IndigiTalks!

Ryle, Jason

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A panel featuring Canadian Indigenous filmmakers Alanis Obomsawin, Alethea Arnaquq-Baril and Tracey Deer, moderated by Jason Ryle, Executive Director of Toronto's ImagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival and curated by Barbara Evans, Associate Professor, Department of Cinema and Media Arts, York University, and Gail Vanstone, Associate Professor, Department of Humanities, York University.

Jason Ryle: We're very lucky today to have these three filmmakers here with us this evening. They really embody so much of how Indigenous filmmaking was, what it has become and where it's going. So now, if you all want to introduce yourselves, I'll leave it up to you.

Alethea Arnaquq-Baril: I am from Iqaluit in Nunavut, in the Arctic. We used to be called Eskimos. We've had a lot of anthropologists visiting the North and the very early history of documentary involved filming Inuit. The first--considered the first--documentary was Nanook of the North. When I became a documentary filmmaker and I learned that, I thought it was pretty cool. Like, "Hey, Inuit mattered at one point to some people!" And then I realized that a lot of our stories were told by outsiders and so I enjoyed becoming part of the storytelling world.

Tracey Deer: I am a Mohawk filmmaker. My territory is about six hours to the West, just outside of Montreal. I wanted to be a filmmaker since I was 12 years old. I didn't see my own people reflected on TV, so as a 12-year-old I had no idea that I could actually tell stories about myself. I figured, "I will go to Hollywood and blow shit up!" When I graduated from university it was really quite the renaissance. ImagineNATIVE had just started, our television network, the Aboriginal People's Television Network, had just launched. So, I left university at this wonderful time in Canada. There was a venue to tell our stories. I thought, "Oh my God, I can talk about my own people, I can talk about what I went through and what I care about!" And I've been doing that for 14 years now.

I spent the first 10 years of my career in documentary. I've now transitioned into fiction TV, dealing with a lot of the same issues. I am really obsessed with identity and belonging and what it means to be a modern aboriginal person in this very global world we live in.

Jason: Alanis is Abenaki, based in Montreal and she is working on her 50th film. [Dream Magic, A Tribute To Alanis Obomsawin on the Occasion of Receiving the Governor General's Performing Arts Award for Lifetime Achievement (NFB 2008, Dir: Katherine Cizek) is screened.]

There is certainly a lot in that tribute, Alanis. How do you feel when you see it?

Alanis Obomsawin: Surprised. I am honoured. But the reality of how I feel is this: things were very wrong in those days, especially in the education system. And I was thinking as a young child about what I could in order to get children to know another story than the one they were being told in the classroom. And eventually by the time I was 16 or 17, I knew I could sing and I knew my history and I thought, "I'm going to tell children another story," and that's how I began. I started with a group of Scouts and went with them in the country and told them stories and showed them Indian games. And eventually I started to do school tours and I did hundreds and hundreds of schools all over the country. I did not come to the schools to reproach anybody or the way they were teaching the history of this country, but I came with a different story. I also did a lot of prisons. In the 60s they said that 68% of prisoners were Indigenous people. So, I knew that it was going to be a long walk and every step counted. I never thought of making films. I knew nothing about filmmaking, but somebody made a film for the CBC in 1965 about what I was doing, making a campaign to build a swimming pool on my reserve for our children. It was from there that the National Film Board invited me to have a first meeting and eventually they gave me a contract to be a consultant. Immediately after this, I knew that I would never do it again. I told them, "Look, if I take your crew onto the reserve and people hate the film they're going to say, "It's Alanis's fault, she brought them here." So I made it very clear and eventually I started working [on my own], I had to raise my own money and the National Film Board would match what I would raise. I started to do programs for the classroom on filmstrips. That's how I started and that's how I fell in love with this medium and what we can do to change the world.

Jason: So, your first film was Christmas at Moose Factory in 1971. How did that project come about? It's a very special, very tender piece about children in residential schools. For those of you who don't know, Canada had a policy for about 150 years whereby Indigenous children were forcibly taken and required to go to church-run residential schools from as young as four years old. The last one closed in 1996. And it really wreaked havoc across our cultures, across our nations, and it's something that we are still dealing with today.

Alanis: At that time I thought, "I want to go to a residential school in a very isolated place that most probably nobody would go to--it's too far, it costs too much money, for all those reasons. So, I chose Moose Factory, and it was so fantastic because everybody spoke the Cree language in the community. So when the children spoke English, they spoke with a very special accent and it was so charming. During the day I'd go into the classroom, talk to children, tell them stories, and in recreation time I would show them Indian games. We had a lot of fun. After doing this so many times the children knew me very well and it was like we were all related. And this is where I told the children, "It's your turn--you have to tell me stories."

Jason: When did you discover the power of documentary? What propelled you forward? I mean this was 40-plus years and 50 films ago.

Alanis: First of all, you have to remember that 1960 was the first year we were named citizens of our country, not before. It was not until 1952 that an Indian person could go to university, because of a change in 1951 of one paragraph in the Indian Act. The UN forced Canada to look at the way they were treating their Indigenous people. And it was from there that the first amendment to the Indian Act was changed. The provinces gave the right to vote to our people at different times, depending on where you came from. Quebec was the last province to give that right, in 1969. I tell you these things because I feel I have been a witness to a lot of history and a lot of change, a lot of terrible things and a lot of good things. I don't like to speak just about the hardships that we have or that we had because we also have created a lot of change.

Jason: The work that you made in the 70s and 80s a period where often you were the only person making documentary work from an Indigenous perspective--is such an incredible legacy to leave behind for all of us here. In the last 15 to 20 years there's been an explosion of Indigenous filmmakers. One of the key moments in contemporary Canadian history was in 1990 with the Oka uprising. It's the 25th anniversary this month. It was a moment where a lot of Indigenous Canadians woke up and started to see the wrongs, the historical issues, the contemporary issues that we've had. For me, it was a real turning point in terms of waking up and identifying what these issues were and what the potential was. In your film on the Oka uprising, Kanebsatake: 270 Years of Resistance, one of your most acclaimed documentaries, you have a wealth of stories and information. Tell us about that time in terms of what's changed 25 years later.

Alanis: In 1990 was when I first went to Oka, Kanehsatake. The trouble and hardship and the yelling and passion of people were right in front of your face constantly. There is a thing in life and I think it's for all of you here: you cannot allow yourself to not do something you believe is right no matter what. Because when you start to work on such a project, you want the stories to be told, and I felt this was history and it had to be documented. But at the same time you have an awful lot of people who hate you for it, and it was very loud-spoken to me at that time. During that time I felt so much stronger about my work. But you could easily get discouraged. You start to do something and people try to stop you or pick on you and call you names. It's hard to continue. But if you believe in something strongly and you believe you must do it, nobody can stop you. That's the way I marched, because it was a very difficult way of working. I hate guns, so imagine when I arrived and the warriors had guns, the army had guns, the police had guns and it was in front of your face all the time. But I taught myself to get used to it, and I managed to stay there. It was very difficult but I am so happy I did it. But when I came out of there I had to be careful where I was going. It was a dangerous time.

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Jason: It was a Mohawk uprising against the expansion of a golf course onto traditional Mohawk territory, which was a burial ground, and the government called in the army and it lasted several weeks. It really was something horrific. You were behind the lines and I believe your crew abandoned you and left you alone to film.

Alanis: I had two crews for a long period of time, one in the nighttime and one in the daytime. I hardly ever slept. I was like this for hours and then when the army advanced in September there was a change and the warriors retreated into a space. The army quickly put razor wire around this area. I felt I had to get in there. They allowed us two people and I went in with one cameraman. After two days he said, "I have to leave. I have to go to France." When he left I looked and the assistant was there. You don't say, "I will wait." You have to move quickly. So I said to the assistant, "You come in and replace him." I was doing the sound with the Nagra [sound recorder]. The assistant turned out to be a very good cameraperson. Two days later he said, "I am leaving. There's going to be a shootout here and I am not staying here." I said, "If you go, that's it! Take the 16mm camera and all the [exposed] stock that we have." And one of the cameramen outside came with a wheelbarrow--they were allowing them to bring clothes or food in--and he had hidden a video camera in it and he showed me how to use it. I had never worked with a video camera and I had no confidence in it. I had a big belt for the 16mm camera. I had a Nagra which is a heavy piece of equipment, my pockets full of tapes and the video camera! I was doing everything at the same time. So, a lot of the last shots of the film when there is a helicopter standing there with the warriors, it's only me who filmed that with the video and the Nagra. I was sleeping outside on the land. I had a garbage bag for a tent between two trees. By the time I came out I had an infection in two eyes--as if I have three eyes [laughs]--and I had a cough, and I had poison ivy, poison oak--I looked quite a sight. It was very unhealthy. It lasted seven or eight days and then I stayed for two more weeks. Usually my way of working is that I go in first and I do just sound. I inter-view individual people, just myself and the person, and then I come back with the crew. In this case it was the reverse, so I stayed to speak to some of the people that we had filmed to go more profoundly into their minds and what they thought and how they felt.

