On Indian Land

Jun 14

Notes from Hugh

In 1982, the Gitksan-Wetsuwet’en Tribal Council invited me to spend time on their territories in northwest British Columbia.

These were the very early days of what would become one of the most significant Aboriginal Rights cases to come before the Canadian - or any - courts. The Gitksan and Wetsuwet’en jointly were going to argue for their jurisdiction on their territories, stretching across the Skeena and Bulkley valleys and the mountains around them, a total of some 45,000 square miles and that the governments, both Federal and Provincial, did not have jurisdiction in this land. My first work for the Tribal Council was to look at the way the economic and cultural systems of the Gitksan and Wetsuwet’en had endured, despite all the colonial invasions and developments in the region. But as I worked, I came to the view that the best way to express the history of those systems, and their realities in the present, would be to make a film that showed that world and heard the voices of the First Nations for whom continuity and survival as peoples lay at the heart of how they saw themselves and their lands. This led to a co-production between the Tribal Council and Channel 4 TV in London, and to the film On Indian Land. Although I was the film’s director, Gitksan and Wetsuwet’en leaders and elders worked on every aspect of the project.

The film was shot on 16mm (Ivan Strasberg, whom I had worked with on three other films, was the cameraman), and the first screenings to the community were done with protected film. The digital revolution in film technology was yet to take over. And the DVD we eventually made suffers from having to be made from transfers through several generations. The original images did justice to the magnificence of the landscapes, but even with its slightly murky visual quality, I think it is a powerful testament to the vision and determination of the Gitksan and Wetsuwet’en, and a chance to see some of the thinkers and the thinking that lay behind the Delgamuukw case - which was to reach its conclusions some fifteen years later.

Synopsis

On Indian Land was made in close partnership with the Gitxan and Wet’suwet’en Tribal Council. It sets out the background and hinterlands of the decision the Tribal Council made to launch a legal action. Finished before it opened and the first Gitxan and Wet’suwet’en witnesses stood in court, the film captures the issues and the mood that were at the heart of that case, which came to have such immense importance.

Key interviewees in the film include Neil Sterritt, Don Ryan, Mary Johnson, Alfred Joseph, Jonny David, Joan Ryan and Art Wilson. Each of these, as well as others in the film, were powerful figures in Gitxan and Wet’suwet’en society, and articulate voices in the struggle for First Nations rights in Canada.

The film travels deep into Gitxan and Wet’suwet’en territories - to the salmon fishery on the Skeena River, high in the mountains to hunt for goat, along the Bulkeley Valley and the prime agricultural lands that were taken by recent waves of settlers from southern Canada. It also bears witness to a feast, with its legal complexities and rituals that have always been at the heart of the cultures of the Northwest Coast.

First broadcast 1986

Where to find this film:

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