Disclosure: This article has mentions of abusive practices
This past weekend, I spent nearly an hour and a half in tears, and I’m so glad I did. One of the films screened at the Camden International Film Festival was “Dawnland” by Adam Mazo and Ben Pender-Cudlip, and for anyone who hasn’t yet heard of it, please take the time to watch the trailer:
“Dawnland” documents the very first truth and reconciliation commission (or TRC) for Native Americans. Over the span of two years, Native as well as non-Native individuals traveled across Maine to collect, document, and witness testimonies from Native individuals about their experiences with Maine’s child welfare practices which tore Native children from their homes and placed them with either non-Native foster care families, adoptive homes, or boarding schools without their parents’ consent. The Native individuals are from Maliseet, Micmac, Passamaquoddy, and Penobscot tribal communities, the groups that form the Wabanaki people.
“Dawnland” is an extremely difficult film to watch for various reasons, although not one of those reasons is related to poor filmmaking. Indeed, it’s amazingly shot and incredibly powerful, and that’s exactly what makes it difficult to watch. Over the course of the film, you hear the stories of numerous Native people, from those people themselves, who suffered mistreatment from the state of Maine, which only legally stopped the practice of removal of Native children in the 1970’s. There were so many moments in the film when I realized how little I knew about the United States’ abusive practices towards and treatment of Native peoples. Thinking back on my education, I don’t remember a single history class teaching me about the boarding schools whose sole purpose was to “Kill the Indian, save the man,” or the multitude of other ways in which the US Government worked to annihilate Native cultures.
Regardless of the amount of education you received (or didn’t receive) about the horrors committed against Native populations in the US, it’s probably near-impossible to not feel anger and pain when you hear a tearful Native woman say, “You can’t heal someone that’s gone through hell,” after listening to people describe the abuse they suffered. It’s just as difficult to not feel disgusted after hearing someone recount a story of having their mouth washed out with soap as a child for speaking their Native language. What makes all of this even worse is that these practices were justified in the name of “child welfare;” the government claimed to be saving these children by forcibly stealing them from their homes, removing them from their communities, and putting them in foster or adoptive homes or boarding schools that didn’t share their language, their heritage, or their culture.
While this TRC is a solid start to healing the harms inflicted upon innocent people for far too long, it’s just that: a start. And as one individual in the film said, “You don’t take 500 years of mistrust and wash it away with one commission.” True healing and repairing of relations between the Native and non-Native communities will take time and a conscious, concerted, continuous effort. Although it’s great that Maine has taken a step towards showing it’s ready to put in some of that work, many people are still “largely unaware a conversation needs to go on,” especially non-Native individuals, and it’s going to take a lot more work to achieve the scale of change that needs to happen on individual, community, governmental, and societal levels.