Minister Faust's Blog, page 5

TARIG ABUBAKAR - CREATING PAN-AFRICAN MUSIC FROM SUDANESE BASE, GROWING UP IN KHARTOUM’S TOUGHEST ’HOOD, COMING TO CANADA WITH $10 + NOTHING ELSE (MF GALAXY 135)

THE KOREAN CONNECTION TO HIDING HIS MUSICAL TRAINING FROM PARENTS, THE NUBIAN SPIRIT TO SURVIVE AGAINST THE ODDS

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Today’s show lets me reach back into the archive for a conversation with a remarkable man who died far, far too young. That man was the Sudanese-Canadian musician, singer, lyricist, music producer, and band leader Tarig Abubakar.

Abubakar came to Canada in 1988 to build his fame and fortune in North America, and despite a rocky start he’ll tell you about in this episode, he formed his pan-African band the Afro-Nubians, toured the country four times, and delighted hundreds of audiences across Canada. He also released three superb albums: 1994’s Tour to Africa, 1995’s The Great Africans, and 1997’s Hobey Laik. His bandmates included guitarist Adam Solomon, Joe Slant, and Mohammed Hagelamin. Together they were named band of the year at the Toronto African Music Awards.

Tragically in 1998 while visiting his home country, Abubakar died in a car accident. He was only 34. In 2005, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation released a CD of two Afro-Nubians’ concerts. Thanks to streaming services, you can access some of the albums any time you want.

In the summer of 1995, I met Abubakar at Edmonton’s Mayfair Hotel the afternoon before his gig at the now-long-gone Sidetrack Café. We discussed:
How he create a trans-Atlantic new Pan-African music from a Sudanese baseGrowing up in E-Dume Esh-Sharghia, better known as Dem, Khartoum’s toughest neighbourhoodThe South Korean connection in becoming a musician and why he had to hide his training and careerComing to Canada with $10 in his pocket and nothing else, andThe Nubian spirit to survive against the oddsOn a personal note, twenty-two years ago when I recorded this interview, I was a young man who’d lost little in my life. I had no idea that Abubakar had only a few more years on this planet. In the decades since I’ve lost far more than I ever expected, including some of the most important people in my life. I’ve been producing today’s show over the last two days and hearing Abubakar’s voice and his stunning music from back before I lost all those people. And as it’s August 14, 2017, I’ve also been reacting to all the horrible news about the terrorist attack in Charlottesville and wondering about how we’re all going to defend ourselves, because it’s going to get worse, I’m sorry to say.

So hearing Abubakar and his ideas and his songs has been especially powerful. We lost him when he was too young and he had so much more to give, especially with his message of unity and his undying love of African peoples. I hope wherever he is, he knows we still remember his music and we still remember him.

James Hale's article on Tarig Abubakar + the Afro-Nubians
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GRINDHOUSE FILMMAKER JEFF CARROLL ON HOLLA IF I KILL YOU, FINDING A DISTRIBUTOR WHO WON’T KEEP YOUR MONEY + WHY YOU SHOULD WORK WITH COMEDIANS + SUSPENDED LIQUOR LICENSES (MF GALAXY 134)

WORKING WITH DAVE CHAPPELLE, WHY JORDAN PEELE WOULD LOVE IT HAPPENED ON NEGRO MOUNTAIN, WHEN TO GO FULL SHARKNADO ON YOUR SCRIPT

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This show is mostly about creators in various fields showing and proving what they know about how to make what they make and how to make money from what they make.

Today we get to combine two fields: making movies and making novels. Jeff Carroll is an amazing creator. He's worked as a booker at comedy clubs and also managed comedians, which gave him access to plenty of working comics whom he could cast the movies he wrote and produced, including his Blaxploitation/ B-Movie/ Grindhouse films such as Holla If I Kill You and the award-winning Gold Digger Killer.

When his distributor went belly-up and took his money beyond the grave, Carroll leveraged his existing intellectual property by turning one of his features into a novel. He's also a speaker and known online as Yo Jeff the Hip Hop Dating Coach. So the man definitely knows how to hustle to keep on reaching audiences through multiple venues.

In today's episode of MF GALAXY, Jeff Carroll discusses:
The ideal locations for indie movie-making and why you should use night clubs with expired liquor licensesWhy you should hire comedians to star in your movies--and it's not just because they're funnyWhat movie-making taught him about writing and promoting his own novels, andHow he shapes his screenplays and characters, and why he solves script problems by going Full Sharknado
We spoke by Skype on June 23, 2017.

