The Bechdel Cast - Rhymes for Young Ghouls with Jess Murwin

Episode Date: November 26, 2020

This week, Jamie and Caitlin and special guest Jess Murwin plot a revenge heist and cover Rhymes for Young Ghouls.(This episode contains spoilers)For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast.Follow@_rad_babe_ on Instagram. You should also follow @BechdelCast, @caitlindurante and @jamieloftusHELP on Twitter. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was assassinated. Crooks Everywhere unearthed the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. That's right, the only, Katherine Hahn is joining us on Las Culturistas. That's right, the queen of comedy herself. Get ready for a conversation that's as hilarious as it is insightful. Tune in for all the laughs, the stories,

and of course, the culture. Don't miss Katherine Hahn on Las Culturistas. Listen to Las Culturistas on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradenti. And I'm Jermaine Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts.

There's a lot to figure out when you're just starting your career. That's where we come in. Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in people who do, like negotiation expert Maury Tahiripour. If you start thinking about negotiations as just a conversation, then I think it sort of eases us a little bit. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, everyone. We just wanted to provide a content warning for this episode

because in this discussion, we talk about, and also the movie involves, sexual and physical assault, child sexual abuse, and suicide. Thank you for listening, and enjoy the episode. On the Bechdelcast, the questions asked if movies have women in them. Are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands, or do they have individualism the patriarchy's effing vast start changing it with the bechdel cast hi everybody welcome to the bechdel cast my name is jamie loftus my name is caitlin durante i just wanted to start like an npr an episode of npr it's the radio um And this is our podcast where we take an intersectional look at how people are portrayed in your favorite movies. It's true. We use the Bechdel test, sometimes called the Bechdel-Wallace test, as simply a jumping off point.

The whole podcast isn't about that despite common misconceptions um you know you know everyone out there talking about the Bechdel cast all the time yeah surely that's what happens it's not just the people say the Bechdel cast and then whoever else is in the room goes what what are you talking about no everyone's like ah like, ah, yes, I know that podcast. Ah, yes. Well. The show we all know and listen to. Anyway, so the Bechdel test. That two people of any marginalized gender must have names. They must speak to each other about something other than a man for at least two lines of dialogue. That is our particular rendition of the test.

Yes. But we have a myriad tests to discuss later in the episode. One created by friend of the cast. Wow. What? Teaser alert. And yeah, I'm really excited for today's episode and for our guest. Yes, our guest today is a non-binary mixed race Mi'kmaq artist, curator, and educator.

Their work focuses on reclaiming narrative space and fusing genre with social justice and holding space collaboration. You also might have heard and seen them on our recent live reading of Twilight. It is Jess Merwin. Hi! Hello! Welcome! Thank you for having me i am this is like a dream come true quite literally this is wonderful i'm so happy to be here yay we're so happy to have you yeah it's it's i really like uh can't wait to talk about this weird Native movie that nobody's heard of. We're really psyched to talk about it

because it was originally recommended to us by Allie who spoke about it when Allie came on to discuss Frozen 2 a couple of months ago, podcast canonically, I think. What is time I've lost to say.

It was definitely this year. It is it well it's for october now uh this episode's coming out in november okay sometime so so it's future it's it's november someone was making the joke that it was like march 585th in a way it does feel it's been march 2020 for 500 years the cbc newscast like the morning newscast that i listen to has like gives you like a daily update of being like well we're going into day of quarantine you're like oh my gosh it feels very end times like it's like yes right like datalog day 4000 there's still no end in sight iron man at the beginning of end game right the original quarantiner um but yeah ali brought this movie to us originally and um we we were kind of tipped off about this movie um I guess we should just say the name of the movie I don't know what we're being no it's a secret about we were talking of course about rhymes for young ghouls a Jeff Barnaby movie

from 2013. And the reason we're talking about it with Allie was, first of all, because it's a movie that Allie's a big fan of, but also because it was the basis for the AILA test, which is the test that Allie created. Yes, and we'll talk about that in a little bit. But first, Jess, what's your relationship with rhymes for young ghouls oh man so growing up uh in like the 80s and 90s as a mixed race like migma kid so i don't i didn't grow up on reserve and i'm migma through my mother's mother through my grandmother and she had been uh at which she was orphaned at a very young age

so she didn't really grow up in a like a traditional sort of way in terms of like learning how to do a lot of like traditional Mi'kmaq things so you know I was growing up with this like identity that was very unresolved in a lot of ways and I felt like very conflicted about because it's you know being white passing but also being like I'm also an indigenous person and didn't really know how I like fit and on top of that being queer and being trans and just dealing with like a lot of other stuff meant that I I ended up feeling like I couldn't really lay claim to anything. You know, it was just sort of like, it's too much. You can't be queer and native and, you know, mentally ill. It's just like too many things. So when this film came out, I had just been back in Canada for a couple of years because I spent some time living overseas and it was like

we have this expression in French it's like a coup de foudre like a lightning strike and we use it a lot when you're falling in love at first sight or when you get an idea and it was almost like that for seeing this film I was in my

sort of early 20s and and just moved back to Canada or like recently back to Canada was sort of like oh my god here's like a film about Mi'kmaq people with people speaking Mi'kmaq and it's like the first time that I'm ever seeing this and all of a sudden it sort of was like this way of starting to reconnect with Mi'kmaq culture like all of a sudden sort of like seeing this film and being like oh my god there is this part of me that's like that that feels something so profound in in just like hearing people speak Mi'kmaq and seeing that represented on the screen and then uh and we'll talk about this a little bit but there was so much other stuff going on

in terms of like indigenous rights and indigenous culture at that time and so it was like this was really the catalyst for me like reconnecting uh in a big way to yeah to to sort of like migma-ness that's incredible and one of so many examples we see of why representation is so important. It's amazing. Yeah. My relationship with this movie is it was not super on my radar until a few months ago. Blood Quantum. I did not know about Rhymes for Young Ghoul.

How did you know about Blood Quantum, Jamie? I don't know. I think it was just I was paying closer attention to movies that were coming out last year than I was in 2013 and 2014. That's fair. But then when Ali brought up Rhymes for Young Ghouls and said it was the same director, I was like, oh. Cool. Yeah. I think we did have a couple listeners as well recommend this this movie to us. So it's it's been on our kind of watch list, our list of movies to cover.

Yeah, I think for our like horror movies last year in the request, it popped up a couple of times and maybe that was why I was familiar with it. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. But I'm happy to have seen the movie. Now I watched it three times. But yeah, I'm so excited to talk about it. Same. Should we dive into the recap? Yeah, let's do it. All right.

So we open with text at the beginning describing the law in Canada that states that every Indigenous child between the age of 5 and 16 must attