Rhymes for Young Ghouls with Jess Murwin: The Re-release

This week, we're re-releasing our episode on Rhymes for Young Ghouls with special guest Jess Murwin! If you can, please join us in donating to The Native Women's Collective -- https://www.nativewomenscollective.org/

Follow Jess on Instagram at @jessmurwin

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
On the Bechdelcast.

Speaker 2 (00:02):
The questions asked if movies have.

Speaker 3 (00:04):
Women and them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands,
or do they have individualism? It's the patriarchy, zeph and
best start changing with the Bechdel Cast.

Speaker 4 (00:16):
Hello Bechdel Cast listeners. Hello, here we are.

Speaker 1 (00:21):
Bet you didn't expect to hear us today. Well here
we are. Well, here we are fake holiday. So we're
clocking in.

Speaker 4 (00:28):
We're clocking in, and we are re releasing an episode
on Rhymes fore Young Gruls, which we recorded back in
twenty twenty, kind of in the height of lockdown, if
I remember correctly.

Speaker 1 (00:40):
Yes, In fact, the day this episode originally came out,
I was arrested at a protest. Just to set us
in time and place. I had kind of a fun
physical response to revisiting this.

Speaker 4 (00:53):
Episode, right, yes, oh my gosh. So yeah, we're re
releasing this episode on the day that a lot of
people still observe as American Thanksgiving, which which these days,
I you know. More, it is more widely understood that
the popular narrative around this quote unquote holiday is completely false,

(01:16):
and that it actually celebrates genocide and settler colonialism.

Speaker 1 (01:21):
Is very much in conversation with Columbus Day for that
same reason.

Speaker 4 (01:27):
You know, the the.

Speaker 1 (01:28):
American celebration of genocide that is just really relentless. I
agree that, like people are coming around to acknowledging it,
but it's.

Speaker 5 (01:36):
Still you know, it's here, it is, and I.

Speaker 1 (01:41):
We wanted to both re release an episode that we
really love with a guest that you if you're a
longtime listener of the show, you're very familiar with Jess
Merwin talking about an indigenous film that does not shy
away from these themes and is very rooted in Canadian
reservation schools. So if you haven't seen the movie yet,

(02:04):
this is a great week to maybe watch the movie
and then listen to our conversation. But we wanted to
just yeah, pop in at the top and make a
few notes in about the half decade that's passed.

Speaker 4 (02:18):
Indeed. Yes, So during this episode we talk about a
media metric called the Ala Test that was inspired by
the main character of this movie and that was originated
by friend of the show, Ali Noddy. Since this episode
was released, that test has been renamed to the Ali
Naughty Test. So if you're trying to look up the

(02:41):
Ala Test or whatever, the name has changed, but it's
the same metric that examines representation of Indigenous women in media.

Speaker 1 (02:51):
So shout out Ali. We love Ali she Rocks.

Speaker 4 (02:54):
Be sure to check her out on social media her
YouTube channel. She's doing excellent work. And then we wanted
to provide a content warning because both our discussion and
the context of the movie involve things like sexual and
physical violence, child sex abuse, suicide, just so listeners are

(03:18):
aware of that.

Speaker 1 (03:20):
Absolutely, and also for what it's worth, Unfortunately, since we
recorded this, the filmmaker has passed. Jeff Barnaby passed away
a couple of years ago. Yeah, so yeah, definitely. I mean,
as you'll hear, it's a movie that we have a
lot of love for and also for what it's worth,
I mean, we fully intent and would love to hear
other Indigenous and Native filmmakers that you would like for

(03:42):
us to cover on the show. This is not something
that we want to just discuss once a year, and
so if you have requests for or just favorite indigenous filmmakers,
If you are an Indigenous filmmaker and would like to
come on the show, just reach out d m us.
That's honestly the easiest way to do it yeah on Instagram,
and yes, if you are with family today, best of

(04:07):
luck with that. And yeah, and also that we are
going to be making a contribution this week to the
Native Women's Collection. Will also you know, we can link
that in the description as well.

Speaker 4 (04:20):
Absolutely. In the meantime, please enjoy this slightly abridged version
of this episode. I went back through and just edited
a little bit and made sure we really focused on
the movie at hand and didn't go into tirades about
me talking about cat nipples, for example, So that stuff

(04:43):
from the original episode has been trimmed out a bit.

Speaker 1 (04:48):
But but listen to the original if you want the
full cut.

Speaker 4 (04:52):
It's so true. But yeah, enjoy this re released episode
on Rhymes for Young Guls cast.

Speaker 1 (04:59):
Yeah, I'm really excited for today's episode and for our guest.

Speaker 4 (05:03):
Yes, our guest today is a non binary, mixed race
MIGMA artist, curator and educator. Their work focuses on reclaiming
narrative space and fusing genre with social justice and holding
space collaboration. You also might have heard and seen them
on our recent live reading of Twilight. It is Jess Merwin.

Speaker 2 (05:26):
Hi, Hi, welcome, Thank you for having me. I this
is like a dream come true. Quite literally, this is wonderful.
I'm so happy to be here.

Speaker 4 (05:38):
Yay, We're so happy to have you.

Speaker 2 (05:40):
Yeah, I really like can't wait to talk about this,
this weird native movie that nobody's heard of.

Speaker 1 (05:49):
We're really excited to talk about it because it was
originally recommended to us by Ali, who spoke about it
when Ali came on to discuss Frozen two a couple
of months ago podcast. Canonically, I think, what is time?
I've lost all.

Speaker 4 (06:07):
Definitely is it.

Speaker 1 (06:12):
But yeah, Ali brought this movie to us originally, and
we were kind of tipped off about this movie.

Speaker 6 (06:20):
I guess we should just say the name of the movie.
I don't know what we're being No, it's a secret
about We were talking, of course, about Rhymes for Young Gules,
a Jeff Barnaby movie from twenty and thirteen, and the
reason we're talking about it with Ali was first of all,
because it's a movie that Ali's a big fan of,

(06:41):
but also because it was the basis for the Ala Test,
which is the test that Ali created.

Speaker 4 (06:48):
Yes, and we'll talk about that in a little bit,
But first, Jess, what's your relationship with Rhymes for Young Gules?

Speaker 2 (06:56):
Oh Man so growing up in like the eighties and
nineties as a mixed race like Migma kid. So I
don't I didn't grow up in Reserve, and I'm Migma
through my mother's mother, through my grandmother, and she had
been she was orphaned at a very young age, so
she didn't really grow up in a like a traditional

(07:19):
sort of way in terms of like learning how to
do a lot of like traditional Magma things. So, you know,
I was growing up with this like identity that was
very unresolved in a lot of ways, and I felt
like very conflicted about because it's you know, being white passing,
but also being like I'm also an indigenous person and

(07:39):
didn't really know how I like fit. And on top
of that, being queer and being trans and just dealing
with like a lot of other stuff meant that I
ended up feeling like I couldn't really like claim to anything.

Speaker 3 (07:54):
You know.

Speaker 2 (07:54):
It was just sort of like it's it's too much.
You can't be queer and native and you know, mentally ill,
it's just like too many things. So so when this
film came out, I had just been back in Canada
for a couple of years because I spent some time
living overseas and it was like, we have this expression

(08:19):
of trench. It's like a kut food, like a lightning strike,
and like we use it a lot, like when you're
like fall in love at first sight or when you
get like an idea, and it was almost like that
for seeing this film. You know, I was in my
sort of early twenties and just moved back to Canada
or like recent moved back to Canada and was sort
of like, oh my god, here's like a film about

(08:42):
Migma people with people speaking Magma and it's like the
first time that I'm ever seeing this, and all of
a sudden it sort of is like this way of
starting to reconnect with Magma culture, like all of a
sudden sort of like seeing this film and being like,
oh my god, there is this part of me that's
like that feels something so profound in just like hearing

(09:05):
people speak Migma and seeing that represented on the screen.
And then and we'll talk about this a little bit,
but there was so much other stuff going on in
terms of like indigenous rights and Indigenous culture at that time,
and so it was like this was really the catalyst
for me like reconnecting in a big way to yeah,
to to sort of like Migmaness.

Speaker 4 (09:27):
That's incredible and one of so many examples we see
of why representation is so important.

Speaker 1 (09:38):
It's amazing.

Speaker 4 (09:39):
Yeah, my relationship with this movie is it was not
super on my radar until I knew about.

Speaker 1 (09:47):
A few months Blood Quantum. I did not know about
rhymes for youngl How did you.

Speaker 2 (09:52):
Know about bood Quantum, Jamie.

Speaker 4 (09:54):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (09:55):
I think it was just I was paying closer attention
to movies that were coming out last year than I
was in twenty thirteen and twenty fourteen. But then when
Ali brought up rhymes for young gouls instead of with
the same director, I was like, oh and cool. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (10:10):
I think we did have a couple listeners as well
recommend this movie to us, So it's been on our
kind of watch list, our list of movies to cover.

Speaker 1 (10:19):
Yeah, I think for our like horror movies last year
in the request it popped up a couple of times,
and maybe that was why I was familiar with it.

Speaker 4 (10:26):
Yeah, but I'm happy to have seen the movie now.
I watched it three times. But yeah, I'm so excited
to talk about it. Should we dive into the recap? Yeah,
let's do it all, right, So we open with text

(10:47):
at the beginning describing the law in Canada that states
that every Indigenous child between the age of five and
sixteen must attend an Indian residential school. There are true
ruined officers who more or less police the schools and
the community, and who are responsible for bringing into custody

(11:08):
more or less any child who is absent from school,
and they are allowed to use force to do.

Speaker 2 (11:14):
That, any force that they see necessary.

Speaker 4 (11:17):
Yeah, yep, So we're starting off.

Speaker 1 (11:21):
Chill legal wording that was Yeah, yep.

Speaker 2 (11:25):
So that's an excerpt from the Indian Act. And we
can talk a little bit more about this in terms
of like context for the film, because there's a lot
to talk about because it's an act that's been around
since essentially the beginning of Canada, since confederation in eighteen
sixty seven, and it still exists today. So that's cool.

(11:49):
But yeah, so that's an actual law that essentially governs
all of the federal government's interactions with Indigenous people. So
to say it's racist is a little bit of an understatement.
And this kind of like opening package that Jeff is
chosen here kind of helps like highlight a lot of

(12:09):
the issues with the Indian.

Speaker 1 (12:10):
Act, absolutely, and I feel like we goofy Americans have
a tendency to really romanticize Canada as this place of
justice that it you know, clearly is not. And so
I mean, even just from the beginning frame of the movie,
you're just like, yeah, no, we are desperate to feel

(12:33):
a way about Canada that is not true.

Speaker 2 (12:37):
No, no. And it's one of those things too that like,
you know, don't get me wrong, we have like legal
weed and free healthcare, so pretty you know, things are
pretty good. But on the other hand, yeah, we do
still have a lot of the systemic racism and discrimination
that exists in the United States, and like Canadians are
you know, aren't necessarily all like super polite and super

(13:00):
for you know, courteous, Like there's I think that we
have this sort of angel complex with regards to the
rest of the world where we're like, oh, we're perfect,
We're not the United States, and it's like.

Speaker 1 (13:10):
Oh, the bar is on the floor, like.

Speaker 2 (13:15):
All the Native people in the back are like, m well,
I don't know about that.

Speaker 1 (13:21):
Yeah, have you read that law lately?

Speaker 2 (13:23):
Yeah? Or even just the fact that like since this
year there's been like a half dozen high profile killings
of Indigenous people, either at the hands of police or
at the hands of our medical system. You know that
sins like January horrifying.

Speaker 4 (13:39):
So yeah, So we open on the movie. It is
nineteen sixty nine. We are on a fictional reserve called
the Red Crow Indian Reservation. We meet a Migma family,
including young Ala. She's a little girl who loved to

(13:59):
try and she usually draws kind of like morbid horror
imagery of like zombies and ghoules and whatnot. She has
a little brother, Tyler. We meet her mother, Anna, and
her father Joseph, as well as her uncle Berner. They
are all drug dealers on the reserve. When then one night,

(14:21):
the adults they're all smoking weed, they're drinking heavily, and
then a bunch of tragic things happen kind of all
at once, where AILA's mother accidentally kills her little brother
Tyler in a drunk driving accident, and then her mother
kills herself. Her father takes the blame for it and

(14:42):
is taken away to prison.

Speaker 2 (14:44):
So that's put in like the first ten minutes of
this movie that we're talking about on a humorous podcast.
You know, and it doesn't. I think that there's like
a lot of stuff even in that that we should
talk about in terms of like pictions of Indians using
drugs and being broken. But again, like all of these

(15:05):
parentheses are kind of like paragraphs, So it might make
more sense to finish with like the plot smur and
then get into it because otherwise, yeah, it's like, right,
we got things to say.

