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‘Older Than America’: Cultural Genocide and Reparations

One female-helmed film that directly addresses the horrific psychological, cultural, and spiritual legacy of Native boarding schools on Indigenous families in the United States is ‘Older Than America,’ a 2008 release, directed and produced by and starring Georgina Lightning, from a script by Lightning and Christine Kunewa Walker. … Rain’s journey is part of the collective story of her community and her tribe…

This guest post by Laura Shamas originally appeared at Bitch Flicks and is reposted here as part of our theme week on Indigenous Women. | Spoilers ahead.

In July 2015, Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission released a major report entitled “Honoring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future” about the cultural genocide against Aboriginal children, due to abuse in Canadian residential boarding schools run by churches and funded by the state. The report is based on testimony from over 6,000 survivors; there are 94 proposals for reparation recommended. The Canadian Broadcasting System notes that the odds of dying in a native residential school in Canada (“1 in 25”) were higher than dying as a Canadian serving in World War II (“1 in 26”).

One female-helmed film that directly addresses the horrific psychological, cultural, and spiritual legacy of native boarding schools on Indigenous families in the United States is Older Than America, a 2008 release, directed and produced by and starring Georgina Lightning, from a script by Lightning and Christine Kunewa Walker. Lightning is a Canadian First Nations filmmaker, and a Maskwacis Cree, registered with the Samson Cree Nation. As the film begins, a graphic informs us: “This story is inspired by actual events.”

Tracing the devastating intergenerational effects of cultural and physical genocide, as part of colonialism, in a film about Native people is difficult and daunting, but Lightning’s approach is original and compelling, aided by a strong ensemble cast that features Native actors. The film begins on the Fond Du Lac reservation in northern Minnesota, as schoolteacher Rain O’Rourke (Lightning), awakes in the middle of the night from an ominous dream about a young man in a Sun Dance ceremony. Rain lives with her longtime boyfriend, reservation Police Officer Johnny Goodfeather (Adam Beach). She mentions to Johnny that they need to secure the door latch; it’s clear that “something” is getting in.

The film’s storyline is bifurcated, propelled by time; the plot of the present is jarringly interrupted by traumatic, haunting memories of the past, depicted in grey flashbacks. And the present is also connected to the future, as few are able to take action until the truth about the past is acknowledged. Ghosts also populate the present, filmed in color.

We follow Rain, the film’s protagonist, as she comes to terms with her past through visions and dreams, and her future, too, when she learns the disturbing truth about what happened to her mother and uncle at the nearby Catholic native residential school. Rain’s journey is part of the collective story of her community and her tribe; until the facts about what happened to Native students locked in a school cellar in the 1950s are revealed and the children properly mourned, Rain and the future of her tribe are in jeopardy. Children are “the hope” of any culture. When entire generations of youth are traumatized or killed by the church and state, what is the remedy? Older Than America looks for answers to this key question.

As Rain works in her job as a schoolteacher on the rez, she begins to have upsetting flashback episodes. An adult male spirit (Dan Harrison), the same one who was in her initial Sun Dance dream, appears more often, as her guide.

The importance and condemnation of the Catholic church, in regards to what happened to the community, is explored early in the film. Rain’s guardian, Auntie “Apple” (Tantoo Cardinal), consults in confession with Father Bartoli (Stephen Yoakam). We learn that Apple feels guilty for helping to commit Rain’s mother Irene (Rose Berens) to the Penrose Psychiatric Hospital. Father Bartoli says that Irene is delusional and must remain there for her own good.

Luke (Bradley Cooper), a geologist from Minneapolis, embodies the “non-Native” perspective in the film; as an outsider, Luke functions as a device to help a non-Native audience understand what’s happening on the reservation, since he can ask a lot of questions. He arrives to investigate a strange earthquake near a cemetery on the old residential boarding school property on the outskirts of town — now closed and condemned. Luke connects with policeman Goodfeather, whose father Pete is the tribe’s medicine man (Dennis Banks). Luke has his own vision in his car when he suddenly sees a former college roommate with a gun to his head. A significant line of dialogue in the film is said by Pete to Luke: “Some stories never make the history books.”

Luke has a theory about “plate collisions” that he’s exploring through his research in the region — a concept with metaphorical resonance throughout the rest of the film, applicable to the tension between: Native and white cultures; physical and spiritual worlds; Christianity and traditional Native beliefs.

