After a long time away from the documentary world, I’ve stepped back into the fray to research and produce a film for Al Jazeera about Canada’s Indian residential schools. “Canada’s Dark Secret” looks at the forced cultural assimilation and abuse of indigenous children who attended those schools for over a century.
A producer colleague in the Middle East who frequently does work for Al Jazeera and who I’ve collaborated with before on other TV productions approached me to work on the film. He wanted me on board not only because I live in Canada and could make the production a reality, but also because I have knowledge about the topic through my journalistic travels and assignments in indigenous regions of the country. In the last several years I’ve heard about and absorbed numerous accounts of the residential school system and its consequences.
This film is directed by Lebanese filmmaker Rania Rafei (above right) and highlights the experiences of a pair of indigenous survivors of the former Mohawk Institute Indian Residential School, in Brantford, Ontario.
The Mohawk Institute was one of the longest-running residential schools in Canada. The film follows survivors who recount their experiences of being separated from their families and subjected to an educational regime designed to suppress their identity, language and culture. The testimony of those two individuals, Roberta Hill and Bud Whiteye, offer a firsthand account of a system whose consequences have continued to impact generations of Canadians.
The doc also features Ron Shortt, a former officer of the RCMP who recently went public to admit he’d helped an Indian agent take a pair of young girls away from their family in Fort Smith, in the Northwest Territories, in the mid-1960s. His account provides a different perspective on the residential school system, revealing how government officials and police officers participated in enforcing policies that separated children from their parents and communities. We visited with Shortt several times at his home in Powassan, Ontario, and followed him in his day-to-day life, as he struggled to come to terms with his past.
Canadian senator Murray Sinclair, who headed Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and whose final report in 2015 documented the widespread abuses associated with residential schools, will also be appearing in the film. Sinclair currently heads the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation in Winnipeg, where we met with him.
More to come…
Update: Canada’s Dark Secret was released by Al Jazeera English in February 2017. The documentary runs approximately 48 minutes and is available to watch online.