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F. The Honour of All This NFB film (available on video) shows how one woman started the process that changed the Alkalai Lake reserve, once nicknamed "Alcohol Lake," into an alcohol-free reserve. The actors in the film are the people of Alkalai Lake, who play themselves or each other. It ends with a selection of clips from the celebration after the film was completed. 1. Introduction to the film * If you have any First Nations students in your group, ask them if they know the film The Honour of All. If not, ask some or all of them to preview it and decide if they would like the whole class to see it. * If they decide it is all right to show the film, they may want to co-present the session with you. Discuss with them what the session with the class would cover.
Since then she has asked First Nations students to watch the film together, outside of class, and decide if it will be shown in class. She has done this three or four times, and the group has always decided to show it. They usually present it proudly to the class and do a lot of extra reading and writing in connection with it. Because of student demand, she has since extended the policy to other potentially controversial films. A film about welfare recipients, for example, will be previewed and okayed by a group of students on welfare, before being shown to the whole group. 2. Alternate introduction If First Nations students introduce the film, there is no need for the following activity. However, discussion of First Nations peoples' lives, their life on reserves and widespread prejudice against them are important for all of us in Canada - particularly as land claims and aboriginal rights are being negotiated. If you do not have First Nations students in your class, you might want to introduce the film as follows:
* Do some word clusters on the blackboard. Put up the word
"alcohol" with a circle around it and have people call out words that are
connected to it in their minds. Write them down all around the word. Put up
"poverty" and do the same. For now don't discuss the words, just brainstorm.
* Ask if anyone knows someone they would describe as poor, or if they describe themselves that way. * Now put up "reserve." Before you start having them brainstorm words for "reserve," make some space for anyone in the room who may now or in the past have lived on a reserve or have family living on a reserve. This is a sensitive word because of the prejudice and ignorance about life on reserves often found among those of us who are not First Nations people. * Notice, in this cluster, how many words seem negative and or blaming. * Introduce the film by letting them know that this is a film about one woman, and then a whole reserve, who got fed up with their situation and changed it through will power and working together. But it started with one woman. This reserve now runs an institute to teach others how to make major social change. 3. Film: The Honour of All * Some questions to consider:
* To finish off, go back to the cluster of "reserve" if you made one, and see if there are new words that should be included. |
A colleague worked
out this way of introducing the film after a negative experience the first time
she used it with a class that had both First Nations and other students in it.
The film opens with a long section in which conditions on the reserve are made
explicit. Every adult on the reserve was a drinker, and the problems of
violence and neglect are not glossed over. The first time my colleague showed
it, one First Nations student walked out during the first section, and there
was a lot of initial discomfort in the room. The instructor worried about what
First Nations students were thinking, and many students were upset because of
the stereotypes that are portrayed in the first section, since they were not
yet aware of how the people on the reserve come to grips with their problems.
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