Alanis Obomsawin: The Vision of a Native Filmmaker

1. Abenaki Beginnings

Kim — University of Nebraska Press / Page 1 / / ALANIS OBOMSAWIN / Randolph Lewis 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 [First Page] [1], (1) Lines: 0 to 57 ——— 0.0pt PgVar ——— Normal Page PgEnds: TEX [1], (1) 1 Abenaki Beginnings Canada became a royal colony of France in 1663. Here come the troops led by le marquis de Tracy, lieutenantgeneral of the armies of the king, here they come marching through the snow, twelve hundred tall men, the famous regiment de Carignan. The news travels down the icy banks of the Mohawk:the King of France has touched the map with his white finger. Leonard Cohen, Beautiful Losers The last thing they wanted was an Indian to document anything. Alanis Obomsawin Early Years Alanis Obomsawin does not know the exact place of her birth, only that she was born somewhere near Lebanon, New Hampshire, on August 31, 1932, and that, when she was an infant, she slipped into a deep coma that neither her parents nor the local doctor could explain. As the illness drained the life out of her, the doctor threw up his hands in frustration and warned the family not to touch the sick child. Death would not have been a surprising outcome to parents who had lost two boys and two girls, none of whom had survived their first year.1 Kim — University of Nebraska Press / Page 2 / / ALANIS OBOMSAWIN / Randolph Lewis 2 ABENAKI BEGINNINGS 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 [2], (2) Lines: 57 to 59 ——— 0.0pt PgVar ——— Normal Page PgEnds: TEX [2], (2) Yet the story is far from over: in a scene that seems ripped from the pages of mythology, an old Abenaki woman flings open the door and dashes inside, grabbing the ailing child in a thick woolen blanket, and then evaporating into the night. Frightened and worried, the parents huddle together and discuss what is happening, deciding at last that they must respect the mysterious actions of a tribal elder, who, as they later learn, has taken their daughter north to a small shack on the Abenaki reserve not far from Montreal. “She kept me for six months,” Obomsawin marvels. “Nobody knows what she did to me, but I survived.”2 It would not be the last time Obomsawin defied expectations. Reunited with her parents for at least part of her tender years, Obomsawin grew up an only child on the tribal reserve at Odanak, speaking Western Abenaki as her first language.3 A small tribe with only a handful of fluent speakers today, the Abenakis have never been the object of the obsessive attention that social scientists have directed toward certain tribes located on the plains or in the desert Southwest . Even within New England, their powerful Iroquois neighbors tended to overshadow the Abenaki, leaving these so-called people of the sunrise to live without much fanfare on lands in present-day Vermont and New Hampshire as well as north across the Canadian border toward Montreal. For centuries they had resided in the great interior of New England, fishing and hunting in the Champlain Valley , the Green Mountains, the Connecticut River valley, the White Mountains, and the Merrimack River valley. Much of their lands were thickly treed with white pine, red spruce, northern hardwoods, and hemlock,and wild animals were abundant—moose,deer,wolves, black bear, muskrat, mink, raccoon, foxes, and skunk. Hunting these animals would remain central to their lives well into the twentieth century, owing in no small measure to the cold climate. Most of their land was covered with snow for four or five months each year, leaving a short growing season of 140 days, which did not encourage the sort of farming practiced by their tribal neighbors to the south.4 The traditional homeland would remain important to Obomsawin throughout her life, even as it seemed to disappear under her feet: “Long ago when our people, the Woban-aki, lived on our land in Kim — University of Nebraska Press / Page 3 / / ALANIS OBOMSAWIN / Randolph Lewis ABENAKI BEGINNINGS 3 1 2 3 4 5 6 7...