FEMSPECTIVES 2020 - nîpawistamâsowin: WE WILL STAND UP
“Do you ever want to go back to how it was, like before the settlers came?” On August 9th 2016, Colten Boushie, a young indigenous man from the Cree Red Pheasant First Nation, was fatally shot after entering a rural Saskatchewan farm with a group of friends. The farmer, a white man named Gerald Stanley, claimed the shot to the back of Colten Boushie’s neck was an accident and Stanley was acquitted by an all-white jury.
Tasha Hubbard is a Cree filmmaker and her documentary nîpawistamâsowin: We Will Stand Up, serves as her personal reflection on Colten Boushie’s death. The film largely depicts the Boushie family on their fight for justice, from Stanley’s trial and subsequent acquittal, to the case’s aftermath that shocked and outraged Canada.
Hubbard’s film is deeply personal; apart from providing the Boushie family with a platform, she uses We Will Stand Up to explore Cree history and that of her own family. The Boushies are given the chance to talk about Colten and how much he meant to their family. They are also provided with opportunity to meet with different political leaders across Canada in hopes of changing the country’s legal system. Hubbard narrates the documentary herself, reflecting on the case and sharing her experience as an indigenous person living in Canada. Hubbard features her son and nephew throughout the film and teaches them Cree history, “this is our territory, we belong here” she tells them. Colten Boushie’s death leaves her questioning how she can protect her own children from injustice.
Hubbard and the Boushie family worry about the prevalence of anti-indigenous racism in Canada and these prejudices being infiltrated Canada’s legal system. We Will Stand Up features animated sequences based on archival photographs that depict the colonial violence against the Cree people. She explores the implementation of the Indian Act to the residential school system, and the effects these regimes have on indigenous people who live in Saskatchewan and throughout Canada today.
Hubbard, adopted by a white family, explains how working in film helped her learn about her Cree culture. Film is the medium for her as well as the Boushies to memorialize Colten and speak out against anti-indigenous racism. We Will Stand Up provides non-indigenous viewers with the opportunity to contextualize the violence that the Cree and other indigenous populations of Canada faced during colonialism. The audience sits with Hubbard’s children as she tells them stories of Cree history on the Prairies. We Will Stand Up is a way of creating a world where indigenous children can safely be themselves in their own homeland, while they are still fighting for justice.