78 days long, the 1990 Oka crisis was a protest led by two Mohawk communities in Quebec, when the white government zoned a golf course into their sacred burial ground. A shameful moment in Canadian history, from a white supremacist anti-Indigenous government that bluewashes itself to the rest of the world, the best way to show this is through the eyes of a child living through it.
Tracey Deer’s Beans is loosely based on her own experience at the time, a coming of age film that’s firmly rooted to the Canadian Indigenous experience. Beans (a very promising Kiawentiio Tarbell) is on the edge between childhood and adolescence, still innocent, but forced to grow up as her tribe fights for their land. Her and her sister are still so young, but when their community is threatened, so is that chapter of childhood where their eyes are still covered by the world.
Non-white children, especially Indigenous girls, are often forced by the world to grow up too fast. Young Black girls aren’t awarded by white society the same trust and youth, always told they’re grown at a young age, and much is the same here. Indigenous girls are more likely to go missing without being found, because so much of society treats them as if they’ve grown before they’re even teenagers, and while experiences like seen here do lead to kids having a more mature understanding of their world, they should not be forced to think and fight like adults so young.
A particularly interesting dynamic here is where Beans’ father wishes to send her to a primarily white boarding school, while her mother wishes for her to stay within their community. While it has the traditional prestige in a white-focused society, the idea of boarding school is far too reminiscent here of schools intentionally used to train Native culture out of children, Her mother here is right to wish to keep her out of immersion in a colonizing culture, and this creates an interesting dynamic of assimilation versus a cultural separatism of sorts that will keep Beans’ generation within Mohawk history.
Coming-of-age films that aren’t centered around white boys, especially those starring WOC, are so often accused of being trauma porn for authenticity as to the experiences they depict. Though Beans is set in the midst of a noted incidence of institutional prejudice, it reckons with colonization that, as a white viewer, it isn’t voyeuristic because it is not about suffering. It’s about growing up in community, the fuzzy line as to what growing up really is. It’s genuine, pulled from experiences, and this shows in how the live new footage that’s woven in never feels spliced in as historical context, but flows because this is a story built of memories. The golf course built over burial grounds feels like an on the nose metaphor, artificial whiteness and stolen wealth placed over history and literal remains of family, but our world is genuinely that way.
The film exists in a wave of fantastic Canadian Indigenous film making waves with audiences and in critical circles. Whether it be more popular releases, like the Ava DuVernay ARRAY Netflix-released The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open, the films of Mi’kMaq artist Jeff Barnaby like Blood Quantum and Rhymes for Young Ghouls, or more underrated festival darlings like Monkey Beach, Beans deserves to be at the center of this rightfully recognized movement. Tracey Deer is a filmmaker to watch, and Beans has this polish her 2005 film Mohawk Girls hadn’t had, but doesn’t lose any of the authenticity. She’s a filmmaker that proves that young adult cinema can still have weight and real world depth to it.
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