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are Indian rhythms, the speech is slow, it doesn’t peak. Before the film was finished and released, people around here were criticizing that. Once it was released, funnily enough, the audience accepted the slower rhythms.
That’s fascinating. And it helps to understand the film because the film does seem slow. With Indian audiences then, it’s not a problem.
No, not with Indian audiences. In fact, most people who are aware of those rhythms don’t see it as a problem. With Indian audiences the film has a very strong impact. It’s the first time they see an Indian in a lead role, not stereotyped, not apologizing. There’s tremendous identification with the film. What surprised me was that when we screened the film in Seattle, it seemed that the impact of the film was greater in the States than it was in Canada.
In what way?
There’s very much a feeling of religion about the film. It shows a very close relationship between the people and the land. The beautiful song Willie Dunn composed and sings in the film, ‘““The seasons in their cycle sing their cycle song of love’, describes that relationship. The first time | showed the film
in the States there was a tremendous silence after the screening. | couldn't figure it out, | really couldn’t. Then a woman came back to talk to me; she had tears in her eyes. It took me a while to understand this, but they are now an urban people. Their grandfathers had a religion that was based ona relationship to the land, but for them it had died out. They didn’t know how to describe it to their children. The film shows Indians in Canada still living in the old way. Also, the American Indians identified very strongly with the
whole problem of residential schools. Seeing Cold Journey they could say to their kids, now see, that’s what it was like.
The story in the film, the young Indian’s search for his culture and his own identity, is a fictionalized account, but from what you say the Indian audiences accept it at a very personal level.
The story has a certain universality to it. Almost 90 percent of the native people in Canada who went to residential schools experienced the painful cultural adjusment that Buckley faces in the film. We wanted this film to be useful and we worked very closely with the native community to make it so. Some white people get defensive when they see the film; they say the prejudice we show can’t possibly be true. | want it to be clear though that the attitudes and the facts presented in the film are accurate.
How closely did you, Martin Defalco, identify with the conflict in the film?
It's a human problem in the end, and | completely identified with it. That isolation of the child from
his mother — it tears those people apart, particularly the women. A native family is generally very,
very close. You take the children away for 10 months to send them to school and that closeness disappears. When the kids come back, they’re strangers. Normally, of course, the kids are accepted back into their families. In the film Buckley doesn’t fit in, isn’t accepted. For many Indians it’s the first time they’ve seen this thing played out. | think when they see it in the film they can talk about it and it makes it easier for them.
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