Jeff Carroll's blog 
Coach Yo Jeff the Hip Hop Dating Coach
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WAR PARTY FOUND REX SMALLBOY ON FINDING INDIGENOUS IDENTITY IN HOP HOP, CORRUPTING INFLUENCE OF GANGSTA RAP, BURDEN OF BEARING OTHER PEOPLE’S AGENDAS (MF GALAXY 133)

WHEN AND WHY HE’D PRAISE A SETTLER FOR WEARING A HEAD DRESS, USING CREE SLANG ON WAX, REPRESENTING WOMEN WITH RESPECT IN VIDEOS, HIP HOP INNOVATION TO CHALLENGE YOUTH AND ELDERS ALIKE

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Hip hop at its finest is a poetical, political voice for those whose voices have been silenced; it speaks to the anger, the dignity, and the triumphant joy of the oppressed. If hip hop is the music of the dispossessed, then no one in North America should have a greater claim on it than the First Nations. Combine that revolutionary rage and cultural crucible with artistic passion and power, and you have what was Canada’s finest hip hop band—WAR PARTY.

Formed in 1995 under the leadership of Maskwacis Cree artist, lead vocalist, and executive producer Rex Smallboy, and co-vocalists Cynthia Smallboy, and Thane Saddleback, War Party won the Canadian Aboriginal Music Award for Best Rap Album in 2001, and were the first Indigenous crew featured on Canada’s Much Music channel. The video for “Feeling Reserved” exploded across Canadian television in 2001 with a powerful set of voices and images that was thankfully bling-bling- and booty-shaking-free. Instead, the video showed everyday people with extraordinary voices and lyrical intelligence, denouncing settler-colonial genocide.

War Party performed with Ice-T, Wu-Tang Clan, Guru, Maestro Fresh Wes and K-OS among many others, and recently Chuck D. recorded an introduction for the new album “The Resistance.” The band got global attention by representing Canada at the World Expo in Nagoya, Japan and for performing for the First Americans Festival at the Smithsonian Museum.

Fiercely proud of their Cree heritage specifically and their First Nations heritage generally, the band refused to fall into the trap of not wanting to be known as “Native rappers.” Their embrace of their heritage made them universal, in the same way that Miriam Makeba, Public Enemy, or Nusrat Khan are emblems of their people, and emblems of human culture, struggle, and aspiration generally.

While the group has since splintered into factions, one of which is named RezOfficial, their original ground-breaking work lives on. Rex Smallboy continues to make albums and also works as a motivational speaker.

In the summer of 2004, I spoke with band members Rex Smallboy and his then-wife Cynthia at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. You can hear Cynthia Smallboy in the bonus content for today’s show. Rex and I discussed:
Finding Indigenous identity in hop hop while fighting the corrupting influence of gangsta rapWhen hip hop’s real slogan should be “misrepresent”Using Cree slang on waxRepresenting women with respect in videosDebating K-Os on social responsibility vs personal desireThe importance of hip hop innovation to challenge youth and elders alikeThe artistic burden of bearing an entire race's multiple agendas, andWhen and why he’d praise a settler for wearing a head dressNote that our conversation includes reference to the Cree Nation’s reserve that was once called Hobbema, about 90 minutes south of Edmonton. The reserve finally discarded that German name and is now called Maskwacis.

War Party.ca

War Party music videos

War Party with Chuck D. – The Resistance

Rex Smallboy – “Children of God”

Feelin’ Reserved


All for One



7 First Nation Rappers Crushing Stereotypes of Indigenous People Through Music
From the War Party home page:


FILM & TELEVISION MUSIC FEATURESThis Land Was Ourz (remix) ADVENTURES OF POWER
This Land Was Ourz, DREAMKEEPER
Stress Filled Days (unreleased) BLACKSTONE
I’m Feelin’ Reserved (remix) STRYKER
I’m Feelin’ Reserved (remix) A Windigo Tale

FESTIVAL PERFORMANCES
The 2005 World Expo, Nagoya, Japan
The 2005 United Nations Indigenous Language Conference Nagoya, Japan
The First American Festival at the Smithsonian Museum Washington, DC
Telus World Ski & Snowboard Festival, Whistler, BC
Vancouver Music Folk Music Festival, Vancouver, BC
Vancouver Island Music Festival, Comox Valley
Folk On The Rocks, Yellowknife, NWT
North Country Fair, Driftpile, Alberta
Dreamspeakers Festival, Edmonton, Alberta
Midway Lake Music Festival, NWT