Speaker 4 (15:18):
It is so much.

Speaker 1 (15:19):
It is quite a bit of trauma in I think
ninety seconds. Yeah, it all happens very very very quickly.

Speaker 4 (15:27):
Yeah, and then there continues to be trauma after this.
Oh yeah, yes, So we cut to seven years later.
It is now the mid seventies. A La played by
Davey Jacobs is now a teenager living with her uncle Berner,
and we also learned that Berner is kind of a
snitch in the community where he kind of rats out

(15:49):
his fellow man on the reserve to these white truant officers,
the main one of those being this guy named Popper,
and Popper comes to collect quote truant taxes, which are
basically this family bribing him so that the kids don't
have to go to the nearby residential school. And we

(16:14):
will also provide a lot of context in our discussion
about residential schools and that system, but it's know that
it's a place that you don't want to go. So
ALA's friends Solo and Angus tell her that Solo had
gotten robbed by Stripper and can't pay the truant tax,

(16:38):
and Aila realizes that Popper kind of set up this
whole thing. And this I might need a little bit
of clarification on my kind of assumption, was that Popper
did that kind of like orchestrated this whole setup and
like robbed them so that they wouldn't be able to
pay the bribe so that he could justify sending them
to the school.

Speaker 2 (16:58):
Is that Yeah, I think that's that's sort of the idea.
And I think that also has to do with the
fact that Joseph is coming out of prison. Like essentially
Popper sets up Burner in that first sort of scene
where he's like they're at the fish Mitten and he's like,
thanks for telling us you're here, so they'll get the
shit kicked out of him by guys in the community,
so that like Joseph will come home and stay in line, okay, right,

(17:21):
And so that's also part of like why Popper would
steal their money is because then you know, he can
get Scholo and Angus and Aila, you know, scoop them
up and take them to the to Saint Demfinas to
the residential school. That's sort of again like a way
of sort of being like you know, and this will
keep Joseph in.

Speaker 4 (17:41):
Line, got it right, because he gets released from prison.
And we also meet Cyrus, a kind of grandmother figure
for Aila, and she tells a story about a wolf
that's kind of delirious and ends a beautiful animal.

Speaker 1 (18:00):
Yeah right, but I didn't. I didn't.

Speaker 4 (18:03):
I was.

Speaker 1 (18:03):
I love when I don't see an animated sequence coming
and then it hasn't been beautiful. I loved it.

Speaker 4 (18:09):
There's one. There's one like that in Blood Quantum too.
That's really cool.

Speaker 1 (18:12):
Oh cool.

Speaker 2 (18:13):
And in both of the cases, like Jeff's using it
as a way to sort of like insert some of
the like oral tradition and like the way that like
our traditional storytelling works and sort of differentiate and distinguish
it from the rest of the story.

Speaker 4 (18:32):
Right, you know.

Speaker 2 (18:33):
And it's really interesting because like talking about the animation, I,
you know, I also as an animator, like love those sequences,
and yeah, I think I think some people sort of
when they first saw the movie were like, I don't
get it. I don't get why there's like an animated sequence.
It's like, nah, you just got to like experience it
as part of the film, you know.

Speaker 4 (18:49):
Like, Yeah, so we hear this story about a wolf
that is like kind of ruaming the land. It's delirious
and it ends up eating itself, which I'm interested to
kind of talk about like thematic implications of that later on.
But so Aila decides to steal the money back that
got robbed from them, and we also at this around

(19:12):
this time, reveal that Aila has now gotten into this
drug business ever since her father left for prison, and
her dad, Joseph, comes back and is like kind of disappointed,
disappointed to learn that Berner let her get into all this.
But because she's an artist, she's like a really skilled
kind of crafts person of like rolling the joints and

(19:35):
like flavoring them and like lacing them and stuff.

Speaker 1 (19:39):
Yeah, I was like, damn, she's cool.

Speaker 4 (19:41):
Yeah, she's so very cool.

Speaker 2 (19:45):
It's also she doesn't like one of the things that
keeps coming back, like and even one of the things
that like in that scene, you know, Berner's like been
drinking and smoking and stuff like that. She's like, you
can't roll for shit, Like she doesn't. She never, like
she doesn't spoke weed. And that's like also part of
like that gas mask is like this idea of sort

(20:05):
of like yeah, she's she's also sort of like not
she's part of this world, but she's not like in
that world in the same functioning, in the same way
as the people around her.

Speaker 4 (20:15):
She's not gonna be a wolf who eats herself. She's
not gonna destroy herself. Yeah. So Ala pitches this plan
to her friend's Sholoh and Angus that they break into
the nearby residential school Saint Dez is what they like
nickname it, and they're gonna steal their money back from Popper.
So she orchestrates this heist. She draws a map. There's

(20:39):
this little kid, jujij who I think does he attend
the school? Yeah, and and he will kind of be
theres like the inside man. He's the man on the inside.

Speaker 1 (20:49):
I think he's like ten.

Speaker 2 (20:51):
I don't know what that kid is doing now, but
oh my god, what a sweet kid, like I know,
a star.

Speaker 4 (20:57):
He always calls a La boss.

Speaker 3 (20:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (20:59):
He's like, well, what now, boss, I yeah, and Tuci
is like, A, I don't know if that would be
like his given name, because that's like a nickname mgma
oh okay, which means like like little bug or little thing.

Speaker 1 (21:13):
Ah, I'm as stand yeah.

Speaker 4 (21:18):
So meanwhile, Ala is having some dreams and visions of
her dead mother and brother, sometimes as zombies, sometimes not,
but this is kind of like a recurring visual motif
throughout the film. And then one day Ala is out
with her dad and they have this violent run in
with Popper and his cronies because Berner sold them out

(21:40):
to Popper and let them know about ALA's plan to
break into the school. So Popper's like, you wanted to
go into the school, fine, now you're you're there. So
he sends her there as punishment, but and correct me
if I'm mistaken, But it feels like that's kind of
part of her plan. She gets sent there on purpose
so that she can also kind of be on the inside.
Or I might be wrong about that. I'm not totally sure.

Speaker 2 (22:02):
The thing, you know what I've gone over the years,
I've gone back and forth on it, honestly. Caitlin like
I feel like when I first saw the film, I
was like, Oh, this is definitely like like she's improvising,
sort of like this wasn't her plan. And I sort
of feel like now when I'm seeing it, I'm like,
I feel like this was part of her plan in
a way, because Jiuji knows to come and let her
out of the hole. Uh huh, right, yeah, So like

(22:25):
I think that it was her plan, right.

Speaker 1 (22:27):
I was also questioning that because I was like, if
if that was her plan? Galaxy brain genius, right, like,
because the first time I watched the movie, it didn't
even occur to me. But then on the second watch,
I was like, wait, she's so smart that it didn't
even occur to me that that might have been intentional.

Speaker 2 (22:47):
Right, But I also think that it sort of like
speaks to the character that Aila is, and like because
I think in a way that she she talks about
aging a thousand years, and I think that like after
her mother, and I think that there is a certain
wisdom in that character that's sort of outpaced with her age,
you know, And and like at the end of the film,

(23:09):
you know, Joseph says to her, like, you know, I
just want you to know, you're a little girl. Yeah,
and she's like, I was never a little girl. I
think that there is a certain she knows that Berner
is gonna crack under pressure and wrap them out, like yeah,
and she knows that like there's a there's a chance
of that. So I think that she's kind of got
some ideas in her head. She knows that they're not

(23:31):
supposed to go out on the water. They've been out
on the water, you know, so I think that I
think it is planned.

Speaker 4 (23:37):
Mm hmmmmm. She also like engages in that fight where
she could have just like stood back, and I think maybe, like,
oh if she if she's fighting there, that's going to
be all the more reason that they might send her
to the school. For sure. In any case she gets
sent there, they cut her hair off, they put her
in solitary confinement.

Speaker 2 (23:57):
That's it. Like that's the scene that still and I've
seen this film so many times now throughout the years,
I still cry every time I watch that scene. That
scene is so hard to watch because they used to
do that to people, you know, yeah, and for us,
like your hair is really sacred because it's your connection
back to like the earth, so I'm tearing up now
even talking about it. So like the you know, that

(24:19):
was one of the things that they always used to
do when the kids were taking to residential schools, as
they would cut off their braids. And I was doing
this project with a bunch of youth up north here
in Quebec, where we were creating this like woven tapestry,
and it was all made up of these different like
lengths of braid that were woven together into this like
five x ten tapestry. And we had this one elder

(24:43):
who came and sat with us one day and was
like telling us about her residential school experience and was
talking about how seeing all these braids woven together was
like so powerful to her because and this was not,
you know, not something I had really thought about beforehand,
but she was talking about how like, you know, you
would see all the hair too, like after all the
kids had had their haircut off, just like swept to

(25:04):
the side, you know, like all these braids like on
the ground. So it holds a lot of cultural significance
in that way.

Speaker 1 (25:11):
Yeah, that scene was Yeah, that scene was devastating.

Speaker 2 (25:16):
And also if you don't really know whether she planned
or not to get sent to Saint Diffin as all
of a sudden, You're like, our hero is in this peril.
You know, you don't know what's going to happen to
her next.

Speaker 4 (25:25):
Right, so it's either like a huge deliberate sacrifice or
just her kind of falling victim to these horrible circumstances.

Speaker 1 (25:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (25:36):
Yeah, So while this is happening, her friend's sholo Angus.
And then there's another friend of theirs who I'd never
caught the name of Maytag. Is that Maytag? Okay? Yeah,
so they are prepping for this heist and they go
into the school, they break Ala out, they rig up

(25:58):
the plumbing so that literal human shit comes out when
Papper turns on the shower, which satisfying.

Speaker 6 (26:07):
Yeah, so satisfying, really good stuff, and like a whole
bunch of like male full frontal nudity.

Speaker 2 (26:16):
Not that it was like you were wanting it, that's sailing,
but it's like this independent Canadian film where you get
to see like a whole lot of dick there.

Speaker 1 (26:25):
Like to see a little bit of shit raining on
full frontal nudity.

Speaker 4 (26:31):
Right, You're just like you deserve this.

Speaker 2 (26:35):
Yeah, And it's just at the lowest moment in that
moment and you're just like, ah, so.

Speaker 4 (26:40):
Good that's been.

Speaker 1 (26:42):
That's been kind of a I feel like a discussion
that's been picking up in the last couple of years
of like how rare male nudity is shown period, and
then on top of that, when it is shown, like
the way it shown is never humiliating, which whatever speaks
to who making most movies. But it was that's true, right,

(27:03):
very satisfying to see him humiliated in such a like
primal way.

Speaker 2 (27:08):
I don't know, yeah, oh totally, and especially because you
you've sort of spent the entire movie up to this
point just watching him and his goons kick the shit
at everybody, you know, and it's like I remember seeing this.
So when I originally saw this film, I saw it
at a festival, and at that point the film when
Hopper's like lying on the bathroom floor covered in shit

(27:31):
just like I'm gonna get you people that the audience
were like cheering. It was amazing, you know, it was
like the end of Get Out. People were like full
on like being like yeah.

Speaker 1 (27:44):
Oh my gosh, yeah, this would have been a cool
movie to see in theaters. Yeah, god damn it.

Speaker 2 (27:49):
It was. It got a really limited release. So I
was fortuned to see end a festival. But we'll talk
about that. That's that's also something we need to like, Yeah,
I think people need to think about sometime for sure.

Speaker 4 (28:01):
Yeah, definitely. So he's covered in shit. Meanwhile, they steal
the money out of his safe and run away. They
get away with I think twenty thousand dollars. But when
Aila gets back home, she finds out that her grandmother, Sarahs,
has been killed by Popper's thugs. And then when Popper

(28:22):
comes for Aila, he beats her. He's about to rape her,
but then little Jujij shows up with a gun and
another very cathartic moment blows Popper's head off. AILA's father
takes the fall for it again. He gets carted off
to prison again, and then the story ends with a

(28:44):
it is that a family friend or a relative juicegu
or juicegu? I wasn't sure. Oh the old man, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (28:52):
Yeah, yeah, so he's like he's like a family friend. Okay,
there's a lot of like on small reserves. We always
joked that it's like, well, everybody's related like somehow. It's
like they're probably related.

Speaker 4 (29:05):
Somehow, like right, Yeah, he was the guy who earlier
in the story had also there was talk of him
having aged a thousand years because he had gone to
fight in World War Two and came back like a
thousand years older because he had like lied about his age,
saying he was older than he was to be able
to fight and then you know, experience a trauma of

(29:26):
war and then came back.

