In the opening scene of Beans, a young girl Tekehentahkhwa (Kiawentiio), is applying to a prestigious high school with her mother Lily (Rainbow Dickerson). She is a Mohawk girl, and the room all around her is plastered with the aesthetic of white Catholic culture and heritage -she seems incredibly out of place. The school official can’t pronounce her name, so she recommends her nickname, Beans. A small but notable concession made for white comfort. As unconventional as this may be, her considerate, studious attitude seems to pay off, and her and her mother leave rather proud of themselves. It would be the last relatively harmless interaction they would have with white people for the duration of the film that follows.
Beans is the first narrative feature from documentarian and Mohawk Girls creator Tracey Deer and is set in the midst of the 1990 Oka Crisis, which Deer lived through first-hand. The dispute that escalated into violence and one death brought on by the expansion of a golf course into land belonging to the Kahnawáke Mohawk in Quebec is not explained to the audience, but subjectively observed from the vantage point of twelve year old Beans, broken up by excerpts of news media from the time illustrating the first-hand testimony of a predominantly white demographic.
The use of such archive footage breaks down the barrier of fiction and reality, Deer forcing her audience to confront ugly racism and acknowledge the truth of her world and her text. The comments and diatribes by men and women thirty years ago are echoed in scenes of a convenience store owner refusing service to Beans and her family or an incompetent police officer listening to Lily’s complaints when the family is unable to get home and refusing to do anything about the direness of their situation. It plants you in the heart of their dilemma, as people who are just trying to get by, not involved in the riots or the stand-off, but their lives made worse just by looking like the people who are. Deers’ choice to frame it as a twelve year old girl sees it, as she saw it, was a smart choice. We intimately feel her anxiety, her terror, her helplessness. And we empathize with her determination not to be helpless for long.
Kiawentiio is exceptional as this girl navigating the crossroads of her cultural identity during a time of intense strife. Early in the movie, she and her little sister are scared out of the woods at the centre of the conflict by a group of older bullies. However, Beans is captivated by them and their rebellious attitude, later going to great lengths to join their gang. Through this, Deer is keen to examine the relationship between Indigenous youth of differing privilege and experience. Beans’ closest friend in the group, April (Paulina Alexis) derides her for wanting to get accepted into such a white school, and it begins Beans’ reconsideration of what she wants and her self-conscious realization of how she and her family seek white approval. Moreover it further brings her out of her shell and prompts her to take greater initiative, a key reason she cozies up to this group of teenagers is a desire to become tough in the face of violent racism.
Deer very effectively builds on this increasing autonomy and Beans’ draw towards activism, but understands the nuance inherent in it. It is immensely satisfying after one harrowing experience to see Beans scream and throw small rocks at police officers laughing over her and her familys’ predicament -it is less so when she starts beating on a random white girl in a pool hall. The dangers of peer pressure are also heavily stressed, as Beans’ attitude changes in the company of these guys to the degree it alienates not only her family but April as well. And the movie doesn’t shy away from the darker places this leads, particularly in one uncomfortable scene late in the film.
But this is doubly the case when it comes to the depictions of violent racism in action and the intimidation tactics of the white locals. Early in the film, we see a tense scene on the Mercier Bridge where armed white officers in military gear hold up traffic going into the town, and then a Mohawk gathering in the woods is interrupted by a volley of tear gas. Viewing it through Beans’ eyes, the suddenness, the confusion is utterly terrifying. At a later point, Lily is driving her children through town when they come upon a riot: a barricade has been built, an effigy representing their tribe has been hung, and people start attacking their car. The barbarism is palpable, a stark affront to Canadian superiority pertaining to racism. The most distressing instance of this though, and the films’ most striking scene, is one drawn directly from Deers’ own trauma. As a child she vividly recalls driving down an open road, when her mother told her to duck down as the car was pelted with rocks from either side thrown by angry white mobs as officers stood by doing nothing to stop it. Deers’ reenactment of the sheer horror of that experience is exactly as uncomfortable, upsetting, and aggravating as it no doubt was to her. Edited with precision, the rage-fueled faces of the assailants and the stone cold ones of the cops will remain in your mind long after the scene is over; but not as much as Lily, a strong, capable, and emotionally in-control authority figure in Beans’ life, here reduced to a wreck as we watch her composure break down from Beans’ vantage point on the floor of the passenger seat. It hurts to watch, and every ounce of Beans’ fury afterward needs no further understanding.
Moments like these literally had me shaken with ire and shame, and that is why Beans is an important film, especially for Canadians who like me may not even be aware of the historical significance of the Oka Crisis. Through the stirring recreations coupled with astonishing archive footage, Deer has acutely and viscerally preserved a portrait of Canadian racial violence so personal and timely and passionately brimming with righteous anger that it would be irresponsible to ignore. Beans is an account of a sordid time while also being a resounding coming-of-age story laced with an inspiring call to activism. And one that we must listen to.
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