RADIO AND TELEVISION APPEARANCES
APTN Aboriginal Day Live 2013, Winnipeg, Manitoba
APTN First Music & the Arts, Toronto
APTN First Tracks, Winnipeg, Manitoba
APTN Contact Music Special, Winnipeg, Manitoba
The Sharing Circle First Nation Invasion, Winnipeg, Manitoba
Much Music Rap City, Toronto, Ontario
CBC Radio Prairie Music Awards Broadcast, Winnipeg, Manitoba
CBC Radio Broadcast Special, Prince Alberta, Saskatchewan

INDUSTRY EVENT PERFORMANCES
2001 Canadian Aboriginal Music Awards, Toronto, Ontario
2002 Prairie Music Awards, Winnipeg, Manitoba

CONFERENCE PERFORMANCES
Vision Quest Conference, Winnipeg, Manitoba
Fire Keepers Youth Conference, Calgary, Alberta
Saddle Lake First Nations Education Conference, Saddle Lake,Alberta
Confederacy of Treaty 6 First Nations Youth Conference, Edmonton, Alberta
National Indian Education Association Convention, Billings, Montana

GAMES PERFORMANCES
North American Indigenous Games, Minnesota
North American Indigenous Games, Victoria
North American Indigenous Games, Winnipeg
Saskatchewan Indian Summer Games
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EILEEN KAUR ALDEN ON SUPER SIKH, THE TALIBAN-FIGHTING, GIRLS-SCHOOL-DEFENDING, ELVIS-LOVING SUPER SPY FROM THE PUNJAB NOW STARRING IN HIS OWN COMIC BOOK (MF GALAXY 132)

HOW SIKH KIDS HAVE REACTED TO THE COMIC; SUPER SIKH - HOW HISTORICAL OR POLITICAL? WHY SUPER SIKH ISN’T AN ELVIS IMPERSONATOR; HOW REAL-LIFE ATROCITIES IN PAKISTAN MIRRORED THE COMIC; SUPER SIKH THE MOVIE?

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Super Sikh! That's right. He's a Sikh. And he's a secret agent. He's a Punjabi 007 who fights for girls' education and loves the music of Elvis Presley, while holding down a fake I.T. job to convince his parents that he's not risking his life for truth, justice, and the five Ks of the Sikh religion.

Super Sikh is the co-creation of Supreet Singh Manchanda, artist Amit Tayal, and writer Eileen Kaur Alden. While Alden was working on a career in screenwriting, her friend Manchanda approached her about creating a family-friendly Sikh action hero for comic books. They went to Kickstarter looking for $5000 to create their first issue. They got more than $22,000 in pledges, and in 2015 began publishing. Now they're up to issue number four and their fans love the comic enough that several issues have gone into reprints.

The comic has done more than thrill readers with great stories and inspire Sikh kids. Background research for the comic and its title character led its writer, Eileen Kaur Alden, to change her life in one of the most profound ways possible.

On June 17, 2017, I spoke with Alden by Skype. You'll be able to hear her dog yipping in the background of her Oakland home. We discussed:
Her work in various creative fields including filmmaking before she began making comicsWhy Super Sikh loves Elvis but isn't an Elvis impersonatorThe potential to turn Super Sikh into a movieThe degree to which the Super Sikh comic will be historical or politicalHow real-life atrocities in Pakistan mirrored events she'd just written in the comicHow readers, especially Sikh readers, have reacted to the comic, and what she hopes they'll do now that Super Sikh is in print.
supersikhcomics.com
facebook.com/supersikhcomic
kickstarter.com/projects/eileenalden/super-sikh
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WRITE YOUR OWN TICKET - WONDERCON WRITERS’ JOURNEY PANEL WITH ERIKA ALEXANDER, TONY PURYEAR, HANNIBAL TABU + MARC SCOTT ZICREE (MF GALAXY 131)

THE MOST IMPORTANT PSYCHOLOGICAL STEP TO TAKE AS A WRITER; JOB-SHADOWING ROD SERLING FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE; HOW + WHERE YOU CAN FIND THE RIGHT MENTOR + TOP SCRIPTS; WRITING YOUR BIO RIGHT

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A few months back I shared with you a panel convened by comix creator, TV writer, documentarian, and filmmaker Brandon Easton from the 2016 San Diego Comic Con Writers' Journey panel full of the specific how-to advice become a professional writer in comics, TV, and film.

