I think
the more we talk about it, I do feel like
it is very squarely a coming of age film of sorts,
just not the tone we're used to um in that genre.
But it's it's such like you said, just it's such
a singular movie, and we are seeing a community that

(02:09:58):
is almost never represented in movies. And on top of that,
we're seeing Aila who is not just dealing with systemic
oppression and as it pertains to being indigenous, she's also
experiencing sexism within her own community and navigating that and
just navigating all this stuff. And she, you know, is

(02:10:18):
not a Mary step character. She makes mistakes. She just
I just yeah, I feel it's it's five nips for me.
The plan where they're like, you know what, We're gonna
make ship shower down upon this guy and then steal
try to steal the money. Like their plan wasn't maybe

(02:10:38):
like Danny Ocean could never never, he could never. Like
it's great, and the catharsis of it is great, but
I'm just like, like like he's right there, he knows that
you're there. Maybe like steal the money first and then
like you know, just like like teen it's like teenagers.

(02:10:59):
Of course they're going to come up with a bit
of a hair brained plan and it works. So yeah,
and it's so rewarding too, because the ship Like at
one point when they're putting the ship like in the van,
like getting ready to go to the school, they're like, yeah,
everybody contributed, and I can just like I can just
picture like everybody everybody just been like, oh, oh you

(02:11:20):
need some ship you need like yeah, And it's just
like the fact that it's like a community effort to
like shoot on this opie. The crowd starts the ship.
It's and that's sequence we didn't talk about it too much,
but that sequence is it's just like another way this
movie is so cool where there's I mean understandably. So

(02:11:42):
there's so many very very emotionally heavy scenes and the
plotlines in this movie, and then for this, I mean,
it fits very well inside of what the movie is,
but it's also this moment of like you're in Oceans
eleven for a second, but if it fits very clearly
inside this world, and it's like fun and they win

(02:12:04):
and it's exciting, and it's just that sequence is so cool.
I mean and even just like we talked about the
little bit of criticism or like some pushback that Jeff
Barnaby received, like from his own community, like are you
really going to like show these stereotypes, which again, like
I don't. I this is an exploration of what like

(02:12:26):
systemic racism and oppression does to an Indigenous community, does
to families, and does two individuals, and like that's this
is just an authentic story about this young woman, this
teenage girl, and it's just an incredibly crafted and told story.
What more could ask like it? I'm so glad you're like,

(02:12:48):
because I think there's also like this nervousness on my
part of like I'm like, oh no, what if they
don't like it, I'm gonna have to sit on this
call and like explain like why it's a brilliant film.
But I'm so glad you guys liked it, and and
and yeah, and thank you so much for this opportunity
and for holding this space for indigenous film and for

(02:13:09):
me and for Ala and yeah, thank you so much.
Thank you for being here and providing all your insights,
information everything. Thank you so much, extremely grateful and just
like stoked that you're on the show. Thank you, And
do come back for Blood Quantum or any movie that

(02:13:30):
you want any time, anytime. Um, I will come back
to read for Jacob Black. I will go back to
talk about native stuff. I'll come back to talk about
non native stuff. I can talk about trands stuff too.
I can talk about horror genre stuff. I love it all.
So I can talk about films made on the East
Coast of Canada that are exclusively about fishing and or cancer. Okay,

(02:13:54):
I can talk about all of it. Um. Finally, we've
our listeners have been like, both, what about movies in
the East Coast of Canada that are about fishing or
maybe cancer? It's I say that as a joke, but
I was a programmer for the Atlantic Film Festival for
a couple of years and that is a genre all
into itself and in like the Atlantic region, you know,

(02:14:15):
is so cool. I love it well, Jess, thank you
again so much for being here. Yes, this is so fun.
Where can people follow you online? Check out your stuff?
Anything else you want to plug people can? People should
follow me on Instagram at underscore rad Underscore Babe, underscore

(02:14:36):
um where you just search Jeff Merwin. Um. That's sort
of the aggregate of like everything gets put. I don't
have Twitter anymore because people were too mean, and so
that's just that's really the only social media I do.
You know, good people should just check it out there.
I have a website Jeff Merwin dot com. But really
just check out my Instagram. I post everything on there anyway.