It turns out that a wealthy developer is working with the current mayor of the town to turn the boarding school property into a deluxe resort. Luke continues his research at the Historical Society of Penrose County, where he eventually uncovers another earthquake story related to the school from the 1950s, involving Native students who died in a cellar.

The haunting ghosts of these dead Native students populate the film, and there’s a key line of dialogue that emphasizes “ghosts coming out of the closet.” Atrocities depicted in the film include a child being forced to swallow soap because she spoke in her native language, and Native children called “base savages” and then beaten.

The old school site affects Luke, as he goes back later to investigate the quake. He descends into a haunted cellar, where he finds a weathered sign inscribed with General Richard H. Pratt’s famous motto: “Kill the Indian – Save the Man.” Pratt is the founder of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School; it’s considered the prototype for all Native residential schools in the United States, and based on a military model.

Luke asks Johnny, “Do you believe in spirits?” It’s revealed that Luke once had a Native American college roommate who killed himself, after the roommate’s father killed himself. Here, the theme of intergenerational Native suicide, due to the fracturing of families, is noted by a non-Native character.

Throughout the film, Lightning explores what happens when the trauma of genocide is disbelieved or forcibly silenced. We learn that it is Father Bartoli, aided by a complicit Auntie Apple, who is responsible for Rain’s mother Irene receiving electric shock treatments, for revealing what happened at the Catholic native residential school. Irene was silenced through the shock treatments and sedation, and Rain realizes how wrong this is: “You want to talk about crazy…”

Medicine man Pete educates outsider Luke on how cultural genocide works on families and identity, starting with taking children right from their mothers’ arms: “They tried to beat the Indian right out of us.” And: “There are two ways to conquer a nation: kill ‘em or take away everything that defines who they are.” A mysterious murder near the school grounds in the present day is hushed up, related to what happened at the native school years ago and Christianity.

One poignant part in the third act illustrates why Rain didn’t marry earlier in her life: out of fear, because she thought there was something wrong with her and her fractured family. But she comes to understand that it was due to the unreported abuse from the boarding school – as Rain, too, was separated from her mother by Father Bartoli and Apple when Irene tried to out the abuse. Rain finally confronts Apple, whose name means in Native culture “red on the outside, white on the inside.” Eventually, Rain frees Irene, and ensures that the children who had been killed at the native school in the 1950s are given a proper burial.

One of the important themes of this film is how to heal from a century of cultural and physical genocide — a topic entirely relevant to what’s happening in the world right now. Writer-director-actor Lightning provides several answers: truth, ceremony, and honoring the old ways – “things that are older than America.” In a sweat lodge ceremony, Rain learns that the adult male spirit who has guided her journey was her uncle, Walter Many Lightnings, who was punished at the school (Dan Harrison). In the sweat lodge, Rain is told, “Our dreams and our spirits cannot be taken.” Rain also learns the power of forgiveness: “The truths of the past… Forgive these people for what they don’t understand.”

Near the end of the film, rez radio announcer Richard Two Rivers (Wes Studi) observes, “Everything we Indians do is in a circle.” As Rain finally welcomes her mother Irene home, everyone gathers for a ceremony. Apple and Irene hug, a start on the road to forgiveness. But a card at the film’s end reminds us of grim facts: Native Americans were forced to enroll in boarding schools are recently as 1975, and Amnesty International reports that the death rate of the Native population is six times higher than any other ethnic group.

Older Than America traces the collective intergenerational trauma that cannot heal until the truth of it comes to consciousness, in a country, a community, a tribe, and in a family. The bond between mother and daughter is the main connection that galvanizes the reckoning of truth in Older Than America. Rain and Irene are united at the end, and we see the ghosts of the native school children and Uncle Walter fade away into the woods.

This film has been categorized as horror and sold under the title American Evil in the U.K. for its 2012 DVD release, probably because of its use of supernatural ghost characters. The atrocities that have been committed at Native residential schools in the U.S. are horrific. The U.S. should follow Canada’s example and begin serious discussions about reparation in America for abuse at Native residential schools. It is long overdue.

Laura Shamas, Ph.D., is a writer and mythologist. She is a member of the Chickasaw Nation. In 2014, she was part of “The Undisciplined Research Project” at the Autry Museum in Los Angeles and wrote about researching native boarding schools: “Memories That Haunt and Reaffirm.” Website: laurashamas.com.