In today's episode of MF GALAXY, Brandon Easton is back from the 2015 WonderCon Anaheim Writers' Journey Panel, and this time with actor, television writer, and comix writer Erika Alexander, with screenwriter and comix creator Tony Puryear, with comix critic and writer Hannibal Tabu, and with author, television writer, and indie filmmaker Marc Scott Zicree.

In today's episode of MF GALAXY, they discuss:
The single most important procedural and psychological step to take as a writerThe value of job-shadowing Rod Serling from beyond the graveHow and where you can find the right mentor and why you mustWhere to find the awful and excellent scripts you need to readThe importance of writing your bio right, andThe surprising early failure of one of the most successful writers in US historyMany thanks to DeWayne Copeland who recorded the video for this conversation. You can find the complete video online at MFGALAXY.org and a link to Copeland's work, which includes my MF GALAXY conversation with him about his superhero web TV series CV Nation.

Thanks also to Brandon Easton for permission to use the audio; check my many conversations with him in the show archive, and watch for his upcoming film DDX: Department of Disclosure debuting August 18, 2017, starring Anthony Montgomery from Star Trek: Enterprise and Rene Rosado from Major Crimes.

Brandon Easton Twitter
Creative Screenwriting.com
Fools' Crusade blog
WonderCon 2015 Writers' Journey panel
Erika Alexander's & Tony Puryear's Concrete Park
Hannibal Tabu.com
Marc Scott Zicree's crowdfunded Space Command
DeWayne Copeland's CV Nation
MF GALAXY interview with DeWayne Copeland on CV Nation

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DR. GEOFFREY ANGUYO ON MEDICAL, EDUCATIONAL + ENTREPRENEURIAL DEVELOPMENT IN UGANDA; HOW THE NGO-FINANCIAL COMPLEX REAPS RICHES WHILE UNDERMINING UGANDA’S DOCTORS (MF GALAXY 130)

WHY INTERNATIONAL FUNDERS WILL FIGHT AIDS BUT IGNORE MALARIA, WHY UGANDA NEEDS INVESTMENT AND ACCESS TO CAPITAL INSTEAD OF AID, HOW INVESTING IN KIHEFO CAN EARN YOU MONEY WHILE FUNDING KIHEFO’S MEDICAL WORK

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How many times have you seen pictures of so-called development workers, who heroically and selflessly leave their privileged homes in the West to travel to any one of 54 countries on the African continent—although they’ll usually just say “Africa” as if it were a country?

They go to build houses or schools or work in a clinic, sometimes saying that they’re there to “save” people or even “save Africa,” all one billion of us, despite what is usually zero knowledge of any of the continent’s 3000 or more languages, more than 5000 years of civilisations and ancient literatures, its countless cultures, religions, and philosophies, or its contemporary arts, industry, and politics.

They also usually do not question why, in the case of the often barely-qualified “voluntourists” who build houses or schools, it is better for them to give airlines and hotels hundreds or even thousands of dollars than it is to pay local citizens of those countries to do the work their countries need. Nor do they ask the effects of spending tens of thousands of dollars to pay the salaries of foreign doctors, while also transporting, housing, and feeding them, instead of paying doctors from those countries so they can serve the communities that produced them.

But, so long as they pose for photos holding one of our babies and surrounding themselves with our children so they look like saints in shining skin, everything’s great, right?

Those are some of the concerns that Dr. Geoffrey Anguyo shared with me. He wasn’t interested in being sucked down the brain drain to grab the riches of practicing medicine abroad. He wanted to build his community, and so he created and headed the Kigezi Healthcare Foundation, KIHEFO, in Uganda.

