A film I love today #13. #afilmilovetoday Thus far, each film I've written on has had a link to a free online source for the whole film. I'm breaking that pattern with the first film I've seen a movie theatre since February, 2020, Beans. Beans is a 2020 Canadian drama film directed by Mohawk filmmaker Tracey Deer. I only identify her as Mohawk because it's clear that the content is somewhat autobiographical, looking at it does through the 1990 Oka Crisis, or Kenesatake Resistance. Deer lived through this as a child, thus informing the experience of the lead character, Tekehentahkhwa (nicknamed "Beans").

This isn't the place for reviews or the like, though it is tempting to write the like. I'll just say that I loved everything about this film, including the fact that it made me think about how much my own take on the Oka crisis has evolved, especially in recent years. At the time, I was I was just finishing my M.A. in Political Science, where I had a heavily Marxist worldview. I was beginning my (short-lived) career as a professional film programmer, and found myself at the Montreal Film Festival near the end of the standoff/crisis (both inadequate terms). I considered myself "with" the Mohawks, and against Bourassa (so much so), Mulroney, the RCMP, the Quebec provincial policy, and the armed forces, and the needs of bloody golfers. But, aside from thinking it was a miracle that I made it to and from Montreal without any aftershock from the bridge closures, I didn't really connect this to my life, my existence as a "Canadian". It still seemed like an isolated incident, and not one only understood as part of "Canadian" history, which is closer to where I'm at today.

I think at the time I was probably fixated on the history of the Mohawk people and the Wyandot (Huron) people, and their relationship to the Jesuits, and all that. The history is long, complicated hard-to-believe.

I think it's safe to say that, despite my obliviousness at the time, this was where my understanding of Canadian history as fundamentally an act of domination by Europeans against the indigenous populations, began. The lights were turned on, and then up during the Canada 150 "celebrations" that were impossible to celebrate, without qualification after qualification (as the AGO's show Every.Now.Then demonstrated powerfully).

The Kenesatake Resistance made evident to European settlers like myself the nature of the conflict between the Mohawks of Kanehsatake and the Canadian government, and the had lives and violent existence the Mohawks continued to suffer. It made evident the complete failure of the political system, and the deep racism in Canadian society. Beans was so powerful for in that it found a way to go back to these facts, and back to the lived violence of Mohawk people, in ways that (because of empathy? creativity?) might just reawaken inquiry, demands for justice, and effective action.