Beans (2020)

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   Siskoid

   I remember the Oka Crisis pretty well. In 1990, I had just started on a journalism degree, and it was all over the news. White folk trying to encroach on Mohawk territory (including a graveyard) to build a golf course (of all things) out somewhere in Quebec (I was never good at Quebec geography, even though I lived near its border). A peaceful demonstration gone wrong. The reservation's residents dubbed domestic terrorists. Massive shows of racism ensue. I don't think the Whites acting like victims were fooling anyone even then. Reliving these events through Tracey Deer's Beans (the main character's nicknames, but I suppose it's also a pun about the stakes) was kind of harrowing, a condensed chronicle of injustice that nevertheless is only background for Beans' coming of age story. Here we have a 12-year-old Native girl who's growing up and acting out as any normal child might, and I appreciate the naturalism of those scenes even though it's nothing we've never seen before, at least in the broad details. A bit sappy, a bit melodramatic (well, have you ever gone through puberty?)... But what sets it above the usual material is the context. How she spends this crucial time isolated and barricaded, how it sparks radicalization (which can be negative or positive, depending on Beans' choices) or disaffection, and indeed, just when you think the White mob might be exaggerated for movie reasons, here comes the actual news footage to show it is not. We Canadians love to point at our Southern border and condemn what's happening there, but we have our own bigots and ugly reactionaries. Canada, like most places, is a glass house. 1 year 8 months ago

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