The Lesser Blessed

Last night I went to a Yellowknife "happening" - a 10:15 p.m. screening of The Lesser Blessed, "an eye-opening depiction of what it is to be a young Native man in today's modern world" (watch the trailer and find other info at The Lesser Blessed; it is also the source of my quote). The film is 2012, hot off the film presses or whatever is the right term for that genre; it's based on the 1996 novel of the same title, written by Richard van Camp.

Why "a happening"? Besides the fact that for me personally 10:15 is past my early-to-bed-and-early-to-rise usual bedtime, it was special because the 10:15 screening was the second of the film that day, an emergency response to the fact that the earlier show had sold out within minutes. Author Richard van Camp was very much in attendance, as was the main actor Larry Sole, both much applauded and cheered as they made brief pre-film speeches. Richard is a local boy who made good - a member of the Dogrib (Tlicho) Dene Nation, born in Fort Smith NT, educated at the En'owkin School of Writing in Penticton, the University of Victoria, and UBC, and, as he said last night, his novel is the first ever published by a Dene writer. There's a brief moment in the film in which the camera focuses on a sign that says: "R V Camp High School" - it took a moment for the information to sink in, then the audience had a hearty chuckle.

It was also "a happening" because the audience was differently composed compared to most events I have been to so far in Yellowknife: by rough estimate at least half aboriginal, half non. In my blog up to now I have followed the dictum of Jane Austen's Charlotte in Pride and Prejudice: I do not speak of that which I cannot praise. I'm also a newcomer, hardly equipped to claim any real knowledge of the race issues that, like the problem of the Giant Mine, in the north cannot as easily be ignored or simply not experienced as in other parts of Canada. But I am not blind, and the problems which face Canada's native population are brought to my mind almost daily. Yellowknife has a homeless population, for example, and that homeless population is largely and certainly most visibly native, and definitely visible - in nice weather the homeless sit in the sun on benches or the edges of planters or building steps on one of Yellowknife's busiest downtown corners.

The film screening audience was a reminder that Canada's aboriginal people have many other faces than the highly dysfunctional one usually seen via the media - successful or just average people leading successful or just average lives like other Canadians. And yet it was interesting to notice that, judging by audience reaction to nuances that I for one simply didn't get, the film spoke particularly to the aboriginal experience. Laughter, for example - it seemed to me that the aboriginal audience laughed at different things than the non-aboriginal audience. There were chuckles of recognition at certain details that simply went by me, certainly, but also, it seemed to me, by other non-aboriginals.

When the film was over, I thought: if even half of what the film depicted, of this sixteen-year-old's "coming of age" in such a confusing, irrelevant, bleak, violent world, is true for even half or a quarter of Canada's aboriginal people, there is such a long way to go before the legacy of the past is healed. And yet, surprisingly, the film ends in hope - the step-father (Benjamin Bratt) is a good man who helps the boy begin to find healing from the nightmares of his terrible past, and a circle of healing which includes the boy's loyal mother emerges.

It's a film worth seeing, a story worth experiencing, an experience worth sharing. I'm glad I did.