Film about grandmother's Residential School experience receiving recognition
First-time filmmaker searches for family history in residential schools doc
LISA ABEL - August 5, 2007
TORONTO (CP) - Growing up in Sioux Lookout, Ont., Nadia McLaren sensed there was something missing from her family history, a feeling she calls "a restlessness of an ancient sadness."
As a child, her grandmother Theresa McCraw, originally from the Ojibwa community of Heron Bay Pic River, Ont., attended St. Joseph's, an Indian residential school in Thunder Bay, yet rarely spoke about her experiences there.
"I just got bits and pieces of her story," McLaren says. "I took this knowledge and her bits and pieces that she did tell me for granted, because I thought that I could ask my aunts and uncles about Granny's experiences - which I did - and none of them knew."
The native residential schools began operating in the late 1800s and it wasn't until the late 1970s that all the schools were shut down.
While some had positive experiences in the government-run institutions, many of the 150,000 students, removed from their families and their traditional lands, and forced to abandon their native languages and spiritual practices, were physically and sexually abused in the process.
McLaren sensed that McCraw's time at St. Joseph's hadn't been positive. After her grandmother's passing in 2003, McLaren knew that a vital piece of their family history had been taken to the grave.
The graduate of the Ontario College of Art and Design began to create a commemorative art exhibit where she would videotape native elders telling their stories, and show them alongside her paintings.
But by the third interview, McLaren realized that a full-length feature film would be the most effective way to get the elder's stories "out into the world."
"I figured the elders stories deserved that kind of attention."
The result is Muffins For Granny, an 88-minute documentary that weaves together home movie footage of her grandmother, interviews with six elders, including animated recreations of their stories, archival photos from residential schools, traditional songs, and scenes of the natural beauty of Ontario's north.
"For a lot of the elders it was the first time they actually spoke about it, so it was really powerful. It was pretty hard on the crew and myself, but definitely felt honoured that they were sharing these stories with us," McLaren says.
Earlier this year, the federal government approved an agreement that would give roughly 80,000 aboriginal students who were abused in residential schools $10,000 for the first year of attendance and $3,000 for every subsequent year.
The deadline for former students and their families to decide whether to stay in the settlement or remove themselves is August 20.
Harvey Trudeau, the eastern Canada liaison for the National Residential Schools Survivors' Society, says that since he has been involved with the society, he has "yet to help anybody fill out an opt-out form."
"As far as we know, the opt-out numbers are not very high," Trudeau says.
Trudeau, who attended a residential school in Spanish, Ont., says the payments might "make the experience easier to bear" for the survivors, though the money will "never help them forget what they've been through."
Karen Isaacs, a peer support worker with a residential schools program for survivors and their families at the Council Fire Native Cultural Centre in Toronto, doesn't know of anyone who has opted out, either.
"I think the compensation package is forcing them to open up their pasts, which will open the door to their healing, but they want to get it done with as little said as possible," Isaacs says.
"I find a lot of people don't want to talk about it. There's the pain; they don't want to feel that pain again. Some of them had such harsh treatment in residential school and they don't want to repeat it," she says.
Wayne Spear, director of communications Aboriginal Healing Foundation, one of the funders of the film, says supporting the making of Muffins for Granny fit well with the healing and public awareness components of the foundation's mandate.
"When people who have suffered trauma, particularly residential schools, realize there are other people who have actually overcome the fear and isolation of having been physically or sexually abused and kept it sort of a shameful secret, it has a healing effect," Spears says, "because people realize they're not alone and other people have gone through this as well and they've been able to cope with it."
Spears says the film "could be an enormous resource for education of the general public," since residential schools are often "softened or dealt with euphemistically" in the Canadian schools.
McLaren is looking for a distributor, applying to screen at more film festivals and trying to get the film into movie theatres. She's also had interest from organizations looking to use it as a tool for cultural sensitivity training.
Muffins for Granny recently ended an engagement in July at Camera, an independent screening room and art gallery in Toronto. Earlier versions of the film were shown at several native film festivals last year in Toronto and Winnipeg, where it won best documentary.
Perhaps what happened at a showing at a film festival in Moose Factory, Ont., was more meaningful to McLaren than the award.
"That was a really powerful screening, because afterwards one of the elders stood up, turned to his people and he said, 'It's time we started talking about this."'
"After I saw that happening, I realized this documentary would find its way," McLaren says. "It was a really powerful experience."