Andrew Genaille's Blog

Here's what I don't understand: why do some members of political parties feel that calling someone an'idiot' will win that person's vote over?
Here's the thing: I've been called an idiot by Conservatives, Liberals and members of the New Democratic Party over the last few weeks; the only party I haven't heard it from is the Green Party.
As I'm an undecided voter, they should be going after my vote. Being called an idiot isn't going to endear me to them.
Actually, I voted during the advance polls so technically I'm no longer undecided but a completely irrelevant voter. It doesn't matter what the parties do, I can't change my vote anyway.
But u to that point, I was undecided; not only had I made my choice based on the issues, but also on the vileness of the other voters in trying to win me over to their way of thinking.
I've been called ignorant, uneducated, a sell out, a dickhead and I've been informed I don't know the first thing about politics. A member of the NDP questioned my sanity.
I've never considered myself ignorant of politics, my grandfather was a First Nations Chief and my mother was the Band Administrator through three other Chiefs. My teenage years were spent working at the band office and dealing with several political parties both provincially and federally. I still have Christmas Cards sent to us from Jean Chretien,
Political discussions were and are still common around our house and I'm used to hearing from different points of view. My father left the Military for the RCMP, he tended to have a centre-right view. My brother has a Masters Degree in Education, and a degree in Canadian History; so as a teacher he tends to vote very left wing.
My sister is a card carrying Liberal. Literally. She has a card. She carries it in her purse.
I take after my mother though, I change my vote depending on what the parties say and do; or as my brother describes me "You're just left of centre, you care about other people but want to be rich too."
Over the last decade I've switched back and forth between the Liberals and the New Democrats depending on the issues of the day; but this last Sunday I actually had to think about who I wanted to be associated with. Not the potential MP, but the other people that would vote for them.
It's safe to assume that as a First Nations person I wouldn't be voting Conservative, just too much there over the last decade to get over: Body bags to the North, apology that didn't mean anything, reserves without clean water, everything to do with Valcourt. Voter-wise, I consistently heard how I don't know what I was talking about: Natives don't pay taxes, I should be thankful for what we're given; and my favourite, we should just die out.
So this year I was perfectly happy voting for the Liberal Party until Trudeau and his party voted for Bill C-51. My brother supports Native Rights and Idle No More, and I write books about Native activists; Bill C-51 is clearly something that would make our lives difficult.
I wasn't alone though in backing away from the Liberals, apparently at the time a lot of Liberals left them including my sister. She didn't cut her card up like others, but she also didn't vote for them this last weekend in the Advance polls; which has led to a lot of soul searching on her part.
Discussions online with Liberal voters informed me that I don't understand the economy, that I don't know understand what Trudeau is trying to do, that I don't get what legal definitions are. I'd like to point out my time in post secondary schools, and two Uncles, and a cousin that are lawyers who can explain what things mean to me. The bottom line though I got was that if I don't understand Trudeau I should follow him.
So that left me with the NDP.
Which is a funny story in my opinion, I didn't want to vote for them because they were too left wing for me; until Muclair revealed his financial plan. It had moved to the right, as a fiscally conservative, morally liberal person that was a selling point with me.
That won my vote so I didn't feel like I was just voting NDP to keep Liberals and Conservatives out. I was even able to put up with members of their party mocking me for switching parties, not concerned that that might lose you members.
At least until NDP members exploded at me for suggesting the NDP went right wing with their budget. It turned into this long debate, as I had to prove that I wasn't the only one that thought this way.
By the end of that debate, I declared to my family I was voting Green. I put it online.
What I heard from the only two Green Party members I know: "Welcome to the family," and "we're doing a get out the vote drive, want to help."
They're kind of laid back.
I felt bad when I Voted NDP and only because those two Green Members were nice to me.


