Molly MacTaggart
The Aboriginal Resource Centre at Humber College North is hosting a movie cafe tonight featuring issues of racial intermarriage taboos on the Mohawk peoples on the reserve of Kahnawake outside of Montreal.
Club Native is a 2008 documentary and it showcases the importance of maintaining sovereignty of the Mohawk Peoples a after the Oka Crisis of the 1990s which was a 78 day stand off between the Mohawk protesters, police and army over expansion of a golf course and condominiums on Mohawk burial grounds.
“The movie highlights what it’s like to be a woman on that reserve, and some of the stigmas attached to being off the reserve,” said Kaitlyn Phillips who works at the Humber Aboriginal Resource centre.
” the unspoken rules that need to be followed. It talks about that and it talks about the Oka Crisis.”
The centre’s main goal is to promote Aboriginal cultures and student enrollment. And it is open to playing films in Indigenous languages.
“Most of the time it’s in English to make it easier for Humber students to watch,” Phillips said, adding that a wide variety of films both fiction and non fiction are played.
“The point of the cafe to be fun, light gathering…. we prefer the films to be educational as possible… so people can leave with a new sense of knowledge,” said Phillips