HistoryTelevision.ca: How did you come up with the idea
of covering the story of the Haida Gwaii and their quest to
reclaim their ancestors?
KM: I learned about the repatriation work in 2002 when we
visited Haida Gwaii while making An Idea Of Canada ,
a film about the rural travels of Governor General Adrienne
Clarkson. The crew were off one night and Kristina McLaughlin,
one of my producers, and a couple of crew members and I went
to a feast that I'd seen advertised in Skidegate, the Haida
village in the south of the islands. We thought it was a community
dinner and went to meet people and learn about the place.
It turned out to be a fundraising event for repatriation.
We were astounded to hear the story of the pillaging of ancestral
bones and we were really moved by the effort the community
was making to bring them back. What most amazed me was the
perspective these people had on their ancestors—since
I come from a culture, which has so little cultural memory.
It was incredible to me that these people would devote all
of their free time to honouring people who had probably been
dead for two centuries and whose remains had disappeared 100
years earlier. It brought to mind the famous adage about aboriginal
culture seeing seven generations in each direction. I thought
this would be a great opportunity to explore that reality
and would make a fascinating film. That night, I spoke to
Andy Wilson, co-chair of the local repatriation committee,
about making a film about their work. But it would take another
full year to gain the community's trust.
HT.ca: How much time did it take for you to complete the
documentary? What were the challenges?
KM: From start to finish, the film took two years. One full
year, as noted above, gaining the trust of the community and
putting the financing together. Another year for the filmmaking.
The challenges were the opposite I usually encounter. It
was easy to get the support of our broadcasting partner, History
Television, through the offices of Cindy Witten. We met at
a conference a couple of months after I was in Haida Gwaii.
I told Cindy the story and she immediately threw her support
behind it, which allowed us to get the film made.
On the other hand, the Haida were very reluctant. As a community
and as individuals, they had invested a huge amount—financially,
emotionally, culturally and politically in this process. And
while they had courted daily press coverage of their activities,
with great success, they wanted to be certain that a full-length
documentary, which they rightly viewed as telling the story
for posterity, would be thorough and done with understanding.
They also had a number of culturally sensitive elements to
their burial rituals that they did not want filmed—the
handling of the skeletons, their food burning ceremony, the
actual burial, because they wanted nothing to interfere with
the moment and, I think, they feared a trivializing of the
sacred.
For a documentarian, this was a difficult condition to meet,
because one wants the fullest and truest picture possible.
But, having worked in the media for 20 years and seen plenty
of abuse, sometimes unintentional, I could sympathize with
their reasoning.
I spent the majority of a year talking with various people
involved in repatriation—the leaders, the elders, the
volunteers and, eventually, we built up a mutual trust. Apparently,
when the story of their Chicago trip first surfaced, there
were about a dozen requests from documentary makers to do
the story. In the end, ours was the only one that got made.
HT.ca: Did you personally find the experience emotional,
if so, which aspects?
KM: Well, where to begin... Not only I, but all of my crew
—including day hires in Chicago found the experience
emotional. There were many moments during conversations, performances
and rituals when one or another of us would tear up. This
was true for everyone involved, including the Haida and the
museum people they worked with. (It has also proved to be
true, by the way, with many viewers of the film.)
It's hard to say exactly what provoked these feelings, in
practice, it was often something banal or not obviously emotional.
My analysis of what is going on in our hearts is something
like this:
We all understand, on some level, that aboriginal people
are the original custodians of the earth or, at the least,
those whose ways tread most lightly upon it. We also know
that, in North America, these peoples and their cultures have
been subjected to some of the worst violence, subjugation,
humiliation and, finally, dismissal that Western culture has
handed out.
And yet, they have not been crushed and, in fact, are resurging
all over the continent. Extraordinarily, most aboriginal peoples,
and certainly the Haida, have answered every indignity by
turning the other cheek and remaining very generous toward
people from the dominant culture.
They believe, and the Haida showed this in many ways in their
repatriation, that "as we heal the Earth will heal." We as
outsiders all grasp how desperately the Earth needs healing,
though we may do nothing about it in daily life. Here are
people who have unquestioningly devoted most of their lives
to various ways of healing their culture and, as evidenced
by the resource battles continually waged on their territories,
their lands. Our lands.
So we weep I think out of sadness for what has been lost.
We weep in sympathy and in a general pride in humanity at
recognizing the tenacity these people bring to reclaiming
what has been lost. And we weep at the sheer beauty of a culture
and a people so grounded as to feel such tender regard for
and passion in defending both their ancestors and the generations
yet to come.
HT.ca: How would you describe the relationship between
the Chicago Field Museum and the Haidi Gwaii?
Well, I did my best to show how that relationship evolved
in the film. The reality is that the museum officials still
vary in their response to the Haida from feelings of suspicion
to tremendous warmth. But everything I saw from people at
the museum indicated a genuine and considerable effort to
understand the Haida and make up for the depredations visited
upon them by the anthropologists of yesteryear.
HT.ca: What is the next project you have on the horizon?
KM: First up, I am directing another film for History Television,
to commemorate VE and VJ days—entirely through the use
of still photographs gathered from all over the world. After
that, I will start working on a huge, High Definition film
about the Great Lakes, which I expect will take a couple of
years to complete.
HT.ca: If your audience could only take one lesson away
from your documentary, what would you want that to be?
KM: The importance of respecting others.