History has recently cast a harsh light on the forced uprooting of First Nation children in Canada and their placement in Catholic (and some Anglican) schools that attempted to wrench out anything of Indian heritage. Here filmmaker Lucy Ostrander tells of a curious cross-cultural footnote to that shameful episode.
In the early 20th century a few dozen young native women fled the white institutions (we are informed little was being taught aside from how to be maids and servants anyhow) to migrate to Bainbridge Island, in the Salish Sea of the Pacific Northwest. There, Japanese immigrants had established a thriving agricultural colony—one that employed Filipinos as their own lower-rung labor class.
Indians and the Filipinos intermarried, forming an "Indipino" subculture, although only belatedly has this been recognized as a distinct community; in reminiscences spoken here by granddaughters and other surviving relatives, the Filipino males were just as intolerant as any black-robed clergyman of the women speaking their tribal language.
Although largely a talking-head affair, supported by some precious archival pictures (mostly from the era of America's entry into WWII, with the concurrent mass-incarceration of the Bainbridge Japanese-Americans), the short subject uncovers an untold tale of forced assimilation and its somewhat ironic outcome, as modern-day descendants of Indipinos attempt to reconnect with their Indian roots. There might have been room here to discuss the diaspora-like migration of Filipinos throughout the USA and the world (which still continues), but as the title suggests, the focus here is on the matriarchal side and native women who had little choice but to dwell in the shadows of more dominant ethnicities (even one that was suffering its own form of imperialistic exploitation). A recommended addition to indigenous studies collections and Pacific Northwest territories. Aud: H, C, P.