Tag: Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers

TIFF22 REVIEW: Stellar [2023]

Jared Mobarak

Hasn’t the world been ending since it started? It’s all a matter of perspective. If you’ve never known a privileged existence, what difference to your world would an apocalypse truly introduce? There’s always been fire for She (Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers) and He (Braeden Clarke). There’s always been tragedy. Whether living under the oppressive rule of Canadian law or being ignored and/or disrespected when leaving the reservation for the cities that they were told would open their arms if only they gave into demands for assimilation, life has always been a struggle…

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TIFF21 REVIEW: Night Raiders [2021]

Jared Mobarak

We are still here. German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller coined the poetic confession “First they came …” in 1946. The post-WWII piece spoke about how groups like the Nazis would always find new targets to oppress once their recent victims were erased. First it was the socialists. Then trade unionists and Jews. The sigh of relief breathed by those not yet included under those labels is therefore only ever brief. Unless you don the swastika to partake in the purges, they’ll eventually find a label to justify wiping you from…

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REVIEW: Blood Quantum [2020]

Jared Mobarak

You don’t name things that eat you. A Red Crow reservation citizen in Jeff Barnaby‘s Blood Quantum asks the question of whether they as indigenous people are immune to a vicious zombie outbreak that’s taken over North America or have simply been forgotten by the Earth during its cleanse. It’s easy to understand such a defeatist attitude considering the world at-large has done the latter for centuries. Colonialists slaughtered, infected, and cordoned off natives from lands they sought and stole, continuing to isolate them even today onto their tiny swaths…

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