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Jason: So you came out with poison ivy and hours and hours of footage that you turned into four docs about Oka, and I have to think that without that conviction we wouldn't have had the kind of document that we have, that I think woke up a lot of Canadians and people internationally.

Alanis: In the early 60s when we began to organize, all of a sudden we were learning so much from travelling and we got money to organize politically. When we were meeting, different reserves would send a delegation to be part of meeting with the organization and a lot of people were worried and they would ask me to meet many times with them. They felt that if I was going to film and tell a story about something that is sacred to people, that this would kill it. We had a lot of meetings concerning that. I said, "I promise you I will never do that unless you ask me to do it and if you really want me to do it." I will never put on pressure. Not only because I promised the people but also because I knew the real feeling, what is sacred and what is not for a display. That was very Important at the beginning of doing the kind of work I did. And so when I started working I'd go to the reserve and spend a certain amount of time alone and talking to people. And because I was singing I was also quite known in Canada by a lot of people so it helped me to connect and for them to know that I would never cheat them. We don't hear so much about that now, but then it was part of the everyday conversation.

Jason: You referenced seeing the work of young Indigenous filmmakers. When you see the work of Alethea or Tracey, what does that make you think? In terms of how things have changed, are you satisfied? Does it give a sense of hope and satisfaction?

Alanis: It's the health of our minds and of our people to be able to tell their stories, to find their history and see how people are reacting, what they want. This is how we make changes. If you don't know your history, you don't know where the hell to go, because you don't know what you are, you don't know where you've been. Our stories, our history, were banished. They took them away and said, " You don't sing these devil songs. You sing hymns, that's it." There are some reserves up to this day where all they have left are hymns--that kind of control, taking all the soul of what we were. And for us to get back to it, all of us, many people have done a tremendous job to make those changes. If you talk today about any community language or history, people listen differently than in the 60s. The residential schools problem was hidden and our people did not talk about it and a lot of them who went didn't even want their children to know because of all the horrible stuff that occurred. And sometimes they'd repeat it. I'm not saying that it's all finished, but we're going into a different world now.

Jason: Alethea, I know this sense of urgency really plays into your own work.

Alethea: First of all I think it's quite amazing that I am here on stage with Alanis and Tracey, and that Alanis was covering the Oka crisis and Tracey as a child was into it. Thinking about Alanis's work--which is obviously inspiring to me--there was this crisis happening and she was able to cover what these people were challenging and she was able to get these incredible war stories. I will never be that badass crazy. I'm Inuit and up north we are much less confrontational than our First Nations brothers and sisters. We are known for being docile and friendly and smiling and laughing a lot and not really challenging things. So, I grew up in a world where there were no major conflicts to cover because people just take it and they live with a really crappy situation and complain at home and to each other but don't challenge the status quo enough. So I can't make films about these big battles. And if I think a big battle should happen I'm going to have to help make it happen. The film [Tunniit: Retracing the Lines of Inuit Tattoos] was kind of confrontational in a hopefully gentle way. I wanted to challenge my own community. It's about Inuit traditional tattoos, which I am obviously interested in, because they're all over me. Tattooing disappeared about a hundred years ago from our culture. The film talks about a lot of the reasons why. I just didn't agree with decisions being made on our behalf, without consulting us, without our opinion, without our permission, and so this film was a way of taking back some of those choices. And tattoos are a superficial symptom of everything about our lives which was turned upside down and changed. So researching the history of our tattoos and bringing them back was my gentle way of confronting those decisions that were taken away from us. With that in mind, this clip shows an elder, and I always love showing it, because he says, "What I am about to say, I say without shame," and that is about as confrontational as an Inuit elder gets. That was like the Mohawk warriors being on the front with guns. I made this film for my own people, it's very much directed at Inuit. [Clips from Tunniit are screened.]

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Alethea: As Alanis was saying, some communities are so religious and anything that's traditional even if it's not spiritual, is seen as shamanistic and from the devil, still today. Every one of the elders you saw in the footage were all elders in the church, very prominent churchgoers. So I was so thankful because it just shut down all the naysayers who would have vilified me for showing this kind of material because it was coming from elders who were very high up in their church but it's also extremely brave, because they didn't know how their community would react. The middle clip was the "Jesus Penis" clip. I love showing that one because it shows the Inuit sense of humour. We deal with a lot of difficult situations and using our sense of humour is like a survival strategy. At the very beginning of the clip there's a white guy who introduces the concept of religion being a foreign thing. I really struggled as a filmmaker on whether to include this academic, because we've seen a thousand documentaries by ethnographers about native people and I didn't want to be that filmmaker. I was like, "Wait a minute, I'm the Inuit filmmaker. Why am I including this guy?" I really struggled to get our elders to talk in the broad picture. We were an oral culture. We didn't have a written history. So when you tell a story, it's like law almost that you speak from your own experience. You speak in fact, and you're always careful to say, if you're telling the story second hand, exactly who told it to you and when and where. So these traditions have kept our knowledge alive for millennia. And so the elders were hesitant to speak beyond their own personal experiences and to speak on behalf of a generation. So I was left with needing this white academic guy to put it all in context. He's lived in the north for 50 years now and speaks Inuktitut. He was one of the teachers who was brought up and was told to beat the Inuktitut language out of the Inuit and he totally didn't listen. He learned the Inuktitut language and married an Inuit woman and documents our history in Inuktitut. The last piece, "The Apology", was my way of being confrontational in my own community, challenging my family members and community members. We've pushed the government to apologize and we haven't pushed at all for the church to apologize, at least in our community. I think that Inuit should have expected this apology from the church.

Jason: Did you have any qualms or issues about actually recording and presenting the spiritual ceremony that we saw?

Alethea: That's a really good question. I've interviewed many, many elders in many different communities and finally one of them explained to me, "Even if you're not a shaman, if you are just knowledgeable about this ritual, you can use it." So, he gave an explanation that this is one we can share, that it was okay to put on camera, so I was comfortable with that. But it's been explained to me that some of the shamanistic rituals, and curses or charms or whatever they are, only hold power if they are held secret and if you share them you will have lost your ability to use it. Not only was colonization a pressure to make these things disappear but we did it to ourselves, too. We can't share these things without killing them, so if you're not teaching an apprentice it just disappears because it's not even documented.

Jason: In the making of this film you actually had your facial and other tattoos done. What did they mean to you? Did the documentary motivate you to get the tattoos or was it the other way around?

Alethea: I wanted tattoos for a very long time and I actually didn't want to make a film about them. But I took a filmmaking workshop and a friend of mine said, "So, you want traditional tattoos?" and I said, "Yes." "And you're going to do all this research about the history of tattoos and you're not going to share it with people? That is so selfish!" It was my first film. I was terrified not only to make my first film but also to be in it was terrifying. But she was right. If I didn't share the knowledge it was going to die.

Jason: One of the lines that really strikes me is how fast we forget, and it was striking when you discovered that Inuit tattoos were actually really common just a hundred years ago. Has this film--or have your tattoos--started a renaissance of Inuit tattoos?

Alethea: I wouldn't call it a renaissance, but definitely there were none when I started the project, zero. For a while I kept track of how many women have them--this one has them on the wrist, this one on the thighs--and I had a little spreadsheet and everything. But now I can't keep track, so it's kind of nice.

Jason: Why don't you tell us about your next project, Angry Inuk?

Alethea: Probably what most people don't realize is that the vast majority of seal hunters on the planet are Inuit, and that we are not just subsistence hunters for our own families but we also sell the skins. We're both subsistence hunters and commercial hunters. So, all these protests against sealing that never show images of Inuit--they just pretend we don't exist--have devastated our communities. So this is another situation where I've felt extremely frustrated with the unfair situation and nobody really meaningfully doing anything about it. There are people who've tried very hard to do something and convince the world and change these things but they don't get angry enough. And so, when Inuit talk about how unfair the anti-sealing world is, people don't really think it's that big of a deal. Because we're really polite about it when we talk about it. So I am making a documentary now about the whole issue and how Inuit have responded to the issue over the generations and how the younger generation is trying to do it in a different way now. [Clip of Angry Inuk is screened]

Jason: Tracey, in terms of your work you mentioned that you were inspired at the age of 12, that you wanted to become a Hollywood filmmaker. What changed?