Why did I vote NDP?
Right up until I was standing in the line up I was going Green, maybe, maybe not. Wasn't sure. Maybe.
But they were saying the Liberals had the best chance of removing Harper. But that was nationally. And Trudeau won't work with the NDP, which means he'll work with Harper or we'll end up with another election. Or not.
But nationally.
I live in BC. NDP and Liberals are neck and neck here. So asked about my riding. NDP has the best chance of beating Mark Strahl.
Then it came down to one question I tend to ask my brother.
"Why should I vote NDP and not any of the others?"
Answer: "Because their Candidate was the only one that came to our reserve and asked us what we think."
That's what did it for me.
But just barely.


Coming away from it though, I still felt like I voted for the party with a squished up face. Not because of the issues, not because of the candidates.
But because I'm annoyed with the people supporting the parties.
They're like angry cults now. With very active, online presences.
All of them.

The First Nations community is considered to be one of the fastest growing populations in Canada. That number, depending on whom you ask can range between 1.2 million to 1.4 million. As a First Nations person it's actually comforting to know that, considering just how close to extinction we came.
Not that our Genocide is anywhere close to being over. There's still the ever-present fear of accidentally breeding ourselves out thanks to some barbaric laws put on us by the powers that be.
If you want a good article about dating as a First Nations person you need only to Google "Looking for First Nations love" by Lisa Charleyboy, she covers the topic pretty thoroughly. The just of which is if a Native person marries a non-native person, each subsequent generation will become less and less Native, until which that family line has lost all their Aboriginal rights.
Ergo, you have to look for love while always wondering if your great-grandchild is going to be that white guy that says "I'm not racist, I'm 1/16th Cherokee."
Cause that would suck.
Lisa's solution though was simply to state that she would only date First Nation men (**smiles politely**). Something she took a lot of flack for I assume, which is partly unfair consider it's an issue many, many Natives deal with.
I have a different solution. Several actually, afforded to us thanks to the advancement of science.
How ethical are they? That's the question I've been debating for the last couple of days.

Situation one: You're a First Nations man and you've found yourself a lovely, intelligent non-native Woman that you'd like to spend the rest of your life with. Unfortunately, you've been told by your Band Office that after you're dead, your half-Indian/Half-other children will be kicked off the reserve.
One solution to this situation would be to find a Woman of colour and very delicately ask her for the donation of several eggs for the chance to have Native Children.
The complication in there would be just how understanding the woman you love would be about the idea of raising another woman's child. Taking it a step further, she probably wouldn't be too happy about the idea of being a surrogate to her husband and another woman's child.
Quite honestly, this would be only possible with several completely understanding women.
Has it been done before?
Yes.
There's several cases of homosexual men that have used this route to have biological Children with other couples who don't have children of their own; and honestly, both parenting couples seem to be completely happy with the situation.
The difference here is the reasons behind the procedure. Is it too close to Eugenics?
The basics behind Eugenics is to wipe out undesirables for a more evolutionary perfect race of people; the way they went about doing this was to sterilize ethnic people, mentally handicap, homosexuals.
This situation is the opposite of wiping out a race of people for the preference of another, the hope here is the Race in question won't get wiped out while at the same time loving the person you want to be with.
There's also the issue of asking two women to undergo two very complicated and humiliating procedures while all the man has to do is what he normally does, while in a room catering to him.

Situation two: You're a First Nations woman who has found the man of her dreams in the form of a white, young, completely jacked Hugh Jackman-as-Wolverine type; but again you're risking the loss of the home your kids were raised in, simply because they're designated differently than their mother.
Less of an ethical dilemma?
There's plenty of Native sperm at the sperm bank, take my word for it and please don't ask me how I know. I'll deny everything.
How do you explain to your significant other you want to use a donation?
How would the suggestion of that not lead to a quick end of relationship moment?
"Honey, I love you more than anything; but the Government has these rules; so I picked this up…"

Maybe I'm overthinking the ethical dilemma, maybe there's a third situation where all the men and all the women involved are aware of the situation and consider it an amazing opportunity.
Maybe situation three is where two intermixed couples decide to exchange eggs and sperm. I'll lend give you my sperm in exchange for your eggs so that both parties can walk away with Children that meet the Government's requirements for having Native Children.
It would have to be a full exchange though, as I don't see it working if the Native Man impregnates the Native Woman, because then you would have to work out visitation rights, support. Easier just to swap goods.

