imagineNATIVE 17 Film Review- Our People Will Be Healed

To call Alanis Obomsawin a prolific director would be a severe understatement. The 85 year old has been producing films at a rate of about one a year since 2012. Most of her latest works have centered on the harsher aspects of the Indigenous experience with government entities but her latest production looks at a success story: Helen Betty Osbourne Ininiw Education Resource Centre at Norway House in Northern Manitoba. This school competes on equal footing with others in Manitoba for teaching talent. It serves students from Nursery to Grade 12 featuring an exceptional music program, strong science classes plus Cree language teaching starting in nursery and grade 1.

Obomaswin camera roams the bright sunlit curved hallways observing a science class studying metal oxidation, geometry, music/fiddling and a grade one group learning basic Cree phrases. Students are interviewed all with big hopes and dreams for future employment. They marvel at the abundance of resources and equipment available to them at the school. Several of the senior classes have had the opportunity to go on rewarding trips to locations like Ottawa but also the chance to take guided canoe trips through their territory where they learn traditional fishing, hunting, building and portaging techniques all part of Cree culture and oral storytelling.

Of course it wouldn't be an Obomsawin film without highlighting some dark aspects of the struggle. The school is named after Helen Betty Osbourne a Norway House resident that was abducted and killed while walking alone when away at a resident school in The Pas in 1971. This event as told by her peers lead all Indigenous women to be sure not to go anywhere alone while away at school. The negative effect of colonialism is also illustrated through discussions about the Sundance Ceromony. An Indigenous tradition that was banned by the Indian Act at the turn of the last century but still practiced in secret. It took the adoption of a Human Rights declaration by the United Nations to openly revive the tradition again in 1951 with the film looking at the 2016 version at Norway House and it's highly emotional effect on the residents showing its importance to the community.

The school is evidence that the best approach is to invest in the social development and education of children plus teaching the culture and impact of treaties to allow the community to heal. Their parents were caught up in drugs, alcohol, gangs suffering from lack of education and despair. Their grandparents were ripped from their communities to suffer abuse, separation and racism in the residential school era passing that trauma on to their kids. The piece is positive and uplifting pointing towards endless possibilities for the current and future generation of Indigenous peoples.

*** 1/2 Out of 4.

Our People Will Be Healed | Alanis Obomsawin | Canada | 2017 | 97 Minutes.

Kinosao Sipi, Norway House, Manitoba, Frontier School Division, Helen Betty Osbourne, Residential Schools, Portage La Prairie, The Pas, Fiddle Jamboree, Sundance Ceremony.