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WE WILL BE FREE – Aboriginal Peoples in Canada

The topic of this paper is a film review which introduces or shows the Indigenous Peoples stories through a video screen. The film or movie about the Indigenous peoples is important because it will support their communities to record their stories and spread to the whole world. In this modern ear of technology indigenous peoples also have the power to rise their voice through the media especially over the film to demonstrate and express the problems they are face due to the post-colonial exist in Canada. The topic of this paper is a movie or film called We Will BE Free_ Aboriginal Peoples in Canada which tells about a group First Nations who live in Winnipeg.

This movie is released in 2014 which is about the indigenous peoples who survivors of the harsh post-colonial history in Canada. The movie is set to show the stories of those survivors who fought to live in the indigenous communities where they placed in “inner city” as they called “North End” in Winnipeg Canada. The indigenous peoples who are oppressed to discrimination and abused by the post-colonial settlers, they have the opportunity to express the problems through the screen. As the Indigenous filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin also said, in 2015 that "I feel that we're really going someplace where we've never gone before. I know that Canadians are really listening now and want to know the truth” (CBC, 2017). The survivors of the Winnipeg who are interviewed in We Will Be Free movie also demonstrate how they suffered for generations and the effects are still exist in their societies. The parents and grandfathers were subjected to discrimination by the European settlers in Canada and then the same problems passed to their children. In the movie they fight to heal from the drug they use and the abuse they suffered from their parents and elders. For example, one of the Indigenous people talks about the discrimination against their community and especially she complains about her father who took away from her house. Those sorts of problems strictly related to the discrimination and abuse their elder experienced due to the post-colonials in the past and affected their children in the current and will affect their grandchildren in the future as well. Another indigenous person says, I lost “countless friends and cousins” due to the discrimination exist against us (We Will Be Free 2014).

Why is it important to tell the stories in the Indigenous communities? As one of the Indigenous websites also focus to encourage the First nation peoples to tell their stories to elders, community members, and families to keep their past backgrounds and challenges they faced to and pass to the next generation (Think Big). Thus, the movies We Will Be Free is also important part for the current generation to express their stories and heal with the available methods they use in their culture. The Indigenous website also expresses that we should search deeper into the problems and make our own identity in Canada as Indigenous because the post-colonial has been trying to remove us from this land (Think Big). When they going to show their power, problems, issues to the global so, the successful way is to make films, documentaries and write their stories of their past and current because the world will easily read about them through these tools they use. Thus, it is important to spread the information through making movies such as, We Will Be Free- Aboriginal Peoples in Canada, to show their existing and history and the problems they suffer.

In the recent years the prime minster of Canada also tended to rebuild the trust and relationship between Canadians and the Aboriginal peoples in Canada which makes a huge difference. For instance, Schiffer (2016) writes the ‘reconciliation Commission’s report’ in 2015 to find out why the aboriginal peoples still have the problems once they had in the past history (paragraph 1) focus the Canadians to understand the First nations problems. As the article by Schiffer further discusses about the colonial history who tried to cut all the rights of the indigenous peoples once they had such as, “traditional culture, languages, spirituality, economies” and integrated them into the European way of life (2016, paragraph 2). The author also says, the ‘colonization legacy’ is not ended there and the it continues to impact the current and future generations as the post-traumatic measures rooted in the current peoples of First Nations (Schiffer 2016, paragraphs 3-4). The film We Will BE Free, is also tells the post-colonial trauma influenced and affected the current Winnipeg Indigenous Peoples life who suffer due to the post-settlers’ power in Canada. They do suffer from various illness, homeliness and diseases because they are marginalized by the settlers and they still suffer because of the post-settlers still colonized their lands.

Bibliography

Indigenous filmmaking set to rise in Canada in 2018 and beyond | CBC News. (2017, December 28). Retrieved from https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/indigenous-filmmakers-canada-funding-1.4466278

Meis. F. M (2014, May 10). WE WILL BE FREE - Aboriginal Peoples in Canada. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXT2JXe8mnA

Schiffer, J. J. (2014, November). Why Aboriginal Peoples Can't Just "Get Over It". Retrieved from http://www.heretohelp.bc.ca/visions/indigenous-people-vol11/why-aboriginal-peoples-cant-just-get-over-it

Think Big, Start Small. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://thinkbig-startsmall.ca/en/thinkbig/indigenous-equality-and-rights