Speaker 2 (29:28):
And he gives Aila a really interesting piece of advice
during that conversation too that they're having when they talk
about him being a thousand years older, because he's the
only other character that we here referred to in that way,
and he says this thing that I ended up picking
up on and I ended up reading a couple of
articles about it too, of like, you know, he's like
courages sometimes moving with the dead, you know, like as

(29:51):
like bodies were sort of piling up. You know, it's
like you have to keep moving. And I think that
that's almost an interesting like thesis point, I think, or
like what AILA's doing in a certain way of sort
of like despite everything, like having to like keep moving forward,
Like you know, they are going to be casualties along
the way, but it's like you have to keep moving forward.

(30:12):
Because otherwise you're one of them, you know, right. So yeah,
so he's an interesting character. He pops up a little
bit in Blood Quantum too. It's interesting because Blood Quantum
also takes place on the Red Crow Reserve and yes,
but in like a parallel universe.

Speaker 4 (30:29):
So because the Fish Mittens Strip Club is also in
Blood Quantum.

Speaker 1 (30:34):
Yeah, I love an expanded universe, that's the right.

Speaker 2 (30:38):
Yeah. So so there's like these interesting sort of like
crossover points that kind of happen where like and a
lot of the folks I think in the film weren't actors.
I think that like some of them are just like
people who maybe had a little bit of like outside
of like the main cast, who are like Canadian indigenous,
like Film Royalty. Glenn Gould has been in everything like

(30:58):
you don't make it like you don't make a Native
film in Canada and not include Glenn Gould because what
are you doing? Who plays Joseph in the film.

Speaker 1 (31:06):
He's incredible. I mean that like the scene that I think, like,
I mean stuck out to be I'm sure everybody was.
The scene at his wife's grave was just so oh
holy shit, It's just like, yeah, he was, He's incredible.

Speaker 4 (31:22):
Yeah, okay, So then this character shows up who we've
seen here, and there is just saying like Aila, I
don't want you. I don't want you to work in
this drug trade anymore. And she's like, good, I don't
want to either. And then Juji the little Boy comes
back and he's like, okay, now what do we do boss?
And she's like, I don't know. And that's how the

(31:45):
movie ends. Let's take a quick break and then we'll
come back for discussion, and we're back.

Speaker 1 (32:02):
Yes, where shall we begin?

Speaker 4 (32:06):
Well, I think it's probably helpful to provide some historical
context for the residential school system, because you really have
to have an understanding of what that is to appreciate
the events of this film and why the characters are
doing everything that they do to not have to go

(32:26):
to a residential school for sure.

Speaker 2 (32:28):
And I think that it'd be good too to talk
a little bit about the a little bit about reserves,
and a little bit about the Indian Act, because I
think that there's like there's layers to this, right, It's
not just the residential school, it's like it's everything, you know,
And this time watching it through too, where I was
thinking a lot about like the violence in the film

(32:50):
and thinking about how it's sort of it's incessant, like
it's just like around every corner, like ALA's just biking
down the road at one point and like somebody like
comes out of nowhere and punch and like yeah, and
that's you know, such a visual metaphor for I think
what it feels like sometimes to be a like a
marginalized person, whether it's you know, your you're black, Indigenous,

(33:12):
or like a person of color, or whether you're trans
or whether you're I think that there's like a sense
sometimes of like things can come out of nowhere and
kind of like knock you on your ass. So uh, yeah,
just to talk a little bit about and like feel
free to jump in too. But yeah, so talk to
talk a little bit about the Indian Act because that's
kind of where it all starts off, right. So the

(33:33):
Indian Act was officially passed in eighteen seventy six. I
hope there's no like Canadian history buffs who are like
like checking my because like it's the one like I
can remember meeting a person ten years ago for like
fifteen minutes, but I cannot rumber dates.

Speaker 1 (33:50):
For the life well most of our most of our
listenership are Canadian history scholars.

Speaker 4 (33:55):
So yes, but I do believe that date is correct. Yes,
I have that in my notes as well.

Speaker 2 (34:02):
Awesome. Yeah So, but before that there had been sort
of a patchwork of different colonial laws that had existed,
and then sort of when Canada became like a country
as opposed to sort of different like sort of colonies,
you know, like between like New France and Upper Canada
and Lower Canada, then it was sort of brought into
law in a sort of more official sense. And the

(34:24):
Indian Act. The short version of the Indian Act is
that it was legislation that was designed to very literally
like legislate out of existence indigenous people, and it did
that through a number of ways. So the residential schools,
which we'll talk more about, were part of the Indian Act.
This idea that you'll civilize and, abusing air quotes, you'll

(34:48):
civilize indiangenous children and assimilate them into Canadian society. The
Indian Act also, you know, targeted women. So if you
were an Indigenous woman and you married a non indigenous man,
you lost your status and indigenous status our native status
which exists in the United States as well, is sort

(35:11):
of like your only pathway for being able to access
things like on reserve housing, like certain like educational scholarships
and benefits and things like that are only accessible through
your status card. There's other services and things like that
that are only accessible through your status card. So losing
your status, you know, was a big deal, and so

(35:31):
we often refer to when women married non indigenous men
has happened a lot in the you know, early days
of Canada as marrying out because it was essentially like, well,
now you're out of the culture, goodbye, one less Indian.
And you know, there were other things like the Indian
Act did. You couldn't leave the reserve to get a

(35:53):
higher education. You couldn't just like leave the reserve togotiate
a doctor. There was a whole system of passes that
Indigenous people had to have for a long time, Like
it was essentially like a passport that said like okay,
I'm leaving my reserve now, and that you know, there
was no thought given to It's like okay, well we
don't have a hospital on reserve. I have to leave

(36:14):
the reserve to go to the hospital, or even just
like I want to go visit a friend on a
different reserve, like you'd have to like have that passport
signed off on by the Indian agent, who could also
say no. So people's movement was really controlled. People's lives
were really controlled. And like I said, you know, disproportionately.
The Indian Act targeted children and women through things like

(36:37):
the residential school system, through things like losing status if
you married out, which wasn't applied to men. If men,
if Indigenous men married non Indigenous women, their non Indigenous
wives would get status and all their children would get status.

Speaker 1 (36:50):
Oh and they were able to remain a part of
their communities. Yeah, Jesus Christ.

Speaker 2 (36:57):
So like it's not even like, uh, it's so blatant.
It's almost like a bond villain who's like, and then
I'm going to set up the laser and then it's
going to catch you in half, and then I'm going
to take over the world. It's like the Canadian government
essentially said from the beginning, we don't want any more
Indigenous people, and this is what we're gonna do to

(37:17):
get rid of them. However, the double edged sword of
the Indian of the Indian Act, you know, and you're
I can imagine it's sort of like, well, if it's
so terrible and so sexist and so racist, just get
rid of it. Unfortunately, it's really one of the major
legislative tools that we have in Canada as Indigenous people

(37:38):
to be able to hold the federal government accountable because
it defines what an Indigenous person is, so which is
just like magnitudes of frustrating.

Speaker 1 (37:50):
Yeah, absolutely so.

Speaker 2 (37:53):
Originally, and this ties into the film. In nineteen sixty nine,
Pierre Elliott Trudeau, who Justin Trudeau's daddy, was Prime Minister
at the time, and he introduced this essentially this act
that would have gotten rid of the Indian Act. This
is so this is nineteen sixty nine. This paper ended

(38:15):
up becoming called the White Paper, and it was this
really catalyzing moment for a lot of what we call
red power or like an Indigenous like civil rights movement
sort of stuff began happening because you know, people were
really hit to the idea that like, if we get
rid of the status of Indian, which is what it
would have been called at the time, then the government

(38:36):
doesn't legally have any enforceable responsibility towards Indians. If Indians
don't exist, they don't exist. Does that make sense right?

Speaker 1 (38:46):
I'm sure, yes, it makes sense the way you're explaining it.
It's just okay that that's so. There's so many layers
of mind fuckery going on.

Speaker 2 (38:56):
Oh yeah, it's a whole like it's a whole terror
issue of like fucked up, which is terrible. I shouldn't
do that to Terra Massu Taaramasus.

Speaker 1 (39:05):
Delightful will recovery.

Speaker 2 (39:09):
Tarasu's got a good rap, you know, I feel like
it can come back from this. But yeah, so so
what the solution has sort of become, you know, is
because we can't get rid of the Indian Act, it's
sort of amend it and a lot of these amendments,
I think sort of the most recent big push of amendments.
There's little things going through all the time, but I
think two thousand and two was like a big push

(39:31):
of like a whole bunch of amendments to it. In
the eighties, we had a big push of amendments that
allowed women who had lost their status through marriage to
get their status back, which was a huge thing. You know.
I had I have a friend who you know, at
that point in time, was already you know, like a
teenager and she talks about how important it was like

(39:53):
that moment when her mom gets status back, which meant
that she could get status, and like because even though
it isn't like like having status is not what makes
you an indigenous person, sure it still can feel like
a very significant thing in terms of belonging. Sure, you know,
of course, yeah, so is this whole sort of mess. Unfortunately,

(40:14):
and the Indian agents, like we see Popper in the film,
were the enforcers of this incredibly racist law. So Indian
agents had total, like unchecked control. It was like even
worse in some ways than sort of like you know
how we talk about like, oh, you know, the sheriff
and the Old West, and you know, they could sort
of make up the rules as they go along. Indian
agents were sort of that, except they were white, racist assholes. So,

(40:38):
you know, I've read different things over the years about
like people talking about how like, oh, well, is Popper's
attitude and behavior a little bit extreme. It's like, well,
like some of the stuff did happen, Like some of
the stuff we know has happened because we've heard stories
from people and it's also been documented. You know, By
the time that we get to the late sixties early seventies,

(41:00):
the Indian agents were starting to be phased out because
we were starting to move into a new period in
terms of like the Indian Act, and like I said,
some of those like big changes that were to come
in the eighties, but at the time, we still had
Indian agents that were quite sort of literally allowed to
do whatever the fuck they wanted with impunity. You had

(41:21):
Indian agents in the States as well, and they were
this may be chuckle, not because it's funny, but because
it's sort of again Macavelian. The original Indian agents were
under the US War Department initially, which is like very blatantly.

Speaker 1 (41:39):
Like could you be any less like clear about how
you feel? Yeah, Jesus Christ.

Speaker 2 (41:47):
Yeah. So so, But what happened with the Indian agents
and the States is as we moved through the eighteen
hundreds and into the nineteen hundreds, they sort of transitioned
into being superintendents for what the AMIC equivalent of residential
schools is the Indian boarding school system, and they were
that position shifted into more of a civilian role later on,

(42:09):
but yeah, it was it was like a government Department
of War position. It was essentially like I brought up
in the Twilight Reading it was to swindle people out
of their land whatever way you could, And yeah, it
was it was about like this idea of like manifest destiny.
You know, it's like, well, we've we've arrived and now

(42:30):
it's ours. Like yeah, So that's a little bit of
a background on the Indian Act and so, like I said,
the residential school system was established as part of the
Indian Act under the mandate of kill the Indian and
educate the child sort of thing, which is just like
a real cool, chill sentiment to have. And so they

(42:53):
started out, you know, we had Jesuit schools, especially coming
into like New France, oh sort of what is like
Nova Scotia and Brunswick like part of Quebec, like New
England sort of area. So we would have had like
early Jesubit schools, and like you know, those were a
little bit less rigorously sort of organized than those that

(43:13):
are mostly we're in the sixteen hundreds, some in the
seventeen hundreds. But like I said, it functioned a lot
more sort of like what's that word as a missionary
sort of effort. Like it was like we're gonna go
on Christianize.

Speaker 1 (43:27):
Sure, there's nothing colonial about this, No.

Speaker 2 (43:31):
We're just talking about Jesus. And it's really interesting because
we from that the Migmah converted to Christianity in sixteen
oh four, and like a lot of that had to
do with the presence of like Jesuit missionaries in Mgmagi
in Migma Terratory at the time. But moving out of
that period, moving into the moving into the nineteenth century

(43:53):
is when we sort of get officially into the like
what we call the residential school period. And these were
schools that were government funded, managed by Christian churches. So
there was like different denominations that were involved. The Roman
Catholic Church was a big one of course, but like
there were Presbyterians, I think, Anglican Anglicans. Yeah, the Church

(44:16):
of England was very big just kind of not facilitating
getting all tripped up on my words, but like essentially
administering the school. So like they were all run by
nuns and priests and like layered clergy as sort of
like the only attendance at the school. And we estimate
that about one hundred and fifty thousand children Indigenous children

(44:39):
in Canada went to residential school.

Speaker 1 (44:42):
And is it safe to I just for our listeners
who are not fully clear and what the intent was.
The intent of the school is to take your culture
from you and replace it with something else.