(02:14:57):
Cool so you get to see my cat, yes, cremlin
and icon. So your Instagram account passes the Caitlin test.
And that's really the goal at the end of the day,
you know, Yeah, we're all trying to really do. I
feel like that's it's about it, you know, can anymore?

(02:15:20):
I think I'm more I follow more cat accounts than
human accounts. I was like, Caitlin, I feel like your
your account pat well, you've plused cats. Whenever your cat sitting. Yes,
I have. All my Instagram stories are always about cats.
So my cat is having a really complicated day today.
I was like, just trying to figure him out. He
really want I think he wants another cat friend. I

(02:15:42):
think because there's neighborhood we there's a lot of alley
cats in our neighborhood, and my my neighbor like feeds them.
It's like a whole ecosystem. But we will just sit
at the door in the mornings and just me out
until a cat comes to talk to him. And I
was like, he loves other cats, he wants a cat.
Shame get an other cats. Sunny Sunny ignores him and

(02:16:04):
he's always trying to play with him, and Sonny's like
the whole thing. I think you should definitely get into
the cat. I've been thinking the same thing too though,
because I travel a lot for work and so Kremlin
Kremlin stays at home a lot of the times. Some
cats are loners, but it's but sea cat crave other
cat company is like it would be it would be

(02:16:26):
cruel because I think they live in packs, right, Like
cats in the wild tend to live in packs. So
I think I mean one cat to cat, there's not
that much difference, just you know, I think it really
only changes when you sort of get up around like five, six,
seven cats. Then it's like whoa, then you have you
might have a problem. Then it's like at that point

(02:16:47):
you very firmly know who saved two and it was
not Jesus. But like four cats are less, that's reasonable. Yeah, yeah,
cats is nothing. Although Edward Gory, the children's author, I love,
I adore him. I want to be him when I

(02:17:08):
grow up, because he just walked around in for coats
and like rings and he had always had five cats.
And he always had five cats because he said, you
have to have an uneven number of cats because otherwise
they get too organized, and you can't have more than
five cats because it just gets out of hand. So
I think that's advice to live back him. I have.
I have Edward Gory cat wine glasses. It's the whole thing.

(02:17:30):
I love him so much. Oh gosh, well, I guess
you can follow us media. Sorry we to start talking about.
Follow me at Caitlin Durante on Instagram and check out
all my saved stories because they're all cats doing funny
things set to music. That's what I want to plug today. Um.

(02:17:54):
And also you can follow the Bactel Cast on Twitter
and Instagram at bectel Cast. We've got our Patreon aka Matreon,
which is at patreon dot com slash pecktel Cast and
that is five dollars a month and that gives you
two bonus episodes every month as well as access to
the entire back catalog. And it's November, so after many

(02:18:19):
years of avoiding it, we're doing Mary Kate and Ashley
month bomb the Matreon. Amazing, amazing. My sister loved those
movies growing up. I'm like, I think I love none
of them, but and yet I've seen all of them.
Oh that's very much where I find myself. Just like,
how do I know the song the intro song to
like Mary Kate Nashley Mysteries? Right? And then you're like, wait,

(02:18:40):
I have no attachment to this, and yet it's so
osmosis onto you that you can't avoid it. We're doing it,
We're doing it, and uh yeah, our t public dot
com slash the Pectel Castle where you can get all
of our merch and be kind to each other. Get
out there, do some mutual aid educate yourselves. We will
be releasing resources at the same time as this episode.

(02:19:04):
And do the damn work and people, or you'll die,
or you will die. Something to keep in mind. Bye
bye bye

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Jamie Loftus

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