Now I'm curious if anybody's done this already. Something more to Google.

Is there a legal reason the Canadian Government refuses to let people use the term Genocide? Perhaps repercussions in the Court system?
I'm not a legal expert, but I'm pretty sure that allowing The Museum of Human Rights to use Genocide to describe what happened to Natives won't result in altering anything presently in front of a judge.
Actually, it's my understanding that most of the court cases between Natives and The Government are leaning in the Native's favour anyway. Calling Genocide Genocide won't change that, trust me it's not the Secret Card up our sleeve that we believe will win our case.
Could it be the fear of judgment? Are they worried that admitting to something so horrible that other countries will look down upon Canada? That they'll be so detested by us that, that at world conferences they'll not want to sit at the same table. The bad news in that regard is that the rest of the world already acknowledges that it was Genocide, the United Nations has had several reports on it done; the experts in the field see it for what it was. They know, and they're already judging us for it; but not in the way the Government might fear. It's a missed opportunity to look brave, and own up to a wrong on the world stage; instead it looks worse, the world can see the evidence, denying it just makes our leader look like a liar.
Is it guilt? I can see that the Guilt of that might eat away at somebody, but admitting a crime doesn't create more guilt; it alleviates it. That's actually how it works.
Would admitting to Genocide force them to look at themselves differently? Are they afraid that it would put their beliefs in jeopardy? 'We are a proud nation founded by great minds that forged this Country in existence'...but to acknowledge Genocide is to admit that our heroes might've been monsters. That maybe our Country wasn't created by our own blood, sweat and tears, but by the blood of others.
I personally would hate to think that it's pride though, that it's simply a matter of not wanting to be seen as wrong.

I think I know why though.
There was a news report the other day in which an intellectual suggested that it wasn't up to the Museum to declare Genocide, but was the privy of the politicians to do so. Personally I believe that to be the wrong place that power should be kept. Politicians don't make choices based on what's right or wrong, they make their choices based on what they can get away with and what can superficially make their electorates happy.
To declare what Canada did to the Natives as Genocide would be, in essence, to accuse the People of Canada of this.
Ergo...
Any Politician that declares the men and women that elected said Politician guilty of the ultimate crime against humanity, is a politician that would soon find himself out of work.
More so I would think, if that Politician were a member of the Conservative Government.
It's not much of a secret among natives that Conservatives and their supporters dislike First Nations. Stepping up and supporting our claims would be seen to most of them as bending down to the Indian, giving into our whining as they see it.
Personally though, I don't know why the Tories would fear losing the votes of their Base, it isn't as if they're going to vote for the NDP or Liberal parties. I couldn't imagine a tried and true Conservative going "How dare he give in to the Indians again, I'm mad enough to vote for that Trudeau fellow." "He wants to take away your guns dear." "Oh right, and I need those to protect me from the government." "We voted this government in, this is the one we want." "Well, which one is selling us to China?" "They got together on that one."

First Nations don't take the term Genocide lightly either; I've never seen them sit around looking at our history and wondering if they could get moments to fit into the definition. It's also not a word we use on the same level as murder, punching or soup; we don't toss it around at the dinner table.
We've seen the UN's rules defining Genocide, and we've seen what it means around the world as it's been put into practice. We're capable of looking at our own history through an unbiased scope and compare it to these other events.
What we've found is that they line up.
Government sanctioned massacres, mass infections, medical experiments on the population, forced starvations; it's a long list. The Residential Schools are what get quoted the most but honestly, they weren't the cruelest of what was done against The First Nations. They were simply one of the most recent.
That aside, I think it would be safe to assume that First Nations already understand that what took place was a long drawn out Genocide.
We've already made up our mind, and like most of the world, that's already how we view it.
If the Government of Canada and The Museum of Human Rights suddenly reverses their position, it won't alter how we see the History; but it will change how we see the Government.