Speaker 2 (44:55):
Yeah, it was essentially that it was this idea that like,
like I said, you know, like it's the idea of
like killing the Indian through education. So you'd be taken
away from your community, you'd be taken out of your language,
so you only spoke English. At residential school. They would
cut off your braids much like we see in the movie.
You'd be wearing Western clothing. You'd only be educated, educated

(45:20):
in sort of like European centric like history and like
customs and mannerisms. In the States more than in Canada,
there was also like this idea of vocational training. But yeah,
it was about westernizing indigenous Indigenous kids because they were
seen as being savages.

Speaker 4 (45:40):
Yeah, I like it was forced assimilation. And then in
addition to that, it was also the like officials at
these schools inflicting severe amounts of emotional, physical, and sexual
abuse upon the children. A lot of children died in
the residential schoo system. Yeah. Throughout the years, there was

(46:03):
a lot of like malnutrition. I read I even read
some cases of like experiments being done on the children. Yeah,
and there was just like not really much education happening.
It was just abuse.

Speaker 2 (46:16):
No, And that's sort of the problem, right, is that
their primary goal was forced assimulation.

Speaker 1 (46:22):
You know.

Speaker 2 (46:22):
Their goal wasn't to sort of build young people up
so that they'd be able to stand in the world afterwards,
you know, like like one would hope that the education
system does to some degree. It was it was really
about like, you are bad, you are dirty. We're going
to make you clean and pure, and you know, we
can't bleach you, but will make you as white as possible.

(46:45):
You know. It decimated now that about six thousand children
died as a result of the regidential school system. However,
those numbers don't take into account well one, you know,
the records are not complete. A lot of schools as
they were shutting down, you know, especially in the eighties
and nineties, you know, burned records just like wholesale got

(47:08):
rid of stuff. Was like we don't know, graves were
often not marked. So there's been a whole process even
now sort of like trying to figure out like people
trying to figure out where their relatives are buried. Conditions
in the school were really terrible. You know, so kids
were not only dying of like malnutrition, but also disease,
also of abuse. Like at times the abuse would be

(47:33):
so severe, Like there was one case that I was
reading about where the children were routinely like electrocuted and
like small doses, and sometimes they would die because they
were like as a punishment being electrocuted.

Speaker 1 (47:46):
And that doesn't even take into account the I think
what we see through al as parents is like the
after effects of that abuse and how if you do
make it out, what is life like after that, know,
coping with all that Yeah, trauma, Oh exactly.

Speaker 2 (48:04):
And you know that's just it too. Like how many people,
you know, their whole lives have had to struggle with,
you know, the weight of that abuse. Have you know,
people who have died by suicide, Like, yeah, it's it's
it's a very hard thing to put a number on,
you know, the fatalities of people coming in through the

(48:24):
residential school system because it was this terrible, terrible, terrible,
terrible machine that just like like I said, you know,
was meant to get rid of what the Prime Minister
at the times for John A. MacDonald, which was he
was like very famous Canadian prime minister from my back
when Cannon was sort of created as a country. You know,
like he was like the Indian problem, Like people were

(48:45):
seen as a problem. It was like, oh, well, we'll
just get rid of them, you know. You know, we
talked about this a little bit before the phone call,
you know, YouTube were sort of saying, like, you didn't
learn anything about this in school. I learned a little
bit about this in school, but it's really only been
the last like couple generations that we've even started talking
about this openly. So the last residents of school in

(49:07):
Canada closed in nineteen ninety six. Yeah, you know, so
like there are people my age whose like parents went
to residential school, you know, and their aunties and uncles
and like we're really directly impacted by that. Yeah, and
we just didn't talk about it. We just didn't talk
about it. We'd like there was a sense that for

(49:28):
a really long time, even like in two thousand and nine,
the Prime Minister of Canada, Stephen Harper, was like Canada
doesn't have a colonial history, you know, like we don't
where everything's great, you know, when we start looking at
like the time in which the rhyme thrown guls is
coming out in a lot of ways. It was like
a big piece of media that was made about this terrible,

(49:49):
terrible system. And yeah, and so I think that a
lot of the violence and stuff that you see in
the film was really done with the idea of like
trying to convey just how distructive this was. You know,
was there anything, Caitlyn, I don't know if, like you
had mentioned that you had like a specific timeline for

(50:10):
residential schools. I kind of jumped all over the place.

Speaker 4 (50:13):
Oh sure, And I mean I think what you covered
was really helpful context. I have just some kind of
dates scattered through in some additional numbers. For example, like
the sixties scoop was this moment in history that was
actually several decades long where I think an estimated twenty

(50:35):
thousand Indigenous children were taken from their families and placed
into foster care or adoption homes, often with non Indigenous families.
This was happening from like the late fifties into the
nineteen eighties.

Speaker 2 (50:51):
Yeah, so I know folks who were scooped and like,
which is a weird way of putting it, but in
some cases it was literally like oh, you know, these
social workers arrived at your house and they loaded you
and your siblings in a car and then you never
saw your siblings again because you were all adopted by
different families, which you know, the term that we would
use for this now is child.

Speaker 1 (51:10):
Trafficking, you know, right absolutely.

Speaker 2 (51:14):
And this was a government this was government mandate that
this was like government endorsed. So that's another way in which,
like the Indian Act has been used to sort of
separate children from Indigenous communities, right is through things like
the sixties and seventies scoop, which really could be called
like you said, like started in the fifties and went
until the eighties.

Speaker 4 (51:35):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (51:35):
And now another thing too that has become that's gotten
a lot more attention in recent years and is something
that there's been a lot of call to abolish is
we call them birth alerts. So what can happen, unfortunately,
is that like social workers can essentially seize a newborn
from an Indigenous mother if they deem her to be

(51:58):
potentially not a good parent some way. It was a
couple of provinces have abolished these like birth alert systems,
but it's still upheld in Saskatchewan and I believe Alberta
as well here. So, yeah, so if you're an Indigenous woman,
giving birth in a hospital can be very risky because
if you're not, if they're like, oh you're kind of young,
you know, or are you a single mother? You know,

(52:21):
like essentially the staff will alert child Services and then
will come and take your child before even like the
drugs have worn off from the birth. You know, Like
it's a really, really horrific system.

Speaker 1 (52:35):
I also wanted to this was Unfortunately, as I was
watching this, I was reminded of a news item that
I read not too long ago in September around just
issues that would have certainly been affecting in particular forced

(52:55):
sterilization as well, which when I did a little more research,
I found out it peaked in the years that this
movie is covering. It peaked between nineteen sixty six and
nineteen seventy six. Over a thousand Indigenous women in Canada
were forced to be sterilized. And the reason that the
story is relevant right now is because it's still happening.

Speaker 2 (53:17):
Yeah, like you said, you know, it is still happening.
There's still a lot of pressure in terms of and
you know, in California as well, like there were a
lot of Indigenous women sterilized in California during the sixties
and seventies. Not that I'm picking on California. It just
happened to know these statistics of California. But yeah, it's
it's still going on today. There's still a lot of pressure,

(53:38):
especially if women like have any sort of even minor
health concerns. Like a lot of times, like there still
is this pressure of like, well you could just you know,
sterilize you. If women are incarcerated, there's also pressure. Yeah,
you know, it disproportionately affects the indigenous community of course
because of colonialism, because there is still huge bias unfortunately

(54:04):
with regards to with regards to Indigenous people.

Speaker 3 (54:08):
Mm hmm.

Speaker 1 (54:08):
Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (54:09):
Oh, I was gonna say in top of the sixties scoop,
if you want to know some other said statistics. I
feel like we're just like, oh, and this thing that's
also really depressing. So today talking to about the birth
alert system. You know, even though the last residential school
closed here in Canada in the in the nineties and
nineteen ninety six, which like spoiler alert, we were all alive.

(54:31):
Then wait, how.

Speaker 4 (54:32):
Old are you, Jamie?

Speaker 2 (54:33):
We were all alive. Then it was like Jamie's young, jamie'
J's scrappy.

Speaker 4 (54:38):
I was there, but yeah.

Speaker 2 (54:39):
So it's within our lifetimes, you know, and I think
that that's a really important thing to remember. However, a
lot of Indigenous folks will argue that the child deutrour
system has taken over the place of the residential schools
in terms of like taking kids out of communities. You know,
you have the birth alert system. You also just have
like tremendous like scrutiny and surveillance of Indigenous families. And

(55:00):
you know, what should be shocking and upsetting to people
is the fact that Indigenous children represent fifty three percent
of the children in foster care in Canada, even though
they only represent seven percent of the youth population in
Quebecutt's estimated that one out of every Indigenous family has
a child that's in foster care with like non Indigenous people,

(55:24):
and it's endemic. It's just like, you know, if it's
not something you have experienced directly, it's something that like
you know other people who have and when you start
looking at things like that, you know, with regards to
kids in the child retro system, with regards to you know, suicidality,
with regards to incarceration, you know, with regards to like

(55:44):
drug abuse, like all the things that we sort of
see in this movie. You know, you can draw a
straight line from one to the other and it can't
be an accident. At this point, you know, there's just
so much like paperwork and documentation of how things of
intentionally been done, you know, throughout the years to make
that this is the case. At a certain point in time,

(56:05):
you have to kind of be like, well, it's not
even a conspiracy anymore, because.

Speaker 1 (56:09):
You know it happened documented and to speak to your
point from earlier, that's just the documentation that still exists.

Speaker 4 (56:18):
Right what what was burned and what was destroyed and.

Speaker 2 (56:22):
What was lost, and you know, and what will not
come to light, you know, for whatever reason, and on
and on and on.

Speaker 4 (56:31):
Unfortunately, Let's take a quick break and then we'll come
back and we'll discuss how this context informs the film.
Shall we will? And we're back.

Speaker 1 (56:53):
I wanted to, if it's cool with everybody's share some
quotes from Jeff Barnaby please about the production of this
movie and just kind of his motivation behind writing it
and sort of where he was at. There was an
interview he did, I believe around the time this movie
was first coming out in festivals with musk Rat magazine,

(57:17):
and he was asked by the interviewer, let me get
their name, Jamais DaCosta. He was asked why he chose
to have a female protagonist for this story, so I
thought relevant to our interests, and here is how he replied.
He said, my nation is a matriarchal society and paying

(57:40):
respect to that archetype of a woman and the strength
that is there, particularly in First Nations women. It's imperative
for me, as a First Nation's man who loves his
mom and loves his wife and loves his sisters, to
pay reverence to their struggle and their strength. I think
women are awesome.

Speaker 4 (57:55):
Great ques Wow.

Speaker 1 (57:57):
My mom had me as a T shirt a new
merg stright up there with our Robert Eggers quote. Ah, Yes, women,
I've heard of them. Jeff Farvey thinks women are awesome.
My mom had me at such a young age and
didn't have a lot of support around her, but still
managed to make it work. She and my stepmam were
a big influence, along with my sisters and seeing what

(58:19):
they went through at such a young age gave me
a measuring stick in terms of the things you can
complain about in life. And then he said, kind of
going off of that, why he chose the era in
residential schools that he chose. I believe this movie is
set in the year that he was born, in nineteen
seventy six, but he says about that in the same

(58:40):
interview quote, I thought, if there was ever a point
in time that this residential school was going to crumble,
it would have been in the seventies. It just made
sense to me to have a young Native girl bring
this institution of ugliness to its knees. It made sense
to me because First Nations women are the language and
cultural keepers. They are the epicenter of our matriarchal society.
I've mostly only known strength come from the women in

(59:01):
my life, which isn't to say that men haven't been influential,
but the rock steady power that doesn't waiver seems to
only come from women, and which I think. He compliments
his wife for a long time. It's nice, but I'm
not gonna read the whole His wife is really lovely.

Speaker 4 (59:15):
To very nice. Well, I think you see that in
the film, this this ideology with like, of AILA's peers,
who seem to be entirely boys, she is the smartest
and most competent of them, not even of just her peers,
of all the like adult men around her. She seems

(59:38):
to have kind of the most awareness of what is
going around, because like there's scenes where like Sholo and
Angus are just like, oops, I got robbed by a stripper.
Dough like t either kind of laughing about it. You know,
He's like, oh, well, no big deal, We'll just sell
some bottles. We'll get the money back that way. And
AILA's like, no, like, do you see what's happening? Do

(59:58):
you see what we have to do? And she's by
far the most competent, and and like why is this
We talked about sort of having to age prematurely almost
and having to be wise beyond your years, not in
a like precocious child tropey way that we you know,
always take guff with on the podcast, but when you're

(01:00:19):
growing up in these horrible, like systematic oppression situations, there's
no other choice. You can't like, it's that's just it
hardens you. And it and the fact.

