Treaty 8 Country

Jun 4

Notes from Hugh

Between 1978 and 1980 I lived and worked much of the time at the Halfway River Reserve, a community in the Treaty 8 region of northeast British Columbia. Halfway was, at that time, a remote cluster of small houses and cabins on the banks of the Halfway River, at the edge of the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. This was a part of the territory of the Danne-zaa First Nation, the people who had always been known as the Beaver Indians. I went there as a member of a team that was mapping the First Nation relationship to their land, and the way settlers and industrial development had impinged on that land - from the first ranchers to an exploding oil and gas frontier. The results of that work was included my book Maps And Dreams.

The mapping project had been launched by the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs (UBCIC), the organisation based in Vancouver that, in the late 1970s, was inspired by the thinking and vision of the late George Manuel - the First Nation leader who had developed the notion of a ‘fourth world’, the material and political reality of indigenous peoples around the world. UBCIC aimed to create a set of maps and supporting documents that would set out the Dunne-zaa right to be heard in any planning or development on their territories - especially in relation to the possibility, at that time, of an Alaska Highway pipeline and energy corridor that might cut across Dunne-zaa lands. But as I worked on the mapping, carrying out interviews, making all kinds of notes and, with the late Martin Weinstein and the UBCIC support team, assembling composite maps, people at Halfway began to tell me that we should be making a film. I remember Bernie Metechea, who was the Halfway field-worker, teasing me about reports - ‘No one here is going to read anything you guys write’, he said, ‘but if we could make a film, then everyone in the community would see it.’

Inspired and urged on by Bernie and other Dunne-zaa, and then with the enthusiastic support of UBCIC (especially Steven Basil, Lilian Basil and Rick Salter) we managed to find enough funds and a volunteer crew to spend some ten days in the summer of 1981 at Halfway, for the most part based at a moose hunting and dry meat making camp, filming everyday life. And then at a Treaty 8 gathering on the Reserve, Jim Bizzocchi and Anne Cubitt were the crew; Anne went on to edit (with support from the National Film Board of Canada). The footage was intimate but limited - we had only ten days, and there were technical problems that came from the fine ash of the fires at the camp getting into the gate of the 16mm film camera. But the result was a short film very much made for the community.

When I made a visit to the Halfway community in 2018, almost 40 years after the film was made, I was delighted to find that many people, including those who were not born when it was made, knew and, they told me, often watched the film. Just as Bernie and others had said, it was what the people would want to see.

Synopsis

Hunting as a way of life for aboriginal people is threatened by large-scale resource development. The film reveals the Indigenous world through details of daily life in a summer hunting camp. In the second half of the film, Treaty 8 bands gather for the first time in 15 years to face common issues concerning their future.

Release Date: 1982
Running Time: 44 minutes

Where to find this film:

Educational DVD or licensing here