Video Sundays: Alanis Obomsawin's "Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance"

In the summer of 1990, filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin worked as a combat journalist on the Kanehsatake reserve, where the proposed construction of a golf course on disputed land—a Mohawk ancestral burial ground—culminated in a 78-day armed standoff known as the Oka Crisis, or Mohawk Resistance, wherein Mohawk protestors resisted the encroaching forces of the Canadian army and Quebec's local police. Present for the entirety of the event, Obomsawin states that she did not want to leave, despite the concerns of the National Film Board of Canada, "because I was going to tell the story 'til the end." The footage—including some smuggled tapes—gave way to her masterpiece, the 1993 documentary Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance, which is available for free on the NFB website, along with a large majority of her expansive filmography. (Marc Glassman of POV Magazine notes that "much of the most meaningful footage is in Kanehsatake while other parts exist in her films Spudwrench [1997] and My Name is Kahentiiosta [1995].") Throughout the film, preparations for battle and protests are interjected with footage recalling the history of the Mohawks, via paintings and sculptures that depict the ongoing dispossession of Aboriginal land in Canada. Obomsawin continues to make masterworks about indigenous life and forms of decolonial resistance and reconciliation, including her latest Jordan River Anderson, The Messenger, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival this year.

In an interview with CBC, director of the Indigenous Screen Office Jesse Wente explains that "[Obomsawin's] whole career is an act of decolonization. [...] An act of decolonization of our screens, of our institutions … but most importantly a decolonization of our thoughts, and how we think and see the world." This 2017 clip from TIFF recounts the production and legacy of 270 Years of Resistance, and includes interviews with filmmaker Jeff Barnaby, and both Obomsawin and Wente. Wente recalls the push from CBC for Obomsawin and the NFB to edit the film before its official release, only for TIFF to show the film in its entirety. "The one saving grace of Kanehsatake is that now these stories do not go away untold. You have Alanis now," Barnaby says, "and you have other filmmakers that she has inspired to pick up their cameras and document these things."