It's usually a general rule not to read the comments at the bottom of a news article that's politically, racially or gender sensitive; but I have to admit, as a writer, it's a rule I often like to break. People are less afraid to say how they really feel, mostly because the anonymity means they don't have to face the judgment that usually comes when you don't censor yourself in mixed company.
I'm a people watcher; the majority of time when I’m with other people, I like to keep quiet and listen to them. If they know that I'm First Nations, I find that when certain topics come up, they hold back, they control themselves because there's this general believe that if they say something controversial, I'll be the first to jump on them. This isn't the case; personally, I like to see how far their beliefs go. When they aren't aware of my race and some politically sensitive topic comes up, the entire evening turns into a goldmine; you I gain a lot of story ideas that practically write themselves.
The invention of the Internet…was a Godsend.
This is where the idea behind Hunting Indians was born.
Nearly a decade ago, I was wandering through chat rooms online, looking for political discussions and came across one that was specifically talking about First Nation land claims. The people in this room hid behind fake names – weird names with numbers behind them – and because of this, they felt they could speak as freely as they wanted, without the fear of repercussions. What I discovered was that the majority of people in this room were anti-native and had found themselves a collective, an echo chamber where they could all share their beliefs.
Occasionally, someone would step up and speak out on behalf of the natives, or native rights; but they were quickly ripped apart by the others, until they eventually gave up and left in disgust.
Over the next hour, I basically read every slur against Indians that people have ever used: apparently, we’re drunks, lazy, get hand-outs, we’re rapists…these people did not like us very much. Then, they started talking about what should be done about Indians, and things sort of took a turn for the worse.
Someone suggested we should be rounded up and put somewhere out of the way. I wanted to point out the reserve system but kept quiet. Others suggested natives should be rounded up and shipped off to another country. Then came the gold nugget: someone suggested that Natives should be rounded up and shot.
My first thought was, I'm glad these type of people don't run the country…anymore.
Arguments could still be made whether they do or not.
My second thought was, what would happen if these people did run the country? Not just run the country, but ran it without the sober second thought hounding them; sort of like in this chat room. What would they do to the Indians? What could they get away with?
That was only half the story though, I didn't want to tell a story about the horrible things that could be done to Indians; one only has to look back at the last five hundred years and see that. One only has to look back over the last ten years to see what people are still willing to do to us, given the chance.
I wanted to tell the story of how we, as a people, would get through that.
How would it affect us? Would we completely break? Would we rise up and fight back? Who would be beaten down to the point they couldn't fight back?
How far to the brink could I take us before it was impossible to come back…and then have someone bring us back.
Over the next few months I wrote two scripts and outlined the third one to make up my Hunting Indians trilogy. At some points, I wondered if it was believable that these things would and could happen; to get past that feeling, I only needed to look through a history book, or look at war zones around the present day world …or just go back to a chat room.
This last year, I took the script for "Hunting Indians" apart to turn it into a novel; which was actually a nice feeling, as I could put in there what we wouldn't have been able to afford on a Canadian film budget.
I had just finished the first novel and was putting together my story notes and outline for the second when I became stuck on the main character and what he should face. Literally, at the same time, I was on a Facebook page for the city I live in, and an Indian woman from another reserve posted that her reserve was private property, and people should not be cutting across it when the main road was jammed up.
The page exploded. Over two-hundred comments in the first hour alone, they passed 400 by the time the administrator decided to delete the entire thread. The damage was done though and the conversation made the city paper the next day.
I screen captured the best parts as well, my personal favorite is still "I'm not racist, my daughter is native; I'm going to make sure she doesn't grow up to think like the rest of you." She, and her white husband, then proceeded to tell us that natives…well, to them, we're not the most ideal people. Plus, if they're not allowed to use our roads then we're not allowed to use theirs.
It. Was. Beautiful.
The difference I noticed though was that because it was Facebook, everybody had a name and a picture, and it was very clear these people lived in the same city. They weren't strangers, they weren't unknowns…they were simply racist individuals who found their own echo chamber and, emboldened by the belief other people thought the same way as they did, they felt justified to have those beliefs.
It's called the normalization process.
Which is when it hit me: book two doesn't have to be about these people running the government and hiding behind laws and rules. They're out in the open now. They're not afraid of judgment, not when they know others will back them up.
Not when events like Ferguson can happen.
Life is extreme and, in a book, I can push that to it's limit and still not reach it's real life counterpart.
Am I worried I won't be able to make book three work? Nope. It's all still out there.

