Rhymes for Young Ghouls with Jess Murwin

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Speaker 1: 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 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 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 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, 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, 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 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. 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. 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 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 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 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, 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 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? 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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, 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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. 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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. 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, 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 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, 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, 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 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, 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 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, 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. 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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, 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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, 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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. 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 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, 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, 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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? 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. 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 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 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, 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 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. 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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, 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 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 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, 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 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, 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, 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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, 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 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, 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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, 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 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 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, 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 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 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. 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 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 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. 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 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, 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, 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 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 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 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, 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. 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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. 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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? 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, 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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, 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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, 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 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 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. 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, 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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? 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 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, 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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, 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, 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 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. 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? 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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. 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 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, 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. And do the damn work and people, or you'll die, or you will die. Something to keep in mind. Bye bye bye