Movie Recommendations: Preparing for the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation
A friend reached out and asked for some resources for a film recommendation for a group to watch and discuss as part of marking the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. I figured I would pass these recommendations on to you and list films we don’t already have in our Resource Library (but feel free to check out films over there as well).
1. Educational on Residential School, but evoking empathy as primary emotion:
Muffins for Granny https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZEmzCWDIKc story of residential school through the eyes of the granddaughter of a residential school survivor. It is about an hour and 15 minutes long. A good length to allow discussion.
2. A series of shorts which allows you to watch, absorb, talk and maybe even view again.
Savage by Lisa Jackson (this is actually my all time favorite film on residential schools) just 5 minutes long https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysQxpSb1MRo
A documentary on former Senator Murray Sinclaire. It is half an hour long. https://reelcanada.ca/film/honour-to-senator-murray-sinclair/
3. Hard-hitting Indian Horse, which you can watch on Netflix or Apple TV etc.
4. Vancouver specific history, though not related to Residential Schools, All our Father's Relations https://www.knowledge.ca/program/all-our-fathers-relations
"The story of the Grant siblings - Howard E. Grant, Helen Callbreath, Larry Grant and Gordon J. Grant - now in the twilight of their lives, and their connection to their mother's First Nations (Musqueam) heritage and reconnecting to their father's southern Chinese heritage is told. Their parents, Agnes Grant and Tim Hing Tong, met when he emigrated to Vancouver from China in 1920 and worked on the leased farmland on the Musqueam Reserve in the southwestern corner of the city with his family. Because of the racist policies of the Canadian government of the time (as demonstrated through the Indian Act and the head tax), Agnes and Tim were separated when they began to have children, who lived mainly with her on the reserve, with Tim having lived most of his married life in Chinatown. Despite being denied Indian status, the four offspring got to know their Musqueam heritage well living with their mother, who was one of the community historians and storytellers, while they, out of circumstances even beyond not seeing their father much, even when they did live with him in Chinatown, did not know much about his side of the family, especially as their Chinese Vancouver area relations were hesitant to visit the homeland and the ancestral village for fear of not being allowed back in Canada, that fear, again, due largely to the historically racist policies against the Chinese."
Let us know what you watched, with whom, and how the conversation went!