The script stories were broken up again so that we each had different sections to write; at which point we went our separate ways, me back to my reserve and him...well he just sort of stayed where he was, waving from the front door.

Breaking up the script I went with the storyline from the 1970's involving a young twenty-something native man leaving the reserve for the city...that I understood, write what you know.

The section in the 1920's was going to be a little more difficult; my love of fast witty dialogue didn't exactly lend itself to a five year old native girl with a weak grasp of the english vernacular. There was also the added issue that this was the beginning of the script and sets the stage for everything that happens after.

I'll admit, it took me longer than it should've to find the right tone; and that's because I had to find the characters. We had written out who they are, and what happens to them but I needed to picture who they were and see how they'll react.

It sounds artistic and I spend a lot of time avoiding what I do to comparisons with artistic expression; takes away some of the fun for me, but really, i had to figure them out before I could begin.

I decided to focus on the children's grandfather first, at the time I think both Eric and I were picturing Gordon Tootoosis to play the role. That gave me something to picture, but didn't fill in the blanks how the character would react; for that I went to my own grandfather. As a kid around my grandfather he was playful, funny and teasing but in a very Indian way...quiet and you'd have to work to get a reaction but when you did it led to some good giggle fits. As you grow older he treats you with more respect, and adds responsibility to your life...ie, learning to drive a tractor and farm when you're eleven, (Nine in my mothers case). That original playfulness you only see when the next generation comes up.

That was my starting off point when showing how the Grandfather interacts differently between the younger sister and older sister.

I realized who the five year old granddaughter was when I was hanging out with my four year old goddaughter. We were with family in the living room and I was pretending to steal her food from her; then act surprised when she would catch me. It hit me that was something my grandfather would do with kids...and gave me my opening scene. I removed myself from the equation and wrote a scene between my god daughter and my grandfather.

Probably the worst mistake I could've made.

The characters were no longer just names on a page but real three dimensional people that I can talk to, and listen to, and watch grow up. The amount of loss these people have to go through is heart breaking, and there were moments in writing when I personally had to stop myself from holding back...

Yes, in the scene where the RCMP and priest take the kids from their grandparents, the original draft has Superman showing up. I wouldn't have been allowed to keep Superman, but they're just damn lucky it wasn't Batman...Batman would'a set them straight.

I don't think I could truly imagine what it's like to have your kids taken from you like that; but I could look at my godkids and imagine what the fear of it would be like, no, I'm definetly aware of what that feels like. Not only that, my goddaughter is brown, she is definitely a little native kid that would've been taken away. She would've been put through the disinfection process, shaved, put in a giant room with other kids and had her wit and humour taken away from her just because they could.

She's much older now...funny as hell, plays the piano, guitar, math wiz that plays sports. Can you imagine what a residential school would've done to her? None of that would exist.

I think about that and regret I didn't go with Batman.

see. Angry's up the blood.

In comparison the 1970's was much easier; aside from the terrible wardrobe choices, and we avoided disco.