Speaker 1 (01:00:33):
That the story of the wolf eating itself that becomes
so important to how she views herself and how we
view her as the audience comes from really the only
other woman that we get to know besides her mother
in the movie of like She I mean, I guess,
going off of what Jeff Barnaby said, she was the

(01:00:54):
keeper of that wisdom and passed it along for sure.

Speaker 2 (01:00:59):
And I was going to say too that just like
a little bit of like added Magma context. There is
this huge reverence in our culture for not just women,
although you know, like Jeff says, you know, it's a
it's a very matriarchal, matrilineal culture, but also grandmother is
in particular are really revered, you know, as elders, as

(01:01:21):
elder women. There's a lot of stories of gluse Cap
whose are our sort of how to describe glose Cap.
He's a trickster figure and he's within traditional storytelling, but
he's also like a protector figure for the Migma. You know,
he was sort of helped when Creator made the Magma

(01:01:42):
at the beginning, you know, to shape the landscape. So
he plays this really important role throughout all of our
traditional stories. And there's a lot of stories about Gluscap
just like doing stuff with his grandmother. And even the
word that we use for grandmother, nugumige, comes from what
goluse Caap calls his grand which is nukumi and jij

(01:02:03):
that like adding that ja on the end is like
how you sort of like talk about like something being
smaller like we talk about is like a small bug.
So like our grandmothers are like a small version of
Gluscap's grandmother, you know. And there's also a lot of
reverence in Bigma culture for figures like sant Anne. There's
a very important UH cathedral called sant Enne de Beaupre

(01:02:27):
where a lot of Migma folks do pilgrimages too, because,
like I said, we converted very early on, so Christianity
has gotten very tied into our traditional culture. And St
Anne in the Bible. I'm now I'm talking at my
ass a little bit. I'll be anest.

Speaker 4 (01:02:42):
I cannot help you because I have never read the Bible.

Speaker 2 (01:02:46):
But San Anne is is Jesus's grandmother, and so you
know she she remains very symbolic and very important for
the Migma in that sense. So the fact that Sarah's
is really the only female figure that we know in
the film, I think is like is very emblematic of

(01:03:07):
like Migma culture, you know. And I love those scenes
so much because they're actually speaking Migma. She's making Bannick,
you know, she's doing like all these things that like
are so familiar and are so like grounding. And when
we're in Sarah's house too, you have a sense of
like Aila doesn't have to be you know, the smartest,

(01:03:28):
you know, most sort of like aware person. She can
just kind of be there and like is comforting.

Speaker 1 (01:03:34):
It feels like the closest scenes to where she feels
like being a kid, because it's really easy to forget
that she's a kid because she has the weight of
the world and then some on her shoulders. But yeah,
in those scenes with Sarah's and I think like part
of why it's so devastating to see that Sarah's has
been murdered is because that's I mean one of the

(01:03:59):
only times you sort of see Aila relax the smallest
bit and just feel, like you said, comfortable.

Speaker 2 (01:04:06):
Yeah, big time, you know. And it's also interesting because
what you're saying too about her, I really see it
as after her mother's death and her father's in prison,
you know, Aila kind of has to become the adult,
has to become the parent, you know, and like, you know,
you both mentioned like that's not rare, unfortunately for kids
who grow up in circumstances where there is like substance

(01:04:29):
abuse or there's like a parent absence for whatever reason,
you know. And I really refer to I always think
about like all the men in the film kind of
as like lost boys in a sense, because there is
sort of like this waywardness, this sort of sense of
like there's not like any other kind of like parent
like child relationships really depicted, and sometimes it can kind

(01:04:52):
of like feel like that in circumstances, you know, where
there is so much intergenerational traumas, like everyone's kind like
lost and everyone's kind of like separated from each other,
you know. And so I thought that that was really
interesting the way that they treated that in film.

Speaker 1 (01:05:08):
Yeah, particularly with AILA's relationship with her father, which I
thought was the way that that was developed was I
mean it really emotionally effective, but really interesting too, where
it's I don't know, every character in this movie is
so multi dimensional and so complex where it's like I
can be mad at AILA's dad in one scene and

(01:05:31):
then in the next scene be like, oh, but I
but I understand where he's coming from. Where I mean
when we flash forward, Aila is essentially her uncle's boss.
She's clearly the brains behind the operation, and her dad
is not able to, like I don't know, get emotionally

(01:05:52):
where he needs to be, and the anger sort of
is lashed out towards her when it is his anger
with the circumstances, not with her. And seeing them navigate
that relationship and reach i mean, go full circle in
the best and the worst way by the end was
just so so so impactful. It was just yeah, so

(01:06:16):
beautifully written.

Speaker 2 (01:06:18):
Yeah, and and sort of you know, you're right and
sort of like seeing that full There's a lot of
like circular sort of narratives that happened in the film,
and I think that that's very intentional in the sense
of like kind of being caught in systemic racism can
often feel like you can't escape this vicious circle that
you're in, right, like any kind of systemic repression. But

(01:06:40):
we sort of we opened the movie with her father
going to prison, we close the movie with her father
going to prison. You know, the amount of journey that
he has to do in between, you know, in terms
of his relationship with Aila is huge. Sorry, my cat's
eating my notes as I am trying to read them,
you know, is absolutely huge, you know. And I think

(01:07:03):
that exchange at the end of the film where where
Joseph like just comes out and says, you know, like
you're still a kid. I want you to be a kid,
you know. I think that that you finally understand in
that moment what the stakes are for him, and like
the fact that like, you know, he understands even though
he's like, I want you to be a kid, he
understands that like Dayla can never really be a kid,
you know, like that's just not on the table. And

(01:07:25):
I think that's kind of interesting in terms of like
looking at this film as like in comparison with like
other films about like teenage girls, because I think there
could be an argument made that in some ways Rhymes
is a coming of age story. Yeah, but it's just like,
you know, you look at that and then you look
at something like BookSmart and you're like, oh right. You know,

(01:07:48):
you guys talk so much about like how you know,
oftentimes teen movies take place in a very like narrow
sort of class oh yeah, and you know, it's sort
of interesting to see the way that this film steps
kind of outside of that, you know, to tell this
story of it's like, well, you know, sometimes coming of
age means having to be your own parent at.

Speaker 1 (01:08:06):
You know, absolutely, yeah, I mean, and I feel like
I would I would qualify this movie as I wrote
down all the different genres I felt like this movie
touched on at different points, which is another thing that
I loved about. It was like, there's just there were
whole sequences that were a heist movie. There were whole

(01:08:27):
sequences that were very much drama. There were whole sequences.
But it feels like a coming of age movie to me. Yeah,
And I don't know, I mean, maybe not at first glance,
because it's not an experience that we usually see reflected
on screen, but we definitely see her come of age and.

Speaker 4 (01:08:48):
Right, it's like, I mean, it's it's almost like you
might not necessarily immediately recognize it as a coming of
age story because.

Speaker 1 (01:08:55):
There's no party at a rich kid's house, so maybe
that's where.

Speaker 4 (01:09:00):
Right, there's no like oops, I smoked weed for the
first time and now I'm true, I guess, so dizzy, Yeah,
at my friend's mansion that I'm hanging out at right.
It's like but but it's like, yeah, a movie about
a young Indigenous teen girl in the nineteen seventies in Canada,

(01:09:22):
Like that is what coming of age would look like.

Speaker 2 (01:09:26):
Absolutely, yeah, you know, and even I think that, like,
you know, there were even things like like I think
that in my own coming of it that like I
like resonated with me in terms of the film, you know, like,
like I said, I didn't grow up in a res
but I did grow up with two parents who had
serious substance of these issues. And yeah, there were definitely

(01:09:48):
things about like ALA's story that resonated so so strongly
with me, like on this very prefun level. And I
think that's important. I think that's so important in the
media that like young people can see. You know, I
was older than Ala when I saw than Ayala would
have been then when I saw the film. But it's
a film that like I try and like show young

(01:10:11):
people too, because it's important. You know, we're talking about
like representation. You know, it's important to sort of see like, yes,
it is this very brutal, violent, I don't think particularly
optimistic story. But Jeff Barnaby talks a lot about this
idea of like wanting to portray the res in, you know,
in a way that's like true to his experience, you know.

(01:10:33):
And I think that, like whether you're Indigenous or not,
if you're a young person who is living in like
in a precarious situation where you know that's because you
know it's always because of things like that you can't control,
then I think that there's things you're going to relate to.
In terms of AILA's story.

Speaker 1 (01:10:48):
Yeah, absolutely, I mean even getting back to the relationship
with her dad, I mean just navigating a complicated relationship
with I had a number of people in my family
who had sense abuse problems, but you love them and
you feel like it's not especially when you're still a kid,
you can't really sever that chord. And I don't know,

(01:11:12):
it's something you almost never see in teen movies, and
if you do, it's kind of framed like a joke
instead of you know, a problem that is something you know,
very sensitive that needs to be navigated, and another thing
that kind of I guess I'm curious.

Speaker 7 (01:11:28):
At what you both felt about this, But I also
was really affected by the like Aila is so mature
in ways that I'm like, I currently don't even know if.

Speaker 1 (01:11:41):
I can be where the amount of grace and understanding
that she's able to extend to both of her parents consistently,
even when she is, particularly with her dad, who she's
often pissed off at the decision she's making, she realized
as he's lashing out, he's compartmentalizing. He's not able to fully,

(01:12:05):
you know, deal with what's in front of him. But
she has this very I mean, there's that scene with
her and her uncle where she says, the jail didn't
break him, we did, which is her putting more blame
on her. You know, we know as a viewer she's
putting a lot of undue blame on herself. But just
the amount of grace that she extends the people in

(01:12:29):
her life because she has such a thorough understanding of
how circumstantial a lot of their problems are, I thought
was like really cool, and again, just something you don't
see that subtlety expressed in this genre really ever.

Speaker 4 (01:12:46):
Right, And something you mentioned about the there's this kind
of ongoing discussion throughout the movie about characters kind of
having to age too rapidly on a maturity and kind
of emotional and psychological level. There's also this idea of
characters being broken, and there is that discussion between Ayla

(01:13:07):
and Berner talking about Joseph saying, you know, like you
said Jamie, like Ala thinks that like we broke him,
and it's not necessarily clear if she means like we
as the family or we as a community or what exactly.
But then there's another quick interaction between Aila and Joseph
at the end when he's saying the whole like you
you're just a little girl, and she's like, I was

(01:13:28):
never a little girl. And then he says, you know,
your mother was broken way before what happened, meaning like
way before the accident that killed her brother, and this
has nothing to do with you, and that, you know,
is a reference to them becoming broken, being survivors of
this residential school system and of this systemic oppression and

(01:13:49):
racism of being you know, forced into reserve life, and
it's it's just heartbreaking.

Speaker 2 (01:13:58):
Yeah, And I think that in some ways I was
thinking about this, I think a little bit closer this time,
because I was thinking about the podcast, and I was
thinking about other films that you've discussed that have like
teenage female protagonists, and I think that Aila has a
certain amount of like is portrayed as having a certain
amount of stoicism and a certain amount of like restraint,

(01:14:19):
and a certain amount of like ability to see the
larger picture that you kind of see crack at the
end when she's like, you know, right before Popularize, when
she's crying after she's found Sarah's and she sort of says,
you know, the the you know, the last rule sort
of surviving in the Kingdom of the Crow is never
let your emotional guard down. And I think that sometimes

(01:14:40):
for kids who grow up or people just in general
who grow up in difficult situations, I think that sometimes
like in order to survive, you need to kind of
compartmentalize and you need to kind of like have a
very calm, steady demeanor because there's nothing else in your
life that is that way, right, you know, And so
I think that there's like a certain amount of that

(01:15:03):
as well. And there's a certain amount of it too
that like I kind of question how realistic it is,
because I mean, I work with teenagers, you know, and like,
and they're all lovely, and none of them are going
to listen to this, but I adore them all, and
you know, I think that there is a certain amount
of that that is sort of like creative license. But

(01:15:25):
it is really hard to like place ALA's age, and
it's really hard to like I think that, like a
more turbulent character wouldn't have worked for the film. So
I think that, like, also from a storytelling perspective, you know,
Ala being this rock is is sort of important for
the narrative, but also sort of perhaps a little bit idealized.

Speaker 1 (01:15:48):
I see that, Yeah, yeah, and I feel like that
kind of like undo. I mean that extreme strength and
ability to compartmentalize also cross over into how she remembers
her mother and how which was kind of another I thought,
pretty different, incredible approach by Jeff Barnabet that I totally

(01:16:12):
agree if she were acting, you know, like your average teenager,
may not have been possible. But I mean, it's I forget.
I think it's her uncle. I think it's Berner. Early
in the movie, once we flash forward and everything has happened,
who insults her mother in front of her and she
immediately because she has I mean, this understanding of the

(01:16:39):
circumstance of what happened was so tragic and so terrible,
and even though it was an accident that involves her mother,
you know, she's able to kind of see the fuller
picture and protect her mother's memory.

Speaker 4 (01:16:55):
Are you talking about the moment where he like he
calls someone an old wit and then she's like, don't
call her that, and then he's like, sorry, the old lady.
I thought he was talking about cirus.

Speaker 1 (01:17:06):
There was he I think he might have been Okay,
then I misunderstood that.

Speaker 4 (01:17:10):
Because I think, yeah, he's talking about because she seems
to be Sarah seems to be sort of it's at
her house where like they're growing all the marijuana. I
think that they sell, yeah, and he's so there's certain
kind of debts to her that they oh because like
she's supplying stuff and then and then yeah, so and
then they're like kind of moving the product around. But yeah,

(01:17:32):
I think he's talking to her. But even so, I
think your points still valid, Jamie. Of like, I mean,
everyone is broken and everyone's having to kind of compartmentalize,
and it's.

Speaker 1 (01:17:46):
And that's something that Aila has. I feel like just
you were touching on this a little bit where in
a world where there is not a lot that she
has control over how she views her mother and how
she holds her mother's memory is something that she has
control over.

Speaker 2 (01:18:02):
Bad time. And it's interesting too because I was going
to say, you know, even though Indigenous women have been,
you know, a target of colonialism and colonial violence through
the Indian Act and in other ways, you know, Indigenous
women are also at the forefront of a lot of

(01:18:22):
activism that happens and is still happening.

Speaker 3 (01:18:25):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:18:27):
One thing that was going on when this film first
came out in twenty thirteen was the beginning of Idle
No More, which is an indigenous rights movement here in
Canada and in some parts of the United States as well.
Like It's Standing Rock, there was Idle No More, folks,
and it was started by four women, three Indigenous and
one white, ally because they wanted to stand up against

(01:18:49):
this bill that the government was introducing that would have
changed not only a lot of Indigenous rights but also
a lot of environmental protections. So they got together and
they're like, we're not going to be anymore. And it's
spread to becoming this national protest movement. It spread to
becoming a bigger sort of movement for Indigenous rights here
in Canada, and that was started, you know, by by

(01:19:10):
four women sort of sitting around a table in the
Prairies like just like deciding, you know, we're done. So
there is, like I think, in in the character Veila,
like and understanding some of like Jeff's like motivations for
wanting to create a character that way, Like I think
I understand like that he's also paying tribute to women

(01:19:32):
like that, you know, who have like held it together
and who are like trying to make change and who
are in so many ways taking all this garbage that
the world puts on them and trying to like make
change and do things that are different, and also like
the compassion that it takes to take all that shit
and and still turn around and be able to say, like,

(01:19:55):
you know, I'm going to march and I'm gonna I'm
going to write letters and I'm going to do a
hunger fast. And yeah, I think that that's really really powerful.
And I think that like so I think that there's
also like that element too, of like when I say
that Aila is a little bit of an idealized character,
like I think that there's also a measure of that
that's like paying tribute in like a positive way to

(01:20:17):
the role that Indigenous women play in politics and in
their communities.

Speaker 4 (01:20:22):
Mm hm, for sure.

Speaker 2 (01:20:25):
There was one thing that just kind of coming off
of something that I think you mentioned Caitlin about like
the selling drugs and like being broken, And I wanted
to talk a little bit about that because I'm so
I'm interested in what your first impressions of that were,
because we're so used to seeing these images of like

(01:20:48):
drunk Indians and you know, that's been so prevalent in
North American cinema since the beginning of North American cinema. Yeah,
so did you feel at all sort of did you
feel any kind of way, I guess like sort of
like seeing those scenes in the beginning.

Speaker 1 (01:21:07):
Like I honestly, I mean, I my first reaction was,
I mean, I knew that, you know, Jeff Barnaby is
an Indigenous filmmaker. I'm like, I'm gonna I'm on this
ride with him he and I knew he was speaking
to his own community. It did like make me go
oh no for for a moment, only because I don't know,

(01:21:29):
I mean, like we've all seen movies where those stereotypes
have played out and then you get no context for anything,
but this movie felt like it was all context for like,
what what led to those stereotypes being so widely perpetuated
without context entirely? So yeah, I think it gave me

(01:21:53):
pause for like a second, but then when it was clear,
I mean the first frame of the movie is context. Yeah,
So I feel like this. And I was reading in
just this same interview with him in Muskrat Magazine that
he had experienced some pushback from other filmmakers in the
community that were just like, well, you're showing these stereotypes

(01:22:16):
and like, you know, like I don't have any interest
in seeing that portrayed on screen in any way, and
his response being something you've already referenced just where he
was just like, well, I'm showing you my community and
reflecting my own experiences growing up, So like, how can
you tell me what I can? Wow? Like I can't

(01:22:38):
reflect my own experience, right.

Speaker 4 (01:22:41):
It almost it's like sort of finding a balance of
like do I do a disservice to my community by
ignoring some very real truths of what is taking place,
or do I I mean, we talked about this a
little bit on a recent episode we recorded on the
Matreon about what we Do in the Shadows, where it

(01:23:05):
was written and directed by both take Away Titi and
Jamaine Clement, who are both Maori, and we were talking
about how cool it is to see because there's like
this kind of discussion around there's a lot of pressure
on filmmakers of any marginalized community to only talk about that.
It's like, if you're black, you can only make movies

(01:23:26):
about racism, and that's your expertise, so that's what you
have to make art about. And how it was like
really cool to see this like really goofy vampire mockumentary
that's like so funny and just like so silly made
by these indigenous Maori filmmakers. But then there's also like

(01:23:47):
you know, Taika made Boy, which is about his upbringing
in his like Maori community. I mean, and you can
speak to this as a filmmaker too, Jess, of feeling
this pressure of like do I make movies that I
want to make that are fun and stilly if if
those are the movies I want to make, or do
I you know, it's like this kind of ongoing dilemma.

Speaker 2 (01:24:09):
Oh for sure. And it's I mean, like Taika also
directed one of the thor films I think, right, yes.

Speaker 4 (01:24:17):
You know those films, tiny little movies that no one's
ever heard of.

Speaker 2 (01:24:23):
Right, And it's it's interesting because I think that, like, yeah,
I feel so acutely where Jeff is coming from, especially
because you know, we all kind of in terms of
like filmmaking here in Canada, we all kind of have
to navigate the same systems of the same funders. So
you know, we're fortunate in the sense that, like we
do have public funding for the arts. You know, I

(01:24:46):
wouldn't trade that for anything, but that also means that
and you know, this is changing a little bit now,
but you know, I've been doing this for like a
decade close on, and you know, a lot of the
funders are not like bipop people. They're not queer people,
they're not you know, a lot of the funders are
still like a very specific type of bureaucrat. So when

(01:25:09):
you're talking about like yeah, it can feel sometimes like
you're just ticking boxes of sort of like Okay, I
want to make my film, but I want to make
it this way. And it's like, you know, a funder
is not necessarily going to be like, well, you know,
you're an indigenous filmmaker and you just want to make
like a zombie movie, Like I don't know, you know,

(01:25:31):
Like so it's complicated some of the way that we
have to navigate that I also make work and want
to continue to make work that is also in that
genre sort of space. Yeah, it can be really it
can be really difficult at times, and there is all
this kind of like pressure sometimes to yeah, like to
not show certain things because like it always comes back

(01:25:55):
to the reality of representation, because you know, this is
like blood Quantum. We keep talking about bloo quantum. People
are just gonna have blood quantum.

Speaker 1 (01:26:03):
We just have to do blood Quantum for Halloween next year.

Speaker 2 (01:26:07):
Absolutely, I will come back if you want me to, no, please, Yes,
I waited like four years for that film. Anyway, that's
another story for another day. But when you're talking about
rhymester Ingoules, it's such a singular film. It's a coming
of age story, it's a heist movie, it's a story
of revenge, and it's it's taking place in this you know,
it's a historical piece as well. Like it's such a

(01:26:28):
particular thing that like when the pressure is on you,
it's like you are the one that we are giving
our small amounts of Canadian money to to make this film.
It's like, not only are you just like the only
like at that point in time, you know, like one
of the most high profile like Migma filmmakers, one of
only a handful of indigenous filmmakers, right, it's also like

(01:26:52):
you know, you you've been awarded this like highly sought
after like money, you know. So yeah, so there are
all these weird pressures sometimes and sometimes like as an
indigenous filmmaker, you can feel like you're battling against like
so many different like things that you might have to
compromise on, you know, like, Okay, not everybody's gonna like

(01:27:14):
then I'm gonna show this in this way. At the
same time, am I working with a funder who understands
my nation's culture? You know? Am I just being tokenized?
Am I like wasting this like tiny little bit of
money but it's the only money we have, you know,
Like right, So there's all these different things that kind
of play into that. But you know, we're starting to

(01:27:36):
talk a lot more about narrative sovereignty. Even just the
idea that it should be indigenous filmmakers making indigenous films
is very new, which it shouldn't be, but is a
very new idea in Canada and the United States. So
I'm hoping with that that they'll just be more opportunities,
you know. And if there are more opportunities and there

(01:27:57):
can be more people making films therefore, you know, so
the one Native person making a film doesn't have to
make a film that represents all Native people, you know.
They can just make the one Native film that they
want to make, and then me over here, I can
make the Native film that I want to make, you know,
like exactly, and they don't have to be the same thing,
and it doesn't have to fit into sort of like
this very specific expectation, you know, right.

Speaker 4 (01:28:19):
And they can have be all different kinds of stories,
and they can span all different genres and they it's
it's almost as like, well, I'm wondering if, like Jeff
Barnaby is like, this is my one chance to make
a film, I have to just like pack in every genre.

Speaker 3 (01:28:33):
That I can.

Speaker 2 (01:28:34):
Yeh.

Speaker 4 (01:28:34):
It's not as though the movie is like feels muddled
or anything like that, but it's like we need to
get to a place where.

Speaker 1 (01:28:40):
There just should never be that much pressure on a
single filmmaker. Yeah, like it just it doesn't make sense.
And I'm glad that he spoke to that issue and
also just said, like, there are indigenous filmmakers that didn't
like the movie I made, and I disagree with them,

(01:29:00):
and it is what it is.

Speaker 2 (01:29:02):
It is what it is.

Speaker 1 (01:29:04):
Yeah, and there shouldn't have been that much pressure on
his movie to represent everybody, but like you were saying,
just that there's not enough opportunities and so that pressure
is created.

Speaker 2 (01:29:17):
And it just spirals up from there, and it's I mean,
I think that like even in a broader sense like
of just like any kind of marginalized filmmaker. I mean
I would even include like female filmmakers in that. Like
you know, when you look at somebody like a Catherine Bigelow,
you know, often people are like, oh, well, she's so
exemplary as like a as a female filmmaker because she's
making like action films, you know, And it should be

(01:29:38):
fine for a woman to make an action film. It
should be fine for an African American filmmaker to make
like an experimental video work. It should be fine for
an indigenous filmmaker to make an alien movie, you know,
like it should be fine, because when a cis hit,
like a white straight you know, filmmaker wants to go

(01:29:59):
and make a film about I don't know, let's just
pick like like a female coming of age story. Nobody's like, well,
are you sure, are you sure that you can speak
to that? You like, nobody scrutinizes, and I know that,
like I know, we pick on white straight men an
awful lot, and they're awful fragile, but it's true, you know,

(01:30:22):
Like I I've had conversations with like filmmaking friends, you know,
people that I absolutely adore, you know, who are male filmmakers,
and nobody questions them about like why they want to
make a film that they want to make. They're like, oh,
I just want to tell this story.

Speaker 4 (01:30:36):
It's like, well, are you the person to do it? Though?

Speaker 2 (01:30:38):
Yeah? So I'm like, well, you know, I want to
make like a film where it's like two dudes and
they travel through time. People are like are you sure though?
Are they going to be native dudes? And You're like,
you can't win, you can't win. And I feel like
we're fed this idea of scarcity, this idea of like
it has to be these like select few people who

(01:31:02):
get to have the keys to the Kingdom, and it's
just not it's just not true and like, and so
any shift away from that that we can have, I
think is a positive thing. I mean, it's unfortunate, but
you know, we're talking so much about like Jeff's work,
you know, and like seeing his films and things like that,
and I feel like, as brilliant as this film is,
in so many ways, more people have probably seen Pocahontas,

(01:31:24):
more people have probably seen Dances with Wolves, more people
have probably seen Dead Man. You know, these films that
like are super dubious and do a lot of damage
in terms of like the representation of Indigenous people. And
yet when I'm like, oh, hey, you want to talk
indigenous cinema, people are sort of like, ah, I don't
know what that is. Yeah, or they might know, they

(01:31:46):
might know Taika, But that's like it, you know, right,
which is better than nothing. But it's not enough.