‘Older Than America’: Cultural Genocide and Reparations

Children are “the hope” of any culture. When entire generations of youth are traumatized or killed by the church and state, what is the remedy? ‘Older Than America’ looks for answers to this key question.

This is a guest post by Laura Shamas.

In July 2015, Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission released a major report entitled “Honoring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future” about the cultural genocide against aboriginal children, due to abuse in Canadian residential boarding schools run by churches and funded by the state. The report is based on testimony from over 6,000 survivors; there are 94 proposals for reparation recommended. The Canadian Broadcasting System notes that the odds of dying in a native residential school in Canada (“1 in 25”) were higher than dying as a Canadian serving in World War II (“1 in 26”).

One female-helmed film that directly addresses the horrific psychological, cultural, and spiritual legacy of native boarding schools on indigenous families in the United States is Older Than America, a 2008 release, directed and produced by and starring Georgina Lightning, from a script by Lightning and Christine Kunewa Walker. Lightning is a Canadian First Nations filmmaker, and a Maskwacis Cree, registered with the Samson Cree Nation. As the film begins, a graphic informs us: “This story is inspired by actual events.”

Tracing the devastating intergenerational effects of cultural and physical genocide, as part of colonialism, in a film about native people is difficult and daunting, but Lightning’s approach is original and compelling, aided by a strong ensemble cast that features native actors. The film begins on the Fond Du Lac reservation in northern Minnesota, as schoolteacher Rain O’Rourke (Lightning), awakes in the middle of the night from an ominous dream about a young man in a Sun Dance ceremony. Rain lives with her longtime boyfriend, reservation Police Officer Johnny Goodfeather (Adam Beach). She mentions to Johnny that they need to secure the door latch; it’s clear that “something” is getting in.

We follow Rain, the film’s protagonist, as she comes to terms with her past through visions and dreams, and her future, too, when she learns the disturbing truth about what happened to her mother and uncle at the nearby Catholic native residential school. Rain’s journey is part of the collective story of her community and her tribe; until the facts about what happened to native students locked in a school cellar in the 1950s are revealed and the children properly mourned, Rain and the future of her tribe are in jeopardy. Children are “the hope” of any culture. When entire generations of youth are traumatized or killed by the church and state, what is the remedy? Older Than America looks for answers to this key question.

Luke (Bradley Cooper), a geologist from Minneapolis, embodies the “non-native” perspective in the film; as an outsider, Luke functions as a device to help a non-native audience understand what’s happening on the reservation, since he can ask a lot of questions. He arrives to investigate a strange earthquake near a cemetery on the old residential boarding school property on the outskirts of town—now closed and condemned. Luke connects with policeman Goodfeather, whose father Pete is the tribe’s medicine man (Dennis Banks). Luke has his own vision in his car when he suddenly sees a former college roommate with a gun to his head. A significant line of dialogue in the film is said by Pete to Luke: “Some stories never make the history books.”

Luke has a theory about “plate collisions” that he’s exploring through his research in the region—a concept with metaphorical resonance throughout the rest of the film, applicable to the tension between: native and white cultures; physical and spiritual worlds; Christianity and traditional native beliefs.

The haunting ghosts of these dead native students populate the film, and there’s a key line of dialogue that emphasizes “ghosts coming out of the closet.” Atrocities depicted in the film include a child being forced to swallow soap because she spoke in her native language, and native children called “base savages” and then beaten.

The old school site affects Luke, as he goes back later to investigate the quake. He descends into a haunted cellar, where he finds an weathered sign inscribed with General Richard H. Pratt’s famous motto: “Kill the Indian – Save the Man.” Pratt is the founder of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School; it’s considered the prototype for all native residential schools in the United States, and based on a military model.

Luke asks Johnny, “Do you believe in spirits?” It’s revealed that Luke once had a native American college roommate who killed himself, after the roommate’s father killed himself. Here, the theme of intergenerational native suicide, due to the fracturing of families, is noted by a non-native character.

One poignant part in the Third Act illustrates why Rain didn’t marry earlier in her life: out of fear, because she thought there was something wrong with her and her fractured family. But she comes to understand that it was due to the unreported abuse from the boarding school – as Rain, too, was separated from her mother by Father Bartoli and Apple when Irene tried to out the abuse. Rain finally confronts Apple, whose name means in native culture “red on the outside, white on the inside.” Eventually, Rain frees Irene, and ensures that the children who had been killed at the native school in the 1950s are given a proper burial.