The next stage of writing Indios involved me moving into the third floor of Eric and Adria's house; and turning their dining room into the writing centre...laptops on the table, and a great big white board at the end.

We settled on five stories spread throughout the century but decided that we would plot them out one at a time as if they were they're own individual movies. The first and largest section was going to be the story of two sisters going through residential school; and in my opinion was going to be the hardest. It's always difficult to write for children, you have to create someone that's aware of the world around them while still showing an innocence grown ups miss...and then in this case we had to put them through a horrible experience.

Also in this case, truth really is stranger than fiction. In our research we came across some revelations about residential schools that created discussions on more than one occasion if it should be included...was it too shocking for our story, or by not including it were we doing a disservice to the actual victims. We decided that it's a story people are able to ignore because they didn't know what actually happened; if we don't show everything, people can just go on ignoring it...or worse, say it wasn't really as bad as they thought.

It's hard not to become attached to some of these kids, on a personal note I could picture some of my younger cousins in their position; something I started doing when looking through the books and came across school photos of kids that looked exactly like members of my family.
We picked our favourite, and utterly destroyed him.

Over the next few days we plotted out the five stories up onto the white board, and when one story was finished Eric would type it out into the computer; we'd make minor changes here and there as it went in. The board would be wiped and we'd start again, in the 1950's, the 1970's, 1980's and 2010.

We also spent a lot of time playing video games, you would have to find something to do when you're working on something this dark; something else to keep you sane. Other wise you have conversations like the one that took place on the second night.

"Do you want a glass of mayonnaise?"
"What?"
"Do you want a glass of mayonnaise?"
"Do I want a what?"
"Do You...Want..to battle..some aliens?"
"Oh, that makes more sense."
"Why, what did you think I said?"
"If I wanted a glass of mayonnaise?"
"Why would I offer you a glass of mayonnaise?"
"I don't know."

I just assumed that it was a city person thing.

Once the individual plots were typed and printed out, we cut the papers up so that each strip had one scene on them. These were put out on the table and then we starting putting them in order based on where they would fit into the overall story arc. Sometimes it was because one scene following another would show just how the next generation issue was caused by an invent twenty years before; sometimes it was because something horrible needed to be broken up by something humorous.

By the end of that evening we had the plot, scene by scene, all lined up.

plus we beat the first three halo games.

I asked Eric, my writing co-conspiritor where the idea for the movie Indios came from; and he gave me a good answer to I felt it deserved it's own post before I continue on.

"What triggered In Dios?

I was out for coffee in a posh Vancouver neighborhood with a mutual friend of Adria and mine. In fact this person was a Chinese Doctor. She was French Canadian and successful, independent and beautiful. We were talking about families, parents excetera and she described how she had a strained and difficult relationship with her father, then said "but I guess I can understand it because his mother went to residential school." It was the way she said it. The weight in which those words came out of her mouth. So I pressed for clarification of what that meant. She went on to elaborate on the types of punishment her father was subjected to by his mother, cruel, abusive punishment. (The standing outside with no winter coat on in the dead of winter was one BTW). These were punishments she learned in residential school that were inflicted upon her. So my school book ideal presentation of residential schools was forever changed. I was told that good Christians thought they were doing good by trying to educate and assimilate the natives into the modern world. But I could not shake this story of how she had a bad relationship with her father that had its root in what happened to her Grandmother. Now interestingly enough by all visual cues, this woman was very Caucasian and you would have no idea that she had First Nations lineage. Not what you'd consider "Native" by any means. So I started thinking how many people in Canada are affected by this? If she is on the edge of this problem, how much worse does it get as you near the epicenter?The more I dug into research on residential schools and the truths that were just starting to come out and be more public back in 2008, the more I was horrified, the more I saw and l understood so many of the issues facing First Nations, Government involvement and the perception of First Nations the rest of the country. That's when I knew I needed to tell this story, and that I needed to tell this story unfolding through the generations and link the catastrophic genocide policies of The Indian Act to the modern day world and where we sit today. From the stone in the center of the lake, to the ripples that reach the shore. Then I called Andrew and asked for help."