Speaker 4 (01:31:53):
Sure, it certainly not enough.

Speaker 1 (01:31:54):
Well that I should be more Indigenous filmmakers who are
household names, period, period, absolutely period.

Speaker 4 (01:32:01):
According to and I don't know exactly how accurate this
number is, but according to box Office Mojo dot com
ever heard of it, this movie. I do consult it
a lot.

Speaker 2 (01:32:15):
Mojo just makes me think of Austin Powers.

Speaker 4 (01:32:17):
I know, I'm just like com paint.

Speaker 1 (01:32:20):
That makes me be a bombshell and that makes me
want to die.

Speaker 4 (01:32:23):
Oh gosh. But this movie earned at the box office
basically fifteen hundred dollars because of its very limited distribution
and exhibitions. So yeah, I mean, I think that's why
a lot of people haven't seen this movie. A lot
of people haven't heard of this movie. Admittedly, we were
not familiar with it until quite recently, Jamie and I,

(01:32:46):
so it's just a matter of their and I don't
even know exactly how to fix this of like getting
the word out there. I mean, hopefully this episode of
this podcast encourages people to watch this movie. It's it's accessible.
I watched it on develop on Hoopla and like Canopy,
which is free if you have a library.

Speaker 1 (01:33:07):
Card, you can rent it anywhere and rent it if
you want to make some money back. Yes, yeah, I
rented it on YouTube like it was.

Speaker 2 (01:33:16):
It's easily accessible, you know, and and increasingly easily accessible.
I own a copy of this film because that's the
only way that I could like keep watching it after
I saw it, you know, in festival. But yeah, people
can see this movie. It's it's I mean, so I
would say that we have to do this, like we
have to go old school on this. So this is

(01:33:38):
the plan that I've come up with in the last
like five seconds. And I don't know why I particularly
old school, except for so everybody listening to the podcast,
you have to watch the movie and you have to
tell five friends about the movie, or you'll be haunted
by an ancient Indian burial ground. That's how we bring
it around, invoke the burial ground. All.

Speaker 1 (01:34:00):
It's a pyramid scheme for good.

Speaker 2 (01:34:03):
Yeah, exactly right.

Speaker 4 (01:34:04):
Oh my gosh. Remember those emails though, right back in
twenty four hours and send it to five friends or
else you'll be killed.

Speaker 2 (01:34:13):
Yeah. I feel like Auntie's always send those.

Speaker 1 (01:34:16):
Alongs that were the number one perpetrator of the year
abouts And it was like, I'm your niece, Why are
you sending me this email thing? I'm going to be murdered?
Like I don't know twenty five people. I'm seven, Like.

Speaker 4 (01:34:31):
I'm a test.

Speaker 2 (01:34:33):
It's like I think sometimes like it's just like yeah,
I sort of miss stuff like that sometimes because it's weird.
Like it's sort of like it's paranormal in a weird way,
but like, yeah, Auntie's being like, you gotta pass this
one on and like all your wishes will come true.

Speaker 4 (01:34:48):
You're like, right, your crush will fall in love with
you if you send this, but if you don't, you'll die.

Speaker 1 (01:34:55):
You'll be murdered tonight, do you hear? Okay, Annie?

Speaker 4 (01:34:59):
Did?

Speaker 1 (01:35:01):
Let's talk about the Ala tests?

Speaker 3 (01:35:03):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (01:35:03):
Yes, yes, really quickly.

Speaker 2 (01:35:05):
And I wanted to talk to about Ala being a
two spirit character, but we can do that after.

Speaker 1 (01:35:09):
Oh yeah, absolutely, so the Ala Test. We obviously talked
with the creator of the Ala Test, but the ale
test just as a reminder to all of our listeners.
We discussed it on the Frozen two episodes. But the
Ala Test was inspired by the Bechdel Test and Ali
wrote it and named it after Aila, from rhymes for

(01:35:32):
young guls. The Ala Test asks three questions about a
film's character. Is she an indigenous or Aboriginal woman who
is the main character, She cannot fall in love with
a white man, and third, does not end up raped
or murdered at any point in the story. So obviously
this movie passes the Alea Test or wouldn't be called that,

(01:35:57):
but for all media. The al test, like the beck,
can be applied to any kind of narrative media. And
you can find the full list and all the updates
that the dash Ala dash test dot tumblr dot com.

Speaker 4 (01:36:10):
And try and follow Ellie on Twitter. She's at Ali
Noddy nahd ees how you spell her last name?

Speaker 1 (01:36:19):
So listen to the Frozen two episode you know what
to do and then tell five people.

Speaker 4 (01:36:23):
And then tell five people. Is there anything else anyone
wants to talk about regarding I.

Speaker 2 (01:36:33):
Mean, I still have pages and pages of terrible, sad statistics,
but we don't have to get into those. I did
want to just add that one of the things that
I've come to appreciate about Aila is that I think that,
whether it's intentional or not, I think she can be
read as a queer character. And a lot of that
has to do with some interpretations of too spirit, which

(01:36:56):
is a Pandigenous term that was adopted in the early
nineties to describe LGBTQ plus indigenous folks. One of the
interpretations of too spirit is coming out of sort of
like in a Jibwei perspective, is that like you have
male and female energy and they're balanced. Another interpretation of it,

(01:37:17):
coming more sort of from like Eastern Woodlands or like
more sort of like Migma and Showny traditions, is that
you walk between worlds and that's what it means to
be too spirit And so you see that a lot
in this film, where Ala sort of doesn't have like
strict boundaries in terms of like like the visions that
she's having of her mom and you know, the dreams

(01:37:39):
that she's having, and also you know she sees Tyler
at one brother. You know, she's sort of having these
these moments where you know, worlds are not Yeah, she's
passing sort of between worlds. She's also shape shifting, which
is also a part of some of the conversations around

(01:37:59):
queer identity. Is from a traditional perspective. So she goes
from having long braids to having very short hair. She's
wearing costumes. At one point she has like that which's
face like on the back of her head. Yes, yeah,
which is like also a very interesting sort of like
duality in a sense.

Speaker 4 (01:38:20):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:38:20):
So, as I've grown with this movie, and as I
you know, continue to watch it and continue to grow
in terms of too, like my my own identity as
like a queer trans indigenous person. I like understand her
better now as also an indigenous character.

Speaker 1 (01:38:37):
That's so cool.

Speaker 2 (01:38:38):
Yeah, and it's it's like, it's interesting, like it's it's
something that like I don't think I'll have to ask
Jeff about but I don't think it was ever intentional
because it's never mentioned in anything, right, But yeah, it
sort of fits really interestingly in that way with a
lot of traditional beliefs.

Speaker 1 (01:38:58):
I love growing with movies. That's the best.

Speaker 2 (01:39:01):
Yeah, There's so many things that don't hold up anymore,
So it's really nice when you can like watch something
that's so cherished and you're like, oh.

Speaker 1 (01:39:12):
You won't betray me.

Speaker 2 (01:39:14):
Yeah, I could still love you. Something interesting too to
think about in the context of this film is the
idea of unsettling. So we talk about unsettling in terms
of like something that disturbs us, right, but we also
talk about unsettling as the process of decolonizing. You know,

(01:39:36):
you're becoming You're not a settler, you're becoming unsettled. And
I think that this film is such an interesting and
interesting representation of that of sort of like Jeff Barnaby's
leaning into all this very spooky imagery and all this
very like you know, very graphic imagery even you know,
like you really do see Popper get his head blown off,

(01:39:56):
like there's a big check of his head missing.

Speaker 4 (01:39:58):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:39:59):
Yeah. So there's this so sort of like this desire
to disturb and kind of like upset, but also that
that's a path to kind of like interrupt and get
some movement in what can be of sometimes a very
stagnant conversation with regards to Canadian history and indigenous history
and in the country. So it's like, it's it's interesting

(01:40:20):
that that exists in this film in that way, and
there's also a conversation to have around the idea of
like revenge or reconciliation. You know, I think that, you know,
Indigenous people aren't a monolith. There's always going to be
people who you know, like we were talking about earlier,
aren't gonna like, you know, the type of films that
Jeff Barnaby is making, and there's gonna be you know,

(01:40:41):
people who do like them that don't like other types
of films. And then like there's gonna be certain types
of discourse that like certain Indigenous people are going to
really support, and there's gonna be other ones that they
don't agree with, you know, but it's very interesting. This
conversation is sort of about like revenge versus reconciliation, because
in an interesting way, we can own, we really decide
what we ourselves as individuals are going to do. And

(01:41:04):
because of that, Yeah, there's so many questions that kind
of exist out there about like whether that is even
like meaningful, you know, if it's just like an individual
sort of thing. But I don't know. I am a
big believer in that, Like, our individual actions are important.
So whether we go to the revenge side of things
or the reconciliation side of things, it's just that we

(01:41:26):
make that choice, you know, alternately in the end. Yeah,
I think that's kind of kind of all I decide. Yeah, Oh,
I do have recommendations.

Speaker 4 (01:41:35):
Please, yes, please, So if.

Speaker 2 (01:41:37):
People are interested, and I'll talk to you guys more
about this off mic. But if people are interested in
learning more about indigenous issues, if like this episode is
like catching you totally off guard and you're like, I've
never heard of Indians before in my life, Well, welcome
to twenty twenty. I don't know where you're been living,

(01:42:00):
but congratulations, I guess, but I would say that learning
about indigenous issues isn't as difficult as we might think.
So much of our school system, you know, has been
set up in a way that maintains weight supremacy. So
we have to do a lot of the work ourselves,
and that can be intimidating, especially if you don't know
where to start. For both, you know, Caitlin and you Jamie,

(01:42:24):
like I feel like, you know, the process of learning
about residential schools this past week, even though it's important,
like history to learn about, I imagine it was also
very very taxing because it is very taxing because it
should be. It's genocide. Yeah, you know, it's not a
fun thing to learn about. It's not a fun thing
to discuss, but it is a necessary thing for us
to learn about because we have to stop it. It's

(01:42:46):
actively still happening and we have to, you know, make
that decision, that personal decision whether we are are going
to be with it or against it in a sense.
So with all that in mind, there are a ton
of resources out there that exists for folks who are
interested in learning that are really easy to access free
even you know, and I will put together some of

(01:43:10):
those maybe we can time it so that like we'll
put like put a bunch together for like the release
of this episode.

Speaker 1 (01:43:16):
Yeah, yeah, we can release a resource guide the whole
thing for.

Speaker 2 (01:43:19):
Sure, because there's like there's so much stuff out there,
even like really little things like there's an app that
you can download for free called native land dot Ca.
It's a world map and like you essentially use it
like Google Maps. You look up different locations and it
tells you whose traditional territory you're living on. And just
even like little gestures like that are really really important
because there needs to be that recognition. There needs to

(01:43:42):
be that starting point. You know. I think that a
lot of us feel very attached to the places that
we grew up in different ways, you know, whether we
spent physically long periods of time there or whether it's
a sentimental sort of attachment. And just being able to
recognize that it's like Okay, that's Migmap territory, or that's
Le Nape territory, or that's Osage territory, that's you know,
Soue territory. Then even just understanding that all of a

(01:44:06):
sudden can be such an opening of a door, because
then it's like, oh, when you hear about like protests
happening at Standing Rock. It's not like, oh, those are nameless,
faceless like Indigenous people protesting. We're not sure what it's like. Oh,
I get it. Those are like the Coda and Lakota Sue.

(01:44:27):
You know, I grew up on Sue territory. Like all
of a sudden, you have a much more personal tie
to that. There's also tons and tons and tons of
Indigenous activists out there, people like Pam Palmitter who are
doing great work, and all their stuff is like on
YouTube and they're active on social media. So there's like,
so there is hope, there's hope you can learn about
these things. It might be uncomfortable, as any kind of unlearning,

(01:44:51):
unsettling process is, but I would really encourage people to
do that work because you know, we've seen with this
past year we cannot continue to live is black, Indigenous
and people of color like we carry this tremendous weight
all the time of this violence of this system. You know,
even though I'm not currently in Nova Scotia, I am

(01:45:15):
connected to the MIGMN Nova Scotia right now who are
fighting for their treaty rights. You know, I am as
an Indigenous person, I am connected to the struggles of
other indigenous people. I'm connected to the struggles of black
people because it's all part of the same system, you know,
And that's why you care, and that's why you have
to be mobilized, and that's why you have to educate yourself,
and that's why you have to speak out and try

(01:45:37):
and do better.

