Dancing around the Table
The National Film Board has done a great job of documenting Canadian culture. In Dancing around the Table, Maurice Bulbulian in his 1987 film, documents the 1983 struggle of Aboriginal people to be recognized within the Canadian Constitution. They argue in international courts to have their rights to self-government and land use and consultation entrenched within the law. It was helpful for me to be able to review that. I recall watching it at the time, but now, with more background and more maturity, I’m able to see nuances that I likely missed at the time. That is one of the strengths of technology, that ability to review and to analyze from a more informed perspective. I found Nanook was the same for me: good to have the chance to revisit. Although documents can inform, they do not have the power and nuance of film.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QlUcg_CqnA[/youtube]

“Children learn sterotypes and attitudes about race from their parents, caretakers and the world around them” (Linn & Paussaint, 1999).

There have been over 1000 movies about Native Indians produced in Hollywood for the last 100 years. Disney  also has produced animations about First Nations, such as Peter Pan and Pocahontas. Also, Charlie Brown and Popeye have some scenes that have American Indians in them. Most of these animations potentially produce negative associations with Indigenous people. In most of these films, the Indigenous people are portrayed as dumb, stubborn, and treacherous. In Popeye particularly, the Native Indians are portrayed as savages who don’t trust anyone and are violent.

This YouTube video introduces couple of animations that have American Indians depicted in wrong ways. They give wrong information to children and as a result, children who watch these animations could have stereotypes against the First Nations. I didn’t realize that the animations produced the stereotypes against the First Nations until I watched this clip. It’s a little shocking and sad that these popular animations can negatively affect children’s thoughts.

http://archives.cbc.ca/society/education/topics/692/

This website is a CBC archive of Canada’s residential schools. It has a total of 22 video clips from 1955 to 2002 which are related to residential schooling in Canada.

There is a brief description of what each video clip is talking about, some of the facts that we don’t know, and comments that people have left after watching/listening to the clips.

As I mentioned before, I would like to do some research on residential schools in Canada, so this archive will definitely be beneficial to my research topic.

More interestingly, this archive contains and suggests interesting writing topics for History or English classes. The topics are classified according to grades. It also provides brief history, the purpose and the outline of what students should expect to do, and the rubric. The CBC website is good for History/English/Social Studies teachers who teach the history of Canada.

http://bill-shiftingother.blogspot.com/

This blog introduces popular movies that have portrayed Native Americans.

As the only movie I watched from the list here is Dances with Wolves, there are some that I would like to include on my ‘must-watch’ list. 🙂

The blog was originally created to explore the connections between Native American history and cinema. I was surprised to see how many Native American movies have been produced since 1950’s. According to the blogger, representations of Native Americans in popular film have undergone a drastic shift. However, there still remains stereotypes against them in the movies. He also argues that the recent films created by Native Americans themselves can help people have less prejudice against them as well as provide an optimistic view, not just in a native community but also in general.