RIDM: Indigenous youth have 'a lot to tell,' says filmmaker O'Bomsawin

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Kim O’Bomsawin has always had time for young people. The Abenaki filmmaker’s 2014 debut documentary, La Ligne rouge, followed a group of young Indigenous hockey players. Her latest, the NFB-produced Ninan Auassat: We, the Children, offers intimate profiles of youths at various stages of development, from grade school to the edge of adulthood, in three different Indigenous nations: Atikamekw, Eeyou Cree and Innu.

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“I always found young people from Indigenous communities to be very resourceful, brilliant and lucid,” O’Bomsawin told The Gazette recently. “Even if their life is harder compared to privileged kids, they had a lot of lived experience and a lot to tell. They were certainly not a reflection of what I would hear about when I would come back to Montreal and listen to the radio and read the papers, which talked much more about drug consumption, the dropout rate and young girls getting pregnant very early (in Indigenous communities).

“I found we were always speaking very negatively of them, whereas my feeling toward them was quite the opposite; so I decided to let them speak for themselves.”

Ninan Auassat: We, the Children is the closing film of the 27th edition of Les Rencontres internationales du documentaire de Montréal (RIDM), which presents 146 documentaries from 54 countries, Nov. 20 to Dec. 1.

“It’s an incredible honour, I was very touched,” O’Bomsawin said, noting that the spotlight given to her film “says people are ready, that they want to go toward and to meet First Nations in a general way, but also that they want to hear from these kids.”

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There are almost no adults in O’Bomsawin’s film. At one point, we see a mother in the kitchen in the background, a father playing guitar or three boys making a fuss when their grandmother comes to visit. Other than that, we are plunged into the world of her subjects.

For the filmmaker, who holds a master’s degree in sociology, it was both a stylistic choice and a way to reflect the fact that Indigenous youth often function with less parental supervision.

“In the communities, what’s different with these youths is they have great freedom,” she said. “Kids will leave the house, go play and come back. They live in a state of controlled chaos.”

Which meant O’Bomsawin dealt with little to no red tape during the filming process.

“From the moment the kids said yes, the parents said yes,” she noted. “We would show up and say, ‘What are we doing today?’ We would take off (with the kids), and the parents were fine.”

O’Bomsawin’s subjects include four-year-old Legend Makesh and her three older sisters, Sage, 22, Jade, 20, and Rain, 14, who care for and guide her through life in Whapmagoostui, Quebec’s northernmost Cree community; Matapew Ottawa, 12, his younger brother Zachary and their cousin Isaac Verreault Lambert, 11, who have adventures and ponder things on the Atikamekw reserve of Manawan; and best friends Alyssa Picoutlaigan, 17, and Monique Benjamin Hervieux, contending with the encroaching realities of the real world in the Innu community of Pessamit.

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Along the way, serious issues are broached, from illness to alcoholism, suicide, violence, abuse, pregnancy and inter-generational trauma. Through it all, we witness these young people finding their way with dignity, resilience and humour, and with help from one another.

“I wanted to communicate a message of hope, especially for these young Indigenous people who were going to see themselves on screen,” O’Bomsawin explained. “I wanted to say: ‘You are beautiful. I find you beautiful, and the people who see you find you beautiful.’ It’s unanimous, everywhere I go to show the film, people say: ‘Wow, these kids are extraordinary. I want to spend time with them.’

“I wanted to give them confidence and show them they have as much value as any other kid they could envy. I also wanted to tell the world: ‘Stop seeing us as failures. We’re so much more.’”

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Ninan Auassat: We, the Children is part of RIDM’s Magnus Isacsson competition for Canadian films that display a strong social conscience. Also in the category are:

Israeli-Montrealer Danae Elon’s Rule of Stone, in which the filmmaker interviews Montreal architect Moshe Safdie and others about the implications and far-reaching ramifications of a law made in Jerusalem in 1967 that states that all new constructions must be made with stone taken from the land of Israel (screens with English subtitles Nov. 30 at 12:45 p.m. at Cinémathèque québécoise);

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Joseph Hillel’s Koutkekout, about a theatre collective preparing for a festival in conflict-torn Haiti (screens with English subtitles Nov. 29 at 3 p.m. at Cinéma du Parc);

And Catherine Legault’s Larry (They/Them), a dream-like portrait of trans artist Laurence Philomène during their first two years of hormone treatments (screens with English subtitles Nov. 28 at 3:30 p.m. at Quartier Latin).

AT A GLANCE: Ninan Auassat: We, the Children screens Nov. 30 at 7:30 p.m. and Dec. 1 at 3 p.m. as part of the RIDM documentary film festival. For tickets and information, visit ridm.ca

tdunlevy@postmedia.com

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