One of the important themes of this film is how to heal from a century of cultural and physical genocide—a topic entirely relevant to what’s happening in the world right now. Writer-director-actor Lightning provides several answers: truth, ceremony, and honoring the old ways – “things that are older than America.” In a sweat lodge ceremony, Rain learns that the adult male spirit who has guided her journey was her uncle, Walter Many Lightnings, who was punished at the school (Dan Harrison). In the sweat lodge, Rain is told, “Our dreams and our spirits cannot be taken.” Rain also learns the power of forgiveness: “The truths of the past…Forgive these people for what they don’t understand.”

Near the end of the film, rez radio announcer Richard Two Rivers (Wes Studi) observes, “Everything we Indians do is in a circle.” As Rain finally welcomes her mother Irene home, everyone gathers for a ceremony. Apple and Irene hug, a start on the road to forgiveness. But a card at the film’s end reminds us of grim facts: native Americans were forced to enroll in boarding schools are recently as 1975, and Amnesty International reports that the death rate of the native population is six times higher than any other ethnic group.

This film has been categorized as horror and sold under the title American Evil in the United Kingdom for its 2012 DVD release, probably because of its use of supernatural ghost characters. The atrocities that have been committed at native residential schools in the U.S. are horrific. The United States of America should follow Canada’s example and begin serious discussions about reparation in America for abuse at native residential schools. It is long overdue.

Courage and Consequences in ‘Rhymes for Young Ghouls’

Written by Amanda Morris.

How much courage must one young Mi’g Maq girl possess in order to endure and survive her mother’s suicide, her father’s imprisonment, and her own quest for vengeance? Rhymes for Young Ghouls answers this question in satisfying ways through layered storytelling, poetic cinematography, dark humor, pain, and a touch of the supernatural. All of this AND it passes the Bechdel Test!

Although the cliché of alcohol and drug abuse on the reservation plays a central role in the plot, the film rises above the expectations that this cliché sets up in surprising ways, drawing the viewer in with dialogue, artistry, strong acting, a truly heinous bad guy in Popper, the violent and vindictive Indian agent played by Mark Antony Krupa, and a soundtrack that enhances both active and quiet moments. Plus, it introduces viewers to one potential negative experience of Indian residential schools, which is a subject not covered in most K-12 classrooms.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81JcYmXLcXo” title=”Rhymes%20for%20Young%20Ghouls%20official%20trailer”]

In Boarding School Blues: Revisiting American Indian Educational Experiences, Margaret Connell Szasz writes about power, position, and knowledge through these boarding schools in “Through a Wide-Angle Lens,” beginning with this statement: “Boarding schools go against the grain of human experience. By substituting an institutional setting for the traditional family, they intervene in the educational nurturing historically provided by home, kin group, and community . . . In Indian country, the subject of boarding schools always evokes an emotional response” (187-88). In Rhymes for Young Ghouls, this idea of interference and the breakdown of family, as well as a risky and brazen solution to this intervention is brought to life. Szasz continues, “The federal boarding schools, alongside the Residential Schools of Canada, left a decidedly mixed legacy, one that remains alive in Native communities across North America” (Boarding School Blues, 196). If you want a good idea about the horrific side of this legacy, Rhymes is the film to watch.

The film starts simply enough, with the following historical text in white on a black background, privileging the words and asking the viewer to consider this premise as the foundation of the story to come:

“The law in the Kingdom decreed that every child between the age of 5 and 16 who is physically able must attend Indian Residential School.

“Her Majesty’s attendants, to be called truant officers, will take into custody a child whom they believe to be absent from school using as much force as the circumstance requires.

“–Indian Act, by will of Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Canada”

The first image is a closeup of marijuana with blues music playing as the scene opens to reveal a woman and two men in a kitchen getting drunk and high on the Red Crow Indian Reservation in 1969. They are relaxed and counting up product to sell while getting drunk and then the couple, the parents of the film’s main character, Aila (Kawennahere Devery Jacobs), decide to drive away. Aila and her younger brother, Ty, are sitting and talking on the hood of the car when their parents stagger out of the house. Aila’s uncle, Burner, suggests that Aila, who is a little girl, be the one to drive. What happens next sets the rest of the film’s events in motion.

The next scene shows Aila’s father being arrested as he shouts to her, “Don’t look, Aila! Don’t look!” Of course Aila looks and sees her mother’s body hanging from a porch rafter as her voiceover says, “The day I saw my mother dead, I aged by a thousand years.”

