Interview with Erin Sneath
Interview with local $100 Filmmaker (and new CSIF Board member!) Erin Sneath by Aaron Feser
“Qimmit” – Review by Cheryl Blood-Bouvier
“Qimmit” (2010) screened on June 2 as part of CSIF’s co-presentation series with the Indigeneity Artist Collective and Dreamspeakers Film Festival.
“Qimmit: A Clash of Two Truths” is an NFB Production by Ole Gjerstad & Joelie Sanguya. It is a film about the Inuit from 1950-1970 as they experience more lifestyle changes when the RCMP began to deliberately kill their sled dogs, which affected their Semi-Nomadic lifestyle. Inuits believed this was deliberately done by the RCMP as a government policy to force them off the land. A recent Commission was held to seek the truth of this matter and it was a Clash of Two Truths.
The story is beautifully filmed in Docudrama style, showing the land, sunrise, dogs, snow, Inuit from different communities who remembered the history, and also RCMP officers who worked in Inuit communities during the years the dog killings occurred. There was a definite clash in the information told orally by the Inuit and the RCMP. Reminded me of a saying I once heard: “There is your truth, then there is my truth, and then there is the truth.”
The Inuit were interviewed in their own language and with it relayed their personal experience of loosing dogs shot by the RCMP. Some had lost their whole group of sled dogs and could no longer go to hunt for food. There were many Inuit witnesses, stories relayed orally, and upsetting memories alive in the community from these negative experiences. No one would speak of it to the younger Inuit. The older Inuit would not pass these stories onto the younger Inuit because they did not want to carry these bad memories based on their experiences. One young girl interviewing her grandfather had never heard of this before from him. She asked him why she was hearing of this now, he explained that it created many bad feelings and they did not want the young people to carry these bad feelings into the future. Their lifestyle had changed a lot too nowadays.
In the retelling of their stories of losing their dogs to the RCMP bullets many of the Inuit people became emotional for the first time. They explained in a variety of stories the importance of the relationships they had with their dogs. They were close to their dogs because they depended on them for their survival in the barren, harsh land and cold winter conditions. I learnt much about husky dogs and how important they were to the Inuit people survival. They trained and knew their dogs very well.
The perspective of the RCMP was matter of fact, and aggressive, in communicating on behalf of the brotherhood of the servicemen that they would never do that. One RCMP officer stated he did not want to go to his grave with this story hanging over them.
Some of this film was documented in the warm, soft desert air of Penticton BC where the Retired RCMP gathered for their weekly coffee and crumpets. They state from their experiences, the politicians and law in the north were an honorable bunch. As a matter of fact, when Walter Densdale was minister of Indian Affairs (1960-63), he sent “Demster” to buy 50 dogs from Eastern Inuit to replace some of the dogs that died and then these dogs died too. About 700 to 900 dogs died of illness at that time. This pushed people into towns because of fear of starvation, and the nomadic hunter ended with dog epidemic.
There was definitely a lack of communication between RCMP and Inuits. I was relieved the commission came to the resolve it in the end. The issues arising from a devastating cultural change for the Inuit were apparent. I liked the resolve, and was impressed with the apology and healing took place. The Truth Commission stated, “in order to move forward must open up the past to move forward.” An Inuit stated, “Inuit were going now they are coming back, using dogs even though they don’t need them to survive anymore.” As on Inuit man stated, “They tried to make me white, they failed cause I’m too short and have different skin and hair.” A little humor goes along way sometimes.
The movie was informative, well filmed, and old film footage was used as well. It was great to listen to the Inuit speak their own language as well. The youth were also involved in many aspects of this film as well.
For more information on “Qimmit” – http://www.onf-nfb.gc.ca/eng/collection/film/?id=55892