I have decided to chronicle the making of "Indios," a script that a friend of mine and I wrote several years ago about the legacy of residential schools. I had two choices on how to do this, I could start now while the film is in the third phase of movie making; or I could devote a few posts to how it reached this point and then continue on. I decided on the second option, there are some stories in the details that I like sharing and this gives me an opportunity to do so. I should point out that I didn't take notes at the time, so a lot of this is through memory and some things will be romanticized versions of what actually did occur.

I wasn't there for the birth of the idea, and if Eric the other writer told me where and how it happened I don't remember; I did send him an email asking and hopefully he'll have an answer by the end of this post.

But where I came in...

Several years ago I wrote a movie called "Two Indians Talking," a title that accurately gives away the plot of the movie; it was a comedy dealing with some very dark subjects. Over the course of 90 minutes they discussed native rights, physical abuse, being poor, relationships, and so on; but I did it with as much humour as I could...mostly because it's hard to deal with the darker stuff unless you can have a few chuckles with it. It did well with audiences, there were lots of laughs, some nice awards.

During one of the screenings I was invited to, a native man got up, said how much he liked the film and happy that there are things in there people are afraid to talk about being talked about. Then he asked "Are you ever going to make one about Residential School?"

Tough question, and the answer at the time was "No, there's nothing funny about residential schools; I don't think I could." I'm not talking about slap stick comedy mind you, my preference is fast dialogue and word play; real life moments that make you laugh. I didn't think I could do that with such a dark topic. Especially one so close to my own family, two of my grandparents went to the schools and I personally got to see how that effects the family for generations to come. The drugs and booze are very real, and even though I've never had a drink I have many many family members on the Wagon, off the wagon and sometimes hanging from it...it's painful to watch, and would painful to write about. That's not even thinking of the suicides.

How does one make that endurable?

Maybe a show like Hogan's Heroes with native kids? Instead of a commandant it's the priest, Shultz is the cook who thinks the kids are up to something...I'm going to have come back to that.

It wasn't long after that though that Eric sent me a text that he has an idea that he wants to run past me over the phone.

We set up a time for the call and after some pleasantries we got down to the idea. "I want to write a movie about residential schools."

"That sounds like fun," is what I may have said, what I was thinking was 'shit...shit, shit, shit."

We chatted about it for half an hour; tossing ideas back and forth; he talked about a few books he had been reading and would send one to me to read; I talked about my own personal experiences with people that went to schools and the people born to them. The basic premise he had though was that he wanted to do the movie in sections, five intertwining stories of different generations from the first in a family to go, to how the great grand-kids are still effected today.

One of the things we did address in that conversation though was how dark it was going to be; and it was going to have to be, you can't write something on this topic and not be dark. We did however, talk about moments of lightness, humour that we could sprinkle throughout the script not just to allow the audience time to breath but to show that even in those times, people could still laugh.

Which did get me to thinking, I did have funny stories from Residential school; among the horrible events and tragic losses that I get told about, I have been told moments of laugh out loud funny.

Over the next several weeks we texted ideas back and forth, couple of phone calls here and there; lots of reading and research becomes involved. Moments of anger though, lots of moments of just being angry at the type of things you find. You know when your heart rate gets going, and you face feels hot and you just want to yell at something cause you can't change anything...that kind of anger.

Also discovered some new things, back in the day people would go around to churches and talk about the good work they're doing with native kids. They would then solicit donations using that "for a few pennies you can help sponsor..." I've seen pictures of the pamphlets they would hand out. At first it amused me, up until the next time I saw the commercial on television for kids in third world countries...they still use the same phrases, the same sad stories...same bs, different race. I now spend a lot of time wondering what they're doing to them over there.