{"id":61,"date":"2008-01-21T23:50:42","date_gmt":"2008-01-22T03:50:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.socialdoc.net\/magnus\/2008\/01\/21\/the-invisible-people-what-happened-to-the-debate\/"},"modified":"2008-01-22T19:51:08","modified_gmt":"2008-01-22T23:51:08","slug":"the-invisible-people-what-happened-to-the-debate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.socialdoc.net\/magnus\/2008\/01\/21\/the-invisible-people-what-happened-to-the-debate\/","title":{"rendered":"The Invisible People – what happened to the debate ?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Peuple<\/a>
\n The Minister shaking the hand of a young Algonquin.<\/em><\/p>\n

During the holidays, I read a collection of articles by the great critic of American cinema Andrew Sarris entitled \u2018Confessions of a Cultist.\u2019<\/a><\/strong> One phrase struck me. \u201cEveryone adores a dissident poet \u2013 in someone else\u2019s society.\u201d (quoting from memory.)<\/p>\n

And I had the opportunity to see the courageous and powerful new film from Richard Desjardins<\/a><\/strong>. I will clarify, for those who are not from Quebec, that he is a great poet, composer, and singer-songwriter as well as the author of important documentaries, with Robert Monderie<\/strong>. Almost ten years ago, their film l\u2019Erreur Bor\u00e9ale<\/a><\/strong> spurred an enormous debate concerning the state of the boreal forest in Quebec, and it is one of those rare documentary films that one can say led to real change in society. Now, with Le Peuple invisible<\/a><\/strong> (The Invisible People), will they manage to provoke a similar debate about the situation of native people in Quebec?<\/p>\n

But first, what is this film about? It is the finely spun and well-documented tale of how the Algonquins, the traditional inhabitants of a vast territory north of Ottawa, suffered at the hands of white colonists and governments\u2014not to mention the Jesuits and the Catholic Church. The film does not treat the colonisers tenderly. Here is what my friend and close collaborator Simon Bujold<\/strong> writes:<\/p>\n

This film is a great history course. The sort of course that the Quebec school books never dared imagine. Richard Desjardins has again accomplished a brilliant intellectual feat designed to make us think.
\nThe Algonquins, who are they?<\/p>\n

\u201cOur brothers,\u201d said Desjardins in an interview. \u2018Those whom we have systematically ignored since our ancestors no longer needed them to survive the rigors of the land. They have always been there. They have reasonably accommodated the European and his descendants well before the Bouchard-Taylor commission.\u2019 ( An allusion to the present debate on tolerance toward immigrants and minority cultures in Quebec.)<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, as the film by Monderie and Desjardins demonstrates, the Algonquins are an invisible people in the eyes of the Qu\u00e9b\u00e9cois. Criticism has been fired specifically at the sovereignty movement, which asserts a distinct national identity while completely ignoring the First Nations. One victim who shows no solidarity with another even more badly off. \u201cI want us to be able to live together in harmony and peace,\u201d says the conqueror as a testimony to the lost friendship he has just crushed. Why concern oneself with the fate of the weaker when one is the stronger. Many viewers exited the theatre still covered with the shame and guilt that rose up in us when confronted with this reality. Powerlessness in the face of a tragedy of such scope. What disturbs the spectator most is that the accusing finger turns slowly towards us as we discover, one by one, the past and present injustices the Algonquins have sustained. In L\u2019Erreur Bor\u00e9ale, evil was the company, no sweat. In this film there is the cruel reflection of the mirror.\u201d<\/p>\n

The film gives no answer to the question everyone has. What to do? What to do today?
\nCan we overcome hundreds of years of organized contempt to destroy the barrier of cultural ignorance.
\nBillions for the tsunamis, millions for Haiti. Schools for the young Afghans, Iraq for Iraqis. And for our neighbors? Nothing.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Merci Simon !<\/p>\n

And the debate ? What has become of the debate ?
\nWell, for a while I thought it was going to erupt. The official spokesperson for the Rencontres Internationales du Documentaire de Montr\u00e9al, the singer Biz <\/strong>of the group Loco Locass,<\/a><\/strong> wasn\u2019t ashamed to attack the film. According to Biz, heard on Radio-Canada, Desjardins and Monderie criticize the Qu\u00e9becois without emphasizing that the Americans and the Canadians had done even worse. Some days later, also on Radio-Canada, I heard the writer Dany Laff\u00e9ri\u00e8re, a Qu\u00e9becer of Haitian origin, assert that Desjardins had taken it upon himself to speak about the oppression of the Algonquins rather than letting them speak for themselves. But aside from that\u2026 not a lot. I believe this is a film that makes people very ill at ease. Will the debate eventually take place ? Perhaps after the television broadcast.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Minister shaking the hand of a young Algonquin. During the holidays, I read a collection of articles by the great critic of American cinema Andrew Sarris entitled \u2018Confessions of a Cultist.\u2019 One phrase struck me. \u201cEveryone adores a dissident poet \u2013 in someone else\u2019s society.\u201d (quoting from memory.) And I had the opportunity to … Continue reading The Invisible People – what happened to the debate ?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,11,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-documentary-debates","category-english","category-film"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.socialdoc.net\/magnus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.socialdoc.net\/magnus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.socialdoc.net\/magnus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.socialdoc.net\/magnus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.socialdoc.net\/magnus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.socialdoc.net\/magnus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.socialdoc.net\/magnus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.socialdoc.net\/magnus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.socialdoc.net\/magnus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}