This 51-minute video opens with evocative dramatizations of young people leaving their homes in the bush, trekking to a railway station, and going to join the armed forces. Old photos showing proud Aboriginal men and women in uniform are accompanied by voice-overs telling of personal feelings and reasons for joining up. “We were going to save our land.” “It was all about a maintaining a connection with the land.” We learn that in spite of their service, Aboriginal veterans, in fact, often lost their land when they returned to Canada.

This video is a compelling view of war as experienced by these vets and a powerful telling of one of the pieces of Canada’s racist past. For both these reasons, it should be used with careful planning.

In both field-testing situations, the video was used with all Aboriginal students. We asked them how to help non-Aboriginal students cope with the content. One student said that non-Aboriginals need to be prepared to see what “their” people did. When asked if the video should be shown to non-Aboriginal groups, one student replied, “Everybody went to war; everybody should see the video.”

Another suggestion is to warn non-Aboriginal viewers that they will have to be sensitive about asking questions since Aboriginal viewers will be feeling very vulnerable. The instructor may want to do some other reading on the topic in preparation for the video. One resource, not at a fundmental reading level, is Native Soldiers, Foreign Battlefields (see page 23). Some may find the video slow, but to others it will feel as familiar as listening to elders talk–a different communication style.

The video tells how the disenfranchisement of vets, combined with the horror of their memories, broke the spirit of some of them and led to alcohol abuse. In our class, this led to conversation about Vietnam vets coming back addicted to hard drugs.

Toward the end we see attempts by modern First Nations and the Canadian government to honour Aboriginal vets and acknowledge the wrongs done to them. Finally, the video shows a sacred circle conducted by Aboriginal vets on Normandy Beach. The circle allowed them to begin personal healing. One student commented on a man who was “still joking” at the end of the video which reminded him how strong a spirit his people have.