This instant maturity might be the reason Aila decides to take over the marijuana business in order to pay Popper a “truant tax” so that she and her friends can stay out of the Residential School that he controls.

Mark Antony Krupa as "Popper" in Rhymes for Young Ghouls — Mark Antony Krupa as “Popper” in *Rhymes for Young Ghouls*

The refreshing part about this dark story is the calm confidence and self-assurance of an unapologetic Native female protagonist who is unafraid to take risks and clearly provides leadership to her friends and family. When her father returns from prison and finds her in charge instead of his brother, he says that they are supposed to take care of her, not the other way around. And he affirms this idea several times when he refers to Aila as a little girl. But the inexperienced and immature concept of a little girl is not the character that Jacobs portrays in Aila. In fact, this character is quite the opposite – worldwise, smart, practical, and sensitive. When it comes time to confront the domineering and violent Residential School truant officer, Popper, Aila and her friends execute a daring revenge plot that ends this sadistic man’s rein over the reservation community.

Glen Gould ("Joseph"), Brandon Oakes ("Burner"), and Kawennahere Devery Jacobs ("Aila") — Glen Gould (“Joseph”), Brandon Oakes (“Burner”), and Kawennahere Devery Jacobs (“Aila”)

Winning such awards as Best Director at the American Indian Film Festival in 2014, Best Canadian Feature Film at the Vancouver International Film Festival in 2013, and Outstanding Actress in a Supporting Role (Roseanne Supernault) at the Red Nation Film Festival in 2014, Rhymes for Young Ghouls is a Native American film that challenges stereotypes of indigenous peoples while also telling a compelling story accessible to all. Originally released in May 2014, this film runs 88 minutes and can be streamed online via Amazon (free with Prime), or on Vudu (rental or purchase).

In the preface to Boarding School Blues, the editors warn against accepting any single interpretation of the Indian boarding school experience because there were a wide variety of experiences, both positive and negative. So I will similarly caution that this film does not represent ALL indigenous peoples’ experiences with the Indian boarding school or residential school systems, but it IS a good film to start the conversation about a subject that most people know nothing about. Incorporating such a film into a brief unit about the Indian boarding school experience would provide that dramatic and artistic touch that students enjoy, but a chapter from Boarding School Blues would also provide a balanced perspective.

Dr. Amanda Morris is an Associate Professor of Multiethnic Rhetorics at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania with a specialty in Indigenous Rhetorics.

The Making of a Caribbean-Canadian Sci-Fi: ‘Brown Girl in the Ring’

When speaking over the phone, Sharon’s enthusiasm for this pioneering adaptation of a Caribbean Canadian sci-fi novel emanates as though this was a fresh and newly discovered idea. In fact, Sharon has been working on creating this film for the past 15 years (while also establishing herself as a published playwright, writer, actor and award winning director) and although the journey has been long, she strongly believes that now is the perfect time to transition this well-nurtured idea into tangible reality.

This guest post by Amanda Parris appears as part of our theme week on Dystopias.

Interview with the filmmaker below.

I was in my first year of university when I first read Nalo Hopkinson’s critically acclaimed novel, Brown Girl in the Ring as part of a Humanities course entitled Cultures of Resistance in the Americas. It had never occurred to me to think of futuristic dystopias and sci-fi literature as part and parcel of a resistance culture that has sustained African Diasporic cultures in the Americas until I was introduced to this work. A few pages into the novel, I was hooked. Located in the city where I have spent most of my life, the story is set in Toronto, a downtown core cordoned off from the surrounding suburbia where the rich and wealthy have fled. In the opening pages Hopkinson sets the scene:

When Toronto’s economic base collapsed, investors, commerce, and government withdrew into the suburb cities leaving the rotten core to decay. Those who stayed were the one’s who couldn’t or wouldn’t leave. The street people. The poor people. The ones who didn’t see the writing on the wall, or who were too stubborn to give up their homes. Or who saw the decline of authority as an opportunity. As the police force left, it sparked large-scale chaos in the city core: the Riots. The satellite cities quickly raised roadblocks at their borders to keep Toronto out. The only unguarded exit from the city core was now over water, by boat or prop plane from the Toronto Island mini-airport to the American side of Niagra Falls.