Years ago he was touring Canada to raise awareness about and funds for his organisation which holistically assists people in Uganda’s Kigezi highlands to address hunger, HIV-AIDS, and entrepreneurship. I met him during that tour in Edmonton on June 1, 2011, and we spoke at the office of Change for Children which sponsors KIHEFO’s work. We discussed a range of topics, including:
How his childhood led him to study medicine and serve Uganda’s most needy citizensHow Uganda’s medical establishment is failing the people it’s supposed to serveWhy medical organisations must educate people and fight poverty if they’re going to win the fight against diseaseThe high personal profits some people get from the not-for-profit sector, and the high price that sector exacts on countries such as UgandaWhy international funders will fight aids but ignore malariaWhy Uganda needs investment and access to capital instead of aid, andHow investing in KIHEFO can earn you money while funding KIHEFO’s medical work, in other words, how getting paid is better than giving aid.He began by explaining how he rose from deprivation to become a doctor for his nation. 

facebook.com/KIHEFO
kihefoblog.wordpress.com
twitter.com/KIHEFO
kihefo.org
kigezitours.com

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ANTI-GURU CARL HONORE ON WHY YOU SHOULDN’T OUTSOURCE CHILD-REARING TO GADGETS, WHAT TOYS SHOULD NOT DO, WHY YOU SHOULD FREE YOUR CHILD FROM STRUCTURED TASKS + HOW TO TELL IF YOU’RE TRYING TO TROPHY YOUR KIDS (MF GALAXY 129)

  WHAT YOUR CHILD NEEDS TO DEVELOP CREATIVITY, WHY HE AGREES WITH GEORGE LUCAS ABOUT EDUCATION, HOW FAR THE OVER-SCHEDULING CRAZE HAS SPREAD, WHY BABY SIGN LANGUAGE IS UNNECESSARY + POSSIBLY HARMFUL
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If you’re an expert on parenting, chances are you’re not a parent. And if you are a parent and you think you’re an expert, you’re probably not an expert either. Being a parent means constant worrying about getting it wrong and wondering if you’ll ever get it right. But at least that’s better than being totally sure you’re right because that’s a really bad sign.

That being said, a few things are starting to become clearer in the 21st century, and one is that trying too hard to be the perfect parent is counter-productive. And another is that if your goal is trophy children instead of happy children with the every-expanding wisdom to chart their own course, your kids probably won’t be happy or able to chart their own course.

Canadian author Carl Honore hit the big time with his 2004 book In Praise of Slow, arguing that people need to, well, chill out. In 2008 he released Under Pressure: Rescuing Our Children from the Culture of Hyper-Parenting. While he was born in Scotland he spent much of his childhood in Edmonton, and that’s where I met him way back in 2008 when Under Pressure was a brand-new book, Facebook was only four years old, YouTube was only three, and my first daughter was not yet two. 

He discussed his views on:

Why kids shouldn’t be outsourced to gadgets, and what toys should and should not do for kidsWhat it takes to create well-rounded and creative childrenWhy he agrees with George Lucas about educationJust how widespread over-scheduling isHow much time children need per day to be free of adult-structured and screen-focused activitiesHow to tell if you’re trying to turn your children into trophies, andWhy he disapproves of the movement to teach sign language to babies who can hear
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HOLLYWOOD/VG ARTIST JOHN GALLAGHER ON THE MOST IMPORTANT SKILL TO JOIN THE INDUSTRY, THE BEST DIGITAL TOOLS ON THE HORIZON, WHAT YOUNG ILLUSTRATORS MUST KNOW ABOUT THEMSELVES TO SUCCEED (MF GALAXY 128)

HOW HE BEGAN HIS CAREER IN TELEVISION—BUT NOT WHERE OR HOW YOU’D THINK, DRAWING AT BIOWARE IN ITS EARLIEST DAYS, THE MYTH AND REALITY ABOUT HOLLYWOOD AGEISM + WHY OLDER ARTISTS HAVE AN ADVANTAGE

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I met John Gallagher so long ago I don’t even remember it, but we were both members of the same fannish club called ESFCAS, the Edmonton Science Fiction and Comic Arts Society at the University of Alberta. A bunch of us there wanted to be professional artists—including Adrian Kleinbergen and Nigel Tully who found work in comics, Jaemi Hardy who became a fine artist, and Marc Taro Holmes who worked in video games and Hollywood and has published instructional books on art—and you can hear my conversation with him on MF GALAXY.

But John Gallagher is a particularly amazing success story. After training at the Alberta College of Art and Design, he went to work at Edmonton’s BioWare studio as a production illustrator. Later he broke into Hollywood, and has worked on Riverdale, the 2017 Power Rangers film, Supergirl, The Flash, The Man in the High Castle, Once Upon a Time, Battlestar Galactica: Blood & Chrome, and X-Men: The Last Stand, among many other productions.