Tracey Deer: In university, I was a film studies major. I went to Dartmouth College and every semester I wanted to take a filmmaking class. And one summer the only thing that fit with my schedule was a documentary class. I said, "Okay, I absolutely need film in my life so I'll take the documentary class." And it changed my world. Up until that point documentary for me was high school class and very stale, long boring films. But in this class we explored a hundred years of documentary. I mean, we all know how amazing documentary is, right? I was just moved to tears. I was angry. The realm of emotions I went through that summer--really, it changed my life. I ended up going home and that summer made a couple of documentaries of my own from home for the class and came back to school with stories about people I love and things that I take for granted. These were normal things in my life, but my audience, my American peers and my teachers, they were just like, "Wow!" That's when I thought, "I am an insider to a specific place that to me is ordinary but other people have no idea about and are super interested in and this feels really good. So it was in my sophomore year in university that I decided, "Okay, forget Indiana Jones Part 5, I am going to make documentaries." I ended up coming home when I graduated for a summer semester with Global Television and that is when, by a lucky accident, a film company in Montreal was making a documentary about the Cree, about a historical moment in their history. And that's where it all began.

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Jason: You were co-director of that film, weren't you?

Tracey: I started as a production assistant, just schlepping equipment around and making a couple of calls. But we were in the James Bay area of northern Quebec, and the film was massive. What was going on was that the James Bay Cree of Quebec in the 70s were in a fight with the Quebec government about hydroelectric damming. The Supreme Court held up the Cree's right to decide what happens on their lands--however, not for that project as the government had already invested so much money. So this dam was going to go through, but after this, the Cree had to decide. The Quebec government wanted more damming--it's a great source of revenue for the province. And so in 2002 they approached the Cree with a lucrative financial deal for more damming.

Up until this point the Cree had maintained their stand on protection of the land. What this deal ended up doing was really splitting the communities down the middle because the young people wanted to keep up the fight. But in the end, they did end up voting and agreeing to more damming. As a Mohawk person it was very interesting for me to be part of the experience. I was removed enough to take it all in. I come from a very, very divided community. We've been close to 'civilization', we've been close to big cities, we've been dealing with governments for a very long time and I know how it's affected us. I was always so amazed to see the Cree still working together as a solid unit, as a solid nation, all agreeing. In the process of the film I saw that disintegrate and saw the process of divide and conquer. I was 22 years old and right out of university, going up into Cree territory as a production assistant. Within three months I was promoted to co-director. It was a huge film; I don't speak Cree--a lot of people incredibly still speak Cree--but here I am directing a film where I don't understand the language. I'm young. It kind of worked in my favour, though. I think I got into a lot of places because people really didn't think of me as very threatening.

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Jason: There's a connection there, in terms of your own work, that you deal with in Club Native and Mohawk Girls, where they deal with hard issues in the community.

Tracey: My first solo documentary is about teenage girls growing up in my community. I wanted to give teenagers a voice. I grew up feeling very invisible and voiceless. And this was the idea I pitched. And everybody, the NFB, APTN [the Aboriginal People's Television Network], producers, everybody loved it and got on board. And I thought, "Awesome! This is going to be so easy. It's my community, they speak English, I grew up there, I know what it's like to be a teenager there." And I just thought, "Lucky me." However, It turned out to be the hardest film I've ever made because of all those reasons--my community, my people, my family. How are they going to feel about what I'm putting out there? Can I tell the truth? And that's what I need to do. I'm a documentary filmmaker. I need to tell the truth, but the truth isn't always pretty. How are my people going to feel about that? Am I doing them a service or a disservice? So these were all going through my mind while making that first film. At some point I was actually so afraid, I froze. For four months I couldn't film I ended up having to put myself in therapy, and I had two sessions every week to get myself through making the film and figuring out how do I feel about my position and my voice and who do I want to be as a filmmaker? And because I was making a film about being a teenager I had to revisit my own teen years, which were not good. Older people who say, "I wish I could be a teen again!"--I would never be a teenager again. And I had to relive it all; I had to go through it all while making that film.

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Jason: And the issues of identity and the struggles that the Mohawk girls face really form the backbone for Club Native.

Tracey: My second solo film, Club Native, really dives into the concept of blood quantum and membership. Here in Canada, you're not native because you say you are. There's a whole bunch of people who will quantify it for you and decree whether you are a native person or not. The Canadian government requires a certain amount of blood quantum, a certain blood percentage, for you to be a native person. That's one level of it. But our communities are also dictating. My community is especially harsh, which my film is about. There's a bureaucracy deciding whether you're a Mohawk or not and you grow up with very strict rules of knowing what you can and cannot do to belong to this group of people that are your people, that are your family. The fear of being rejected by your people is so intense that we follow these rules that are limiting and detrimental to us flourishing as people. I grew up in this society, I grew up with these rules, and as a teenager I was very, very angry. I'd lived through the Oka crisis. I was 12 years old, I had post traumatic stress, I had Canadians telling me that my life wasn't worth anything, that they would send their army to point guns at us. And I felt like I did not have a right to live my own life. My community was telling me who to marry and what not to do. My dream of becoming a filmmaker I was told was selfish, because how was that going to help people? "Become a social worker, become a teacher." So I felt like my entire existence didn't matter. So I have been very, very angry about other people trying to tell me who I am. And I feel a lot of it stems from this decree by the Indian Act to define us as a people. So Club Native looks at this issue. [Clips from Club Native and Mohawk Girls are screened.]

