Its relentless: New documentary highlights discrimination against Indigenous Peoples

Gitxaala producer and filmmaker Leena Minifie has heard many horror stories of the discrimination Indigenous Peoples face during her more than 20 years as a journalist, film and television producer. However, even she was taken aback by some of the things she heard while working on The Good Canadian. Minifie co-directed the feature length documentary with Academy Award nominated director David Paperny. The film is described in the APTN press release as “part investigation, part real-life horror story, part national reckoning.” The Good Canadian walks viewers through the “corridors of systemic inequity, from the Indian Act to residential schools, to modern day family separation,” the APTN release says. Minifie says she was shocked at how easy it is for Indigenous youth to be swept up into foster care and group homes. “Things that regular non-Indigenous parents do that just wouldn’t be a flag and it is a flag to those social workers, who are quite young, most of them in their 20s and non-Indigenous. Small things with check-ups on houses,” says Minifie on the latest episode of Face to Face with host Dennis Ward. “A woman could be written up on her report if she had a bruise on her or arm or her bra strap was showing or she had a hole in her pants or a couple of dishes in the sink, the things that we all have in our lifetime could be written up as a justification for keeping your kids away from you. I don’t know anybody in Canada that has a perfect dust free, dish sink free life, I don’t. “Some of the birth alert stories we’ve heard of there being legitimate plans in place and maybe like 10 or 12 people surrounding a mother who has quit substances, done everything right, corrected her entire life and still gets her kid taken away.” Paperny and Minifie spent four years working on The Good Canadian. The film had its world premiere on APTN and CBC on the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. Minifie says APTN getting involved was the “rocket ship to get the project sailing.” She hopes the partnership with the public broadcaster will mean more non-Indigenous people see the film and appreciate that Indigenous peoples face racism and discrimination as soon as their born. “A lot of non-Indigenous peoples, we know, have never even met a social worker, they don’t know what they do. They haven’t been interacting with police in any sort of traumatic or negative way. When we talk to Indigenous folks, they are intersected with government lives whether it be federal or provincial and multiple levels of governments and that connection ends up staying for their entire life,” says Minifie. “You’re talking about a mother, pre-birth, then birth, then going into elementary school and experiencing racism, high school and then you become of child bearing age and go into the workforce and then potentially those things are affected like foster care, being taken away. Then, there’s a pipeline to prisons from foster care and also missing and murdered women. So, it never ends the amount of interconnections between the oppressive powers in our life cycle and so that’s what the film was trying to show. That it’s relentless.” The Good Canadian may be Minifie’s directorial debut but she has been working in the industry for more than two decades, including on the award winning Bones of Crows. In 2007, Minifie launched Stories First Productions which has been involved in feature length films such as Indian Horse, The Grizzlies, and Monkey Beach. Minifie feels the generation coming up in the film and television industry is some of the biggest talent she’s ever seen, creating a “renaissance in Indigenous storytelling.” Her advice to future storytellers is to keep it interesting and “keep it weird.” “Know what the unicorn parts of your project, know what’s really unique. Sometimes people don’t know what you have, just like with The Good Canadian, people were like we’re hesitant about this, we don’t know what it means to turn the camera and look at non-Indigenous people, that seems a little scary and we just kept going forward because we knew what we had in our hands and understand what you have in your hands first and really break that down and don’t compromise on that,” says Minifie. The Good Canadian is streaming now on APTN Lumi. Continue Reading