On April 27, 2017 Gallagher spoke with me by Skype from his home in Vancouver. He discussed:

How he began his career in television—but not where or how you’d thinkHow he joined BioWare in its earliest daysThe myth and reality about ageism in Hollywood when it comes to production illustrators, and where older artists have an advantageThe amazing digital tools he’d like to see invented and which ones are only a few years awayWhat young illustrators need to understand about themselves in order to succeed, andThe number one illustration skill your portfolio must demonstrate if you want to get hired by a game or film studio tomorrow
Along the way several names bubbled up, including Ray and Greg, who are Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk, two of the founders of BioWare, and Trent Oster, another founder and now the owner of BeamDog. Gallagher also cited SUB which is the Student Union Building, and HUB Mall, both at the University of Alberta campus in Edmonton. And we talked about “crunch,” the video game industry term for the predictable, long stretches of overtime at the end of any project.

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John Gallagher
SFCAS Facebook
Jaemi Hardy
Marc Taro Holmes homepage
Marc Taro Holmes MF GALAXY interview
Adrian Kleinbergen
Nigel Tully
Photogrammetry

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SALADIN AHMED ON WRITING BLACK BOLT, INFLUENTIAL EDITORS + WRITER WHO GOT HIM GIG, TURNING A MARVEL D-LISTER INTO A-LIST POTENTIAL, COSMIC PRISONS + AHMED’S CONNECTION TO SECRET LIFE OF PRISONERS (MF GALAXY 127)

HIS LOVE FOR CRUSHER CREEL, BLACK BOLT’S RACIAL IDENTITY, HOW WRITING COMICS PROTECTS HIM FROM A “GOOD OLD-FASHIONED NERVOUS BREAKDOWN”



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Saladin Ahmed is a fascinating cat. He’s best known as the Arab and Muslim American fantasy novelist who crafted Throne of the Crescent Moon which was nominated for the Hugo and won the Locus Award for best first novel. But his ethnicity also includes Polish and Irish, and his writing also includes short stories, articles, a stunning number of Tweets, and the new Marvel Comics series Black Bolt about the king of the Inhumans.

We met at the Science Fiction Research Association conference in Detroit in 2012, and he was as fun and down to earth in person as he is online. When I learned that he was writing for Marvel I just knew I had to find out what it was like for him as a novelist to leap into the world of comics, and was delighted to learn that like me, he was a lifelong comics fan who’d always wanted to create comics, too.

In today’s episode of MF GALAXY, Saladin Ahmed discusses:

Which influential editors and which groundbreaking comics writer helped him get the gigHow his shot at turning a D-list Marvel character such as Black Bolt into A-list potential gave him the chance to write one of his favourite Z-list characters into the story, and whyWhat aspects of real-world politics about alienation and prison he wants to address with Black Bolt, and which others he won’t touch and whyHis personal connections to prison and knowledge of the secret life of prisoners, and why they matterHow writing comics helps keep him safe from what he called a “good old-fashioned nervous breakdown” and liberated him from the soul-crushing and intimidating solitary grind of novel-writing
Ahmed spoke with me by Skype from his home near Detroit on June 02, 2017.

Saladin Ahmed’s Patreon
Christian Ward
CBR - Black Bolt sent to cosmic prison
Marvel editor Sana Amanat
Marvel’s Sana Amanat page
Sana Amanat’s TEDx talk
Sana Amanat Talks Ms. Marvel - Late Night with Seth Meyers
Off Panel #52: A Day in the Life with Marvel Editor Wil Moss
The Inhumans
Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe
Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual
Crusher Creel, the Absorbing Man
5 Ways The U.S. Prison Industrial Complex Mimics Slavery
Angela Davis on the Prison-Industrial Complex
Inhumans coming to TV debut on IMAX
Arabian Knight
How one 31-year-old paid off $220,000 in student loans in 3 years

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BIRTH OF A FAMILY – STUNNING NEW DOCUMENTARY ON FOUR SURVIVORS OF CANADIAN GOV’T DECADES-LONG MASS-KIDNAPPING PROGRAMME THAT DESTROYED THOUSANDS OF FAMILIES (MF GALAXY 126)

DIRECTOR TASHA HUBBARD LENSES THE UNION OF FOUR SIBLINGS MEETING DECADES AFTER SETTLER GOV’T RIPPED THEM FROM THEIR MOTHER; TRIUMPHING WITH JOY AND LOVE OVER COLOSSAL BIG GOV’T RACISM + TYRANNY

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Remember when the Chinese, Saudi Arabian, and Nigerian governments invaded Canada and occupied it and it seemed like they would never leave? Remember how every province and territory fell like dominoes even after heroic military struggles against them, and so the invaders jailed or killed our resistance leaders after labelling them terrorists and savages?

