Occupy Forum is an opportunity for open and respectful dialogue
on all sides of these critically important issues!
Movie Night: “Where the Spirit Lives” A film about aboriginal life in Canadian residential schools
Where the Spirit Lives (1989) is a drama about aboriginal children in Canada being taken from their tribes to attend residential schools for assimilation into majority culture. The Aboriginal Residential Schools were a network of “residential” (boarding) schools for Indigenous Canadians (First Nations or “Indians”; Métis and Inuit). Funded by the Canadian government they were administered by Christian churches and operated for most of the 20th Century. The policy was to remove children from the influence of their families and culture, and assimilate them into the dominant Canadian culture.[2] Over the course of the system’s existence, about 30% of native children, or roughly 150,000, were placed in residential schools nationally.
A consensus emerged in the early 21st century that residential schools did significant harm to Aboriginal children who attended them by removing them from their families, depriving them of their ancestral languages, through sterilization, and by exposing many of them to physical and sexual abuse by staff members, and other students. Many native and non-native people are calling for reparations to be made by the Canadian government to the survivors of the system.
The lead character of the film is a young girl taken from her reservation to one of the schools but whois particularly resistant to efforts to westernize her.
It may be interesting to discuss the film’s story in light of the election of the new Canadian Prime Minister who has said one of his top priorities will be to honour treaties with aboriginal people and to address long-standing issues such as poverty and racism towards them.
Time will be allotted for Q&A, discussion and announcements.
no one turned away!