Nalo Hopkinson

Seventeen years after the publication of Brown Girl in the Ring, Toronto was named the No. 1 city in the world to live in by The Economist. But who benefits or lives the reality of this status? The rise of condo-mania in the downtown core has also led to the rapid gentrification and resulting dislocation of numerous communities – the individuals affected fit a disturbingly similar profile to the ones that Nalo envisioned eventually cordoned off from health care, electricity and technology. Her description of The Burn, that walled-off section of Toronto, feels hauntingly familiar and it is this resonance that writer/director Sharon Lewis feels will hook people into the film adaptation of the novel that she is currently working on: Brown Girl in the Ring – The Prequel.

The Prequel puts the coming-of-age story of the novel’s protagonist, a young girl named Ti-Jeanne, front and center. The film will illustrate her first steps as she moves into the role of the heroine that she becomes in the novel. Beyond an exploration into the particular otherworldly gifts Ti-Jeanne possesses and her ability to navigate the dystopian landscape that defines her home, Ti-Jeanne’s character is also challenged by a more familiar narrative of conflict between her Caribbean and Canadian cultural identities. When speaking over the phone, Sharon’s enthusiasm for this pioneering adaptation of a Caribbean Canadian sci-fi novel emanates as though this was a fresh and newly discovered idea. In fact, Sharon has been working on creating this film for the past 15 years (while also establishing herself as a published playwright, writer, actor and award winning director) and although the journey has been long, she strongly believes that now is the perfect time to transition this well-nurtured idea into tangible reality. Last week Sharon successfully completed a crowdfunding campaign to support the film. Achieving this recent milestone has affirmed her belief that there is an audience out there excited for a story like this and that the moment is now for the film to be realized. She says,

Well I think we’re in the zeitgeist. I think that the novel and the film are coming to life in an appropriate time. I’m not sure if in 1998 we would have understood that this is so relevant to our present day lives. I think that with the rise of social media and technology we have a lot more access to those images so all of a sudden Ferguson, Baltimore, Detroit, all of those are in our consciousness in a way that it wouldn’t have been in 1998 because we didn’t have the same kind of access and the people living within those situations didn’t have the same kind of access. We see the rise of public videos being used in legal battles. That was never the case in the late 1990s. So all of a sudden police officers are being held accountable according to public videos. It doesn’t mean that they’re always being held to justice but they’re actually being held accountable which again is being used as a catalyst for people to riot. In the film that is the trigger for all of the things that happen. There is an economic collapse and the poor people are tired of being poor and they rise up. I think that if you look at why they are rising up it’s because there’s an access to social media in a way that they didn’t have before and then the only way to shut them down is to seclude them and cut off their electricity and cut off their ability to communicate with the outside world where their reality is going on.

Corporate and government decisions to seclude a section of the population following their mass politicized mobilization as a result of increased connectivity and communication feels eerily prophetic in the current era recently dubbed “Black Spring.” Sharon revealed that part of Nalo’s inspiration for the novel came from poignant observations of the harsh realities occurring south of the border:

When I talked to Nalo she was inspired by Detroit in terms of what post-apocalyptic Toronto would look like and this is 1998. So she was in Detroit and looking at a city that basically had an invisible wall around it. You had all the wealthy industrialists living in a particular area and then all the Black neighbourhoods were burnt out, abandoned, policed – heavily policed and the public school system was on its way down. So that’s the Toronto that you’re going to see in my film.

Although set in Toronto, Sharon recognizes that this story of economic flight and extreme disconnection and alienation is one that can resonate beyond the city’s borders. As a child of the Caribbean Diaspora, the extremes of wealth and poverty sitting side-by-side in an imbalanced yet normalized fashion is disconcertingly familiar for Sharon:

I spent a lot of my childhood in Jamaica and Trinidad and a lot of that reality is already there. There were already people that were cut off from technology or cut off from electricity who were having to make do. And right across the street they were seeing the glistening lights. I remember in Jamaica driving through Kingston and on the hillside you’d see people living in zinc shacks, still walking to the river to get water and then just a couple of feet down from them was this massive, beautiful house with satellite dishes and massive technology.

Sharon Lewis

Prescient in the film will be the way that these kinds of divergences in experiences create walls between people – sometimes physical but often subconscious – thereby separating them from each other in ways that enable the current world order:

There is a wall but like any ghetto there’s an invisible wall. There’s a wall that basically you don’t step into the other world because you don’t belong there. And you won’t see the wall in the film because again my whole point is your own psychological barriers are much more destructive than any actual physical wall that’s built.

