Connections

There were a lot of similarities between the workshop and the movie Indian Horse. The obvious one is that both were about the indigenous people. Aside from this easy example, the workshop and the movie both made me realise how difficult it must have been to be separated from your family to go and live in Native residential school. They also made me understand the impacts that these Native residential school had on the indigenous people and helped me understand why some of them fall in alcoholism. Last but not least, they both made a good representation of the feeling indigenous people felt throughout their life.

This movie also has a lot of links with my novel, which is Kindred. We cans see the similarities through the themes addressed in both works. One of these themes is the suicide and it is represented well in the book and in the movie. In the movie, we can see this theme with the main character who almost kills himself by drinking alcohol. In the book, it is more direct because we read about Alice suicide and understand why she does it. Another theme represented would be the racism. In the book, it is really clear because we can see the slavery and slaves were black people being discriminated because of their skin color. In the movie Indian Horse, racism was clearly visible with the discrimination towards Indians. They weren’t treated as well as other and constantly received insults.

The workshop we did completely open my eyes on the feeling you get when you’re put in the same conditions as the members of the first nations. It made me feel this inability to be able to remedy the situation and act. The woman animating separated us, the children, from the adults. This made me see how powerless we, as children, were and how much the adults wanted to do something but were paralyzed by the system. I liked the fact that we could participate to the workshop and say how we felt and ask questions. I would highly recommend this workshop to anyone and especially to anyone who doesn’t understand the damages caused by this racism.