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33-3 (Fall 2009) Native Women's Hidden Reality

Film Review: Being Innu

A film by Catherine Mullins
76 Minutes, 2007 | English and Innu versions | Distributed by Documentary Educational Resources

Being Innu should be required viewing in every school in North America. Better than almost any other film it depicts the reality that Native peoples live under in many places and the devastating consequences of cultural hegemony, and it does it in a way that is compelling and very personal. The film follows the people of an Innu community, Sheshatshiu, in Labrador, over the course of a few months.

I Dreamed the Animals: A Hunter's Journal

I was born at Emish [Voisey’s Bay] close to the salt water in Labrador. I was just a little boy when we moved to Upatik [Okpatik Island area]. I spent most of my life with my parents in Upatik, and I still go back to there. Sometimes I visit my father’s campsite, but it’s hard to see it because it’s all covered with grass and moss.

Once, in the summer, we didn’t have anything to eat. One night my father started to sing his traditional song. I didn’t know why he sang it in the night. The next morning it was a very nice day, and the lake where we camped was calm.

Short Shrift: A Photo Essay

In early 2008 Dutch photojournalist Marielle van Uitert traveled to Rwanda to document the lives of Batwa people, also known as Pygmies. Rwanda was ravaged by genocide in 1994, and the scars of that conflict still mark the country, but the Batwa, who were marginalized before the genocide, have suffered even more than most. They lost a far greater proportion of their population than other ethnic groups in the country during the conflict.

The Other Way of Knowing

Big Country Burning I by Yondee (Shane Hansen) 2005.

Western science and Indigenous worldviews are often seen as incompatible, with the Indigenous view usually being far less valued by society at large. But an inside look at Indigenous ways of knowing shows that they offer unique and dependable insights, in precisely the areas where Western science is often weakest. 

Freedom Foods

White Corn

Food does more than nourish our bodies. It lifts our spirits, nurtures our minds, and comforts our souls. As any weary traveler who has ever longed for a home-cooked meal can attest, food connects us to our families and communities by reminding us where we come from and—just for a moment—transports us back to a place of familiarity, trust, and comfort.

But in many Indigenous communities across North America, this pivotal aspect of both health and culture is slipping away.

Helping Survivors Survive

Rose Simpson Sculpture, Santa Clara Pueblo, NM

The numbers are staggering: according to the Department of Justice, Native American women experience violent crime three-and-a-half times more often than the national average, and one-third of Native American women will be sexually assaulted in their lives. As horrific as that sounds, the problem may, in fact, be even worse than these official statistics suggest, as 70 percent of all rapes typically go unreported, especially when the crimes involve family members or acquaintances.

Melting the Ice in the Hearts of Men

Inuit Landscape

In my Inuit culture we believe that of all the things that can be created the only one that will disappear before your eyes is smoke. And as the smoke comes to you it has the power to carry away with it any bad things you have in you—bad thoughts, bad things we see, bad things we hear, bad things we say, bad things we feel, and bad things we smell. The smoke carries all of that away from us. And when the smoke clears, you and I can be as we were as children. You think of things that only you know and the Great One knows, and you pray that they will be removed from you.

Comic Relief

Steven Keewatin Sanderson

Steven Keewatin Sanderson, a Plains Cree illustrator and animator, is one of the few Native comic book artists working anywhere. A self-taught artist, he has become a force to reckon with, having developed a number of comics with Native superheroes as well as producing his own animated films, working on hit cartoons for the Cartoon Network and Disney’s computer game Treasure Planet: Battle at Procyon. You might not have predicted that success from his early life, though.

A Natural Match

Look back over past issues of the Cultural Survival Quarterly and you will read a litany of stories describing the ways Indigenous Peoples’ lands and resources are under assault by governments or corporate interests. The reasons range from negligence to profit to the pursuit of policies that are aimed at benefiting the larger populace but have the effect of causing grave harm to Indigenous Peoples. The process is rarely polite.

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