The setting constructed by Nalo Hopkinson in her novel was, as are many dystopian landscapes, a prophetic warning of what will come to be if we continue to ignore the signs of the times. And yet it sets itself apart from other popular dystopian literary tales with a distinctly Caribbean Diasporic influence, one which director/writer Sharon Lewis is excited to push aesthetically in the cinematic adaptation. She cites Marcel Camus’ 1959 Oscar Award-winning film Black Orpheus as a key inspiration in imagining an aesthetic that is steeped with a heavy Carnival influence:

I’ve never seen a Caribbean set in a dystopia. I’ve never actually seen a dystopia that has a Caribbean aesthetic. For me it makes sense because what I saw in the reality of Jamaica or Trinidad where people had to adapt with little resources…it’s dystopia. Aesthetically it will be interesting because you’ll see Caribbean people and that will affect the way they dress and you know the food and all of that, but also in the way that they talk and the way that they relate to each other in terms of what those moral values are.

To step into the unchartered territory of Caribbean-Canadian sci-fi film, Sharon has cast a wide net in considering her aesthetic and story inspirations. She celebrates the rise of female heroines in Sci-Fi and Fantasy film such as Bella Swan in Twilight, Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games and Imperator Furiosa in Mad Max: Fury Road. Although an avid fan of sci-fi, the unbelievable dearth of Black female heroines in the film genre has meant that Sharon has had to look elsewhere for reference points when conceptualizing the heroine Ti-Jeanne for Brown Girl in the Ring – The Prequel. She cites Julie Dash’s seminal film Daughters of the Dust as a key inspiration in seeing Black women as magical, full, and rich characters.

With the success of her crowdfunding campaign, Sharon has launched a Brown Girl Movement, led by women of colour who are coming together to tell this story in a new genre that will inevitably feel strangely familiar for so many: that of the Caribbean-Canadian sci-fi.

To learn more about Brown Girl in the Ring – The Prequel, visit the website.

Amanda Parris is writer from the 6ix who dreams of screenplays to come, has a couple of theatre plays under her belt and sometimes really geeks out and writes for “the academy.” In her spare time she is an actor, Critical Hip Hop educator, and producer of all things cool, creative, and disruptive that started from the bottom. You can follow her on Twitter at @amanda_parris

A Labor of Love and the Internet: ‘Cyber-Seniors’

I was born in 1980, which means I’m old enough to remember not knowing how to use the internet. I also remember being taught to use it. In 2015 I can’t imagine not having this instrument in my life, but the documentary Cyber-Seniors reminded me that there is a very large swath of the population that passed many more years without the presence of email or instant messenger than I did. The film tells the story of a mentoring program called Cyber-Seniors, founded in 2009 by teenage sisters Macaulee and Kascha Cassaday. Macaulee and Kascha were moved to set up this program because they experienced firsthand the benefits of how Facebook and Skype enabled them to remain connected to their grandparents. Enlisting the help of friends, the sisters started to regularly visit assisted living residences to provide basic computer and internet skills to elderly adults. The people they work with are in their late seventies to early nineties, and express varying degrees of interest, delight, and frustration with their lessons. Shura, 88, is endlessly amused by every new thing she learns about what’s possible on the internet—especially on YouTube. In fact, she becomes quite enamored of cooking videos and decides to make one of her own. The results are more than charming.

There’s an unapologetic sweetness to this film, in part because it is directed by Macaulee and Kascha’s sister, Saffron and their mother, Brenda Rusnak. However, to my great relief, it does well to avoid too much sentiment. After all, the same Internet that has given us Skyping with grandma has also given us an endless pit of ugliness. There are a few moments of gravitas in the film that touch on the pain of loss, aging, and illness. When Ellard, 89, is given the opportunity to connect with his daughter, we learn that they are estranged, and he hasn’t seen her for over five years. And in a sad, unexpected turn, we also see Macaulee fall sick from cancer. At the expense of spoiling the film, though, I hasten to add that the ending is decidedly hopeful.

Perhaps the most moving aspect of the film is the nonchalance of the intergenerational dynamics. We see the teenage mentors move from tentative to completely comfortable—and almost pleasantly bored—by their interactions with these adults, who they would otherwise have no reason to know outside Cyber-Seniors. It’s easy to be cynical about the way social media facilitates a bottomless narcissism, as every YouTube video seems to scream “look at me!” Cyber-Seniors is an antidote to that feeling, and does well to emphasize the upside of the internet by showing a population that too often goes unseen get a chance to enjoy recognition.