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Tracey: Mohawks are very confrontational, unlike your people, Alethea, and, the same as you, I want to push and say, "Really? Is this what we want to be?" One of my big frustrations is that in my community it's the safest, the most peaceful way of life to sit on the fence and not have an opinion and close your eyes and block your mouth. But now the change I am seeing is that people are getting off the fence. I am encouraged--and I have to remain hopeful--to see my people not being so afraid anymore and feeling like, "No, I don't want this to be who we are." And that's very, very encouraging.

Jason: It's always incredible to hear your stories and to see your work. One thing that really ties them all together -Alethea, Alanis and Tracey--is the bravery and courage in terms of not just the types of films you're making, or your decisions to make them, but the people in them, and I think that really transcends the work and means so much for all of us. But you're right; it's a different time now, with movements like Idle No More and the cultural and artistic renaissances that have been happening across the country and all through the indigenous world. [Clip from Trick or Treaty? is screened.]

Alanis, when looking at your work lately and in terms of the conversations that we've been having recently, I sense a new vigour, a new determination. Where does this motivation come from?

Alanis: It comes from what I see and hear and mainly through a lot of young people. We've had so much suicide amongst our people on a lot of the reservations. Three years ago, in one community, there were 80 young people who tried to kill themselves and 13 succeeded. In another community there were 48 and I could go on. Now the language is different. If you have a chance to see the film Trick or Treaty? you're going to feel it. It's the will of people who are quite young who have gone through very, very difficult times. Suicide and alcoholism, and the drugs that enter the communities are a very big problem. Now there's a rejection of all that. And I'd like to give some examples. I interviewed a lot of young people. Some of them were in very disturbing places, like belonging to gangs that would do horrifying things. Now, these young people are talking to me in a different way. When we were in the 60s, we used to say, "We are the Seventh Generation." The prophecy said the Seventh Generation were the ones; it would be the young people who would save our people." But I say it is now. I'll give you an example. You know last year and the year before we had so much trouble. You must have heard of the hunger strike with Chief Theresa Spence and all the fights with the government. And that's when the Idle No More movement started because of Bill C45 and Bill C38. And up north on the Quebec side, in Whapmagoostui, this young guy who was 15 or 16 at the time, he was listening to the news. He was so fed up, he said, "I'm going to walk to Ottawa from Whapmagoostui." That's what they used to call Great Whale. It's the end of the treeline, it's subarctic. And he said this to the community and they said, "No, you can't go there on your own, let's have a meeting and we'll decide." And five other young people said they were going to go with him, along with a guide. While they were walking they were stopping at all the communities on the way, all the way to Ottawa. When they started to walk with snowshoes, it was 56 degrees below zero. He said to me he was walking and he turned his ankle and he said it was so painful he was crying from the pain. So the guide said, "David, you cannot continue walking like this. Come and sit on this skidoo until we get to the other community." He said, "I never sat on the skidoo. I told myself, "My parents, my grandparents, my ancestors didn't have a skidoo and they had to put up with whatever happens on the land when you have hardship." He said, "I took off my snowshoes and I used them as crutches and I walked." And this is the kind of language that these young people are talking. And it's even more profound than just words. It's a feeling. We're going some place else. I'm positive of it. I'm going to be 83 this month, on the 31s' of August, and I feel I am receiving such a gift that in my lifetime I will have seen big changes coming from this generation. And it is so strong. I want you to know--feel good for us. Because I think we're going some place we've never been before. And it's our young people who are doing this. [The panelists are all moved to tears.]

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Tracey: It's happy tears. It's happy, hopeful, exciting.

Jason: It is indeed, and it just speaks to the power of the work that you do, that your peers do. Where historically, our education system has failed us, our government has failed us, and the media have failed us, it's really incumbent on artists like you to tell the stories that people want to hear and need to hear. So much please join me in thanking our wonderful guests for all their generosity and their time and their thoughts. [The panel concludes to sustained applause.]