Speaker 3 (01:45:38):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:45:39):
My grandmother, who was migmn is like was like my
anchor for my mag man has for a really long
time passed away a couple of years ago, and her
dying words were, I love you all. And love is
such an important value within Migma culture that like I
love you all is not just talking about I love

(01:45:59):
you all as in like the people who are physically
in the room there, but like love is something that
influences all of our actions. You know. We have a
lot of intention and a lot of thought that goes
towards like how we are in the world in terms
of like how we relate to everything, you know, and
so yeah, like starting to educate yourself is like starting

(01:46:22):
to take responsibility as like part of that interconnectedness.

Speaker 8 (01:46:26):
Yes, it's like a big taint, no no, no, I
think as a lot of us who are, you know,
on a pretty steep learning curve honestly, because they're I mean,
like we.

Speaker 1 (01:46:38):
Were saying, there's just so much of this. I mean,
this is just things I didn't learn in school. I
feel like you hit the same three points in at
least American public schools. And that's kind of it. And
it's like the information is accessible, it's just making the
commitment to do it like it. That is all it is.

Speaker 2 (01:47:00):
Yeah, And I was going to say, there's this fantastic
film that I just got to see it at the
Toronto International Film Festival, but we'll hopefully get why release
soon and everybody can check it out. It's a documentary
based on Thomas King's book The Inconvenient Indian, which everybody
should read. But there's this fabulous line in the film

(01:47:22):
at the end that is I think, sort of very emblematic,
kind of about this whole conversation, you know, And it's essentially,
once you know this story, you can't unknow it. You
just have to live with the fact that you know
it now. So now that you know about residential schools,
you can't say, oh, well, I didn't know, you know,

(01:47:44):
and therefore it was allowed to go on there are
still residential schools open in the United States. By the way,
I don't know if you guys found that in your research.

Speaker 4 (01:47:52):
But I did.

Speaker 2 (01:47:54):
Yeah. So yeah, so it's like, well, now that you know,
you know, and go forward with that and you can
do it. I believe in you.

Speaker 4 (01:48:03):
Thanks Jazz. I didn't write this quote down from a
YouTube video A wh I love watching YouTube. I love
going to box office Mojo dot com classic Caitlin. Yeah.
Senator Murray Sinclair, oh yes, said and again I'm going

(01:48:23):
to paraphrase this, but he was talking about how people
have said to him regarding oppression in the residential school system,
saying like, you know what that was in the past,
why can't you just forget it? And his response is
always why can't you remember? No?

Speaker 2 (01:48:37):
And that's just it. And like I said, you know
earlier in our conversation, like these things are still impacting
us today. I still have friends who, you know, grew
up in the foster care system. I still have friends
whose parents were in residential school I. You know, this
is an ancient history. And that's the most fundamental thing
is that, you know, so often we portray indigenous people

(01:48:59):
as being real and being like of the past. And
even when I was growing up, I was like, I
feel like the most like contact I had with Indigenous
culture was like a racist diorama at like a history museum,
you know, and we have to remind ourselves that like
Indigenous people still exist and colonialism still exists, and ignoring

(01:49:22):
it is what we have been doing and that has
not been effective. So yeah, so it is like it
is something that like I think people especially here in
Canada are very are starting to become a lot more
aware of. But it's it feels sometimes like such a
slow process, you know that, Like I wish everybody could

(01:49:43):
get a copy of Tom King's Inconvenient Indian and a
copy of like Rhymes for Young Ghouls, and it's like
this is your homework, like citizen, you know, like this
is what you have to do this weekend.

Speaker 4 (01:49:56):
Is there anything left to discuss?

Speaker 1 (01:49:58):
Well, we know it certainly passes the Ala test because
it's ALA, but I believe that kaylin I had this
movie passing the Bechdel test.

Speaker 4 (01:50:09):
Yes, there's a scene at the end where Aila and
her she's watching sort of like her own flashback from Afar.
Toward the end of the movie where she and her mom,
Anna are painting something by firelight, and they're kind of
discussing what they're painting and why and.

Speaker 1 (01:50:28):
Just weaving right.

Speaker 4 (01:50:32):
And then it also passes between Ala in series, I
think when she relates the story about the wolf. Yep, yeah,
in that whole conversation. So yeah, definite Bechdel Test passing.

Speaker 2 (01:50:46):
Yeah, And like that's another reason that, like, I was
so excited to talk about this film because I was, like,
I know that it passes the Bechdel test because I
was watching it with that intention, you know, seven years ago.
Hell yeah, So that's that's awesome. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:51:03):
And then that's that brings it to our nipple scale,
So zero to five nipples based on examining the movie
from an intersectional feminist lens, and hmmm, it's gonna I
mean it's very high. Yeah, I mean I I feel
like it could be a five nipple situation. Yeah, I
think so, And I'm interested to hear.

Speaker 3 (01:51:25):
Right.

Speaker 2 (01:51:25):
I feel like I'm trolling you guys in the video
and nobody can see it. I mean, it's five nipples
for me. But I also feel like I'm a little
bit biased because I mean, I just this film has
meant so much throughout the years and I love it
so much and just you know, have a bad ass
MGMA female heroin fuck yeah, like.

Speaker 4 (01:51:47):
Yeah, yeah, I don't really have any like notes for like,
there's nothing that like rubbed me wrong or any show.

Speaker 1 (01:51:55):
Me a more motivated female protagonist with.

Speaker 2 (01:51:59):
More ata like she's running the show, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:52:03):
And with higher stakes. I mean this that it's wonderful
and again that that phrase narrative sovereignty and having this
be an indigenous filmmaker, writing, directing, editing this amazing character.
Who Yeah, I have no no, it's I think the
more we talk about it, I do feel like it

(01:52:24):
is very squarely a coming of age film of sorts,
just not the tone we're used to in that genre.
But it's it's such like you said, just it's such
a singular movie, and we are seeing a community that
is almost never represented in movies. And on top of that,

(01:52:46):
we're seeing Aila who is not just dealing with systemic
oppression as it pertains to being indigenous, she's also experiencing
sexism within her own community and navigating that and just
navigating all this stuff, and she she makes mistakes. She
just yeah, I feel it's it's five nips for me.

Speaker 4 (01:53:07):
Mm hmm. The plan where they're like, you know what,
we're gonna make shit shower down upon this guy and
then st try to steal the money like their plan
wasn't maybe like.

Speaker 1 (01:53:20):
Danny Ocean could never can never, he could never.

Speaker 4 (01:53:26):
Like it's great, and the catharsis of it is great,
but I'm just like, like, he's right there, he knows
that you're there. Maybe like steal the money first and
then like you know, just like teenager it's like teenagers. Yeah,
of course they're gonna come up with a bit of
a hair brain plan and it works.

Speaker 2 (01:53:45):
So yeah, and it's so rewarding too, because the ship
Like at one point when they're putting the ship like
in the van, like getting ready to go to the school,
they're like, yeah, everybody contributed, and I can just like
I can just picture like everybody abody just been like, oh,
oh you need some shit you need like we get that. Yeah,

(01:54:06):
And it's just like the fact that it's like a
community effort to like shit on.

Speaker 1 (01:54:10):
This opie, the crowdsource this shit. It's love and that
sequence we didn't talk about it too much, but that
sequence is it's just like another way this movie is
so cool where there's I mean understandably so there's so
many very very emotionally heavy scenes and plotlines in this movie.
And then for this, I mean, it fits very well

(01:54:33):
inside of what the movie is, but it's also this
moment of like you're in Ocean's eleven for a second,
but if it fits very clearly inside this world, and
it's like fun and they win and it's exciting and
it's just oh, that sequence is so cool.

Speaker 4 (01:54:50):
M hmm.

Speaker 2 (01:54:51):
Agreed.

Speaker 4 (01:54:51):
I mean, and even just like we talked about the
little bit of criticism or like some pushback that Jeff
Barnaby received, like from his own community, like are you
really gonna like show these stereotypes, which again like I don't.
This is an exploration of what like systemic racism and
oppression does to an Indigenous community, does to families, and
does to individuals, and like that's this is just an

(01:55:14):
authentic story about this young woman, this teenage girl, and
it's just an incredibly crafted and told story. Ask glad
you like it.

Speaker 2 (01:55:27):
I'm so glad you're like, because I think there's also
like this nervousness on my part of like I'm like,
oh no, what if they don't like it, I'm gonna
have to sit on this call and like explain like
why it's a brilliant film. But I'm so glad you
guys liked it, and and and yeah, and thank you
so much for this opportunity and for holding this space

(01:55:48):
for indigenous film and for me and for Aila and yeah,
thank you so much.

Speaker 4 (01:55:54):
Thank you for being and providing all your insights, information everything.

Speaker 1 (01:56:02):
Thank you so much, extremely grateful and just like stoked
that you're on the show.

Speaker 2 (01:56:06):
Thank you, thank you.

Speaker 4 (01:56:08):
And there you have it. That's our re released episode
on rhymes for Young Grules. You can follow our guest
Jess on Instagram at Jess Merwin. You can follow us
at Bechdelcast, as well as subscribe to our Patreon aka
the Matreon.

Speaker 1 (01:56:30):
We love the Matreon. It is where for five dollars
a month you can.

Speaker 5 (01:56:33):
Get two bonus episodes with just Caitlin and myself on
a theme of usually yours and occasionally are choosing if
we didn't like what you chose, So it's.

Speaker 1 (01:56:45):
Always a weird time to join the Matreon. It's a
really fun community of people over there. You get us
say in the episodes, you get you know, when we
go on tour, you get pre tickets, you get discounts,
you get bonus merch if you come to our live shows.
It's really fun. This upcoming month, we're going to be
covering some holiday films you've been asking us to do

(01:57:07):
for years and we're finally doing. We're doing The Family
Stone and Black Christmas over there, so.

Speaker 4 (01:57:11):
True, so meet us over there.

Speaker 1 (01:57:13):
The link is in the description.

Speaker 4 (01:57:14):
It's a great way to spend five dollars. And speaking
of spending money or not spending money, the last thing
I want to say is I'd like to encourage listeners
to participate in the economic blackout that is currently happening.
I've seen different date ranges for different versions of this,

(01:57:35):
but more or less between November twenty fifth, so it's
already started to December. Tewod there's a huge economic blackout
where rather than participating in Black Friday and Cyber Monday
sales from huge corporations, exercise the power you have as

(01:57:55):
a consumer to withhold your money because that will beak
volumes if enough people do it.

Speaker 1 (01:58:03):
Absolutely, and in addition to as we've discussed in the
show before, keeping up with and observing the BDS boycott
list as well and rerouting maybe some of that money
that you would have been spending at business Corp or
wherever the fuck you you spend your money and rerouting

(01:58:24):
at two places like the Native Women's Collective, which we
mentioned at the beginning of the episode. You can give
to them in the description or you know, in addition,
you know, get involved in it or at very least
aware of mutual aid efforts in your community. You know,
you can obviously, if you're not able to donate your money,

(01:58:44):
you can donate your time. There's just a massive, massive
need for you and whatever you are able to do,
whether that's financial, whether that's donating your time, and just
you know, get involved in your community because that's the
only way that we weather these kinds of horrific times
that we find ourselves in. So if you're able to

(01:59:06):
do it, you absolutely should, and it's just you know,
a great way to build community and focus on community.

Speaker 4 (01:59:13):
Absolutely.

Speaker 1 (01:59:13):
My last plug is listen to We the Unhoused. It's
a show I also produce on iHeartRadio that discusses specifically
issues that affect the unhouse, told by unhoused people and
their advocates.

Speaker 4 (01:59:29):
There's a really great.

Speaker 1 (01:59:30):
Episode coming out this coming Tuesday that interviews a wonderful
filmmaker named Caitlin Crenn who just released a wonderful documentary
on PBS about the queer unhoused community in New York.
It's a really great movie. It's called Outcast Nation. It's
a great interview with her and.

Speaker 4 (01:59:52):
Yeah, amazing. That's my It's my little plug with that.
Thank you for listening. Be safe, take care of yourself,
and take care of each other. Bye bye.

Speaker 1 (02:00:07):
The Bechdel Cast is a production of iHeartMedia, hosted and
produced by Me Jamie Loftus.

Speaker 4 (02:00:12):
And me Caitlyn Dorante. The podcast is also produced by
Sophie Lichtermann and.

Speaker 1 (02:00:17):
Edited by Caitlyn Dorante. Ever heard of them?

Speaker 4 (02:00:20):
That's me and our logo and merch and all of
our artwork in fact are designed by Jamie Loftis, Ever
heard of her? Oh my God?

Speaker 1 (02:00:29):
And our theme song, by the way, was composed by
Mike Kaplan with vocals by Katherine Voskrasinski Iconic and a
special thanks to the one and only Aristotle Acevedo.

Speaker 4 (02:00:40):
For more information about the podcast, please visit linktree slash
Bechdel Cast