Remember how they made trillions of dollars in profit for the Chinese communist party, the Saudi monarchy, and the Nigerian government, by stealing our whole country, and then they mocked us for being poor?

Remember how they destroyed and outlawed all our cultural institutions, suppressed all our languages, forced us to take Mandarin, Arabic, and Yoruba names, and forcibly converted some of us to communism, Islam, or the Yoruba religion—and punished us if we stayed faithful to our own beliefs?

Remember how they sent all our children to their schools where they tortured, starved, and even raped thousands of them, where they tolerated up to a 50 per cent death rate for our kids they jailed there, and often didn’t inform us when our kids died and they buried them in unmarked graves?

Remember all the trauma and addiction we experienced and passed on because of what they did to us, and how even after all that horror, for over three decades they kidnapped 20,000 more of our children and sent them to live with Chinese, Saudi, and Nigerian families who were occupying our land, and prevented them from learning their heritage languages and cultures and even knowing their real families?

Well, of course you don’t remember any of that because that never happened. But that is exactly what English and French invaders did to the hundreds of Indigenous nations of what is now called Canada. And the rest of us whose families arrived later became settlers on all that conquered territory—the second-largest country on earth—which means our families collaborated with that colossally destructive regime, whether we knew it or not. Every dime of Canadian GDP since 1867 has arisen from the cultural and even physical genocide that we don’t even call genocide—we call it “confederation.”

But because we as settlers teach ourselves to see the people we’ve conquered as beneath us, we can sleep easily and pat ourselves on the back as being the politest and most civilised people on earth, especially as compared to those nasty Americans. Because if we did see First Nations people as being just like us, and if we reflected on how we would feel and what we would do if anyone had committed such crimes against us, we would never sing “O Canada” proudly again.

But hopefully, we would commit our lives to righting the wrongs that earn our society trillions of dollars and make us among the most comfortable people on the planet.
Well, regardless of our collaboration with genocide, many of the people our regime targeted survived and many have even thrived. Award-winning filmmaker Tasha Hubbard has created the startling new documentary Birth of a Family. It’s co-written by Saskatoon Star-Phoenix reporter Betty Ann Adam, about Adam’s successful uniting with her three siblings Rosalie, Esther, and Ben, decades after the Canadian government kidnapped them.

It’s not a re-union because while Betty Ann had met each of them, the rest had never been together before the remarkable week of filming when they toured Banff and stayed in the same cabin at the Banff Centre for the Arts.
The director and co-writer behind this unforgettable portrait of intergenerational pain and profound triumph is Tasha Hubbard. She’s an Assistant Professor in the Department of English at the University of Saskatchewan. 

She won a Gemini and Golden Sheaf for writing and directing Two Worlds Colliding, and created the animated short Buffalo Calling which screened at the 2015 Venice Biennale. Her short hybrid documentary 7 Minutes won a Golden Sheaf Award in 2016. She’s a member of the Cree Nation, and researches and creates projects for Indigenous media on images of the buffalo and the experiences of Indigenous women and children. She also blogs for the Broadbent Institute.

On May 30, 2017, Tasha Hubbard spoke with me by Skype about her new National Film Board documentary. In this episode of MF GALAXY, we discuss:
How and why the Truth and Reconciliation Commission motivated Betty Ann Adam to make a film about uniting with her siblingsThe strict rules that Hubbard imposed on herself to avoid ruining this pivotal experience in the lives of Betty Ann, Rosalie, Esther, and BenWhy settlers continue to use quaint and even cheerful euphemisms such as “the Sixties Scoop” for a three-decade long mass-kidnapping campaign against 20,000 children and their families, andHow Hubbard ensured that her film conveyed the individuality, dignity, and triumph of the people she was photographing Along the way, we discussed Write Magazine, which published an editorial that proposed a “cultural appropriation” writers prize to encourage people to write, in the editor’s words, what they did not know. I also mentioned a birthday party, which refers to a powerful sequence in the film. And Hubbard talked about being “raised away,” which means separated from one’s birth family.

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