Transition/Transaction

“Welcome to my world” is an inter-title near the beginning of Daybi’s film Neutral, 2004, which could easily be called Natural, given the startling performance of non-actor Ryan Genaille, who plays Ismail, a young man living in his deceased godmother’s house. The title, Neutral, reflects, through an Aboriginal youth perspective, Daybi’s even-handed coolness in discussing angst-ridden YA issues of abortion, exacto knife switchblades and blind drunkenness. His talents as a rap lyricist are evident in wall-to-wall voice-overs that are immediate and intimate: “I also spent a lot of time playing alone, just looking up and wondering, about who I was, and who I was gonna be.”

As it happens, Ismail is going to be Romeo. The sun sets in Daybi’s adopted reservation, Kahnawake. Daylight fades to blue northern light. The luscious Vita (Angela Loft) comes a-walkin’ down the reservation road. Boy meets girl in an elliptically cut punch-drunk-love porch scene complete with insert shots of facial piercings and weather-beaten sneakers. The filmmaker creates an immediate intimacy between the characters and the audience that resonates as true by anyone who remembers youth.

“Can I ask you a favour? Will you punch me in the face?” “What?” “No, my jaw’s outta place.” There’s a countdown, a thumping punch, and then kisses. Sensual rawness so frank and real I am reminded that this type of Aboriginal depiction has rarely been committed to screen. With such heart-aching beauty, there is something almost dangerous about watching these kids hang out and have sex. Could it be that with 23% of Manitoban elementary school-aged youth being Native, these types of Aboriginal primal scenes have become verboten? Are we still living in the days of Jesuit Laforgue, who observed in the film, Black Robe (Bruce Beresford, 1991), that “they did it in the dirt like dogs”?

Gabriel Yahyahkeekoot is a Regina poet who has worked with the Sakewewak Artists’ Collective in a video workshop context, creating a body of work that depicts his awakening to the sociopolitical conditions into which he was born. The Moccasin Flats section of Regina, contender to Winnipeg’s North End for Child Poverty Capital of Canada, is witnessing a growing population of discontented Cree and Ojibwe youth who have come into direct conflict with the larger community and its enforcers. These conflicts are spelled out in spoken word and solarized images of youth reclining bucolically in the landscape and later revealed to be victims of the tradition of “murder, rape, theft, isolation,” the juggernaut of the colonial heritage of our country.

Daybi’s Neutral ends suddenly with the death of Ismail, while Yahyahkeekoot’s message is “survive at all costs” in “this prison we call reality.” His video, Moment of Clarity, 2003, reveals how startlingly clear the vision of youth can be.

Elwood Jimmy’s choice of artists is at odds with the type of Native film and video work supported in Manitoba. This can be confirmed by the critical vacuum left in the wake of this program last spring. Even the most incidental of aceartinc.’s efforts usually gets at least a resigned nod in the Winnipeg press, student papers or the free (you get what you pay for) weekly, Uptown. What’s going on here that can’t be spoken about? Were the short films and videos on display by Daybi and Gabriel Yahyahkeekoot execrable and unmentionable? Is the program best forgotten by everyone involved? Obviously not, as this material has been screened nationally alongside Jimmie Durham’s work, and purchased for museum collections.

How is it that in Winnipeg, home to APTN (the would-be Al Jezeera of Aboriginal Canada) plus countless Native and film/TV/ media training entities, this white cube presentation would pass by without any response? aceartinc. and their partner in First Nations contemporary art projects, Urban Shaman Gallery, are in contact with these institutional organizations, so it can’t be lack of information that was responsible for the silence.

The gatekeepers who jealously guard the government funding provided to regional emerging Native voices are not interested in these genres or viewpoints. Local competitions for funding, for instance the NFB Prairie Centre’s regional First Voices program, are based on approved genres and content, encouraging young filmmakers to vie with each other for the funding necessary to produce works that, ideally, will be in the form of redemption tales, hard issues elided. It seems that at all costs, encouraging another filmmaker with the rigor and political intensity of Alanis Obomsawin must be avoided. Maybe this will find remedy when funding is controlled by filmmakers. ■

“Transition/Transaction,” curated by Elwood Jimmy, featuring recent video works of Gabriel Yahyahkeekoot and Daybi, was exhibited at aceartinc. in Winnipeg from March 16 to April 21, 2007.

Noam Gonick is a filmmaker, television creator and installation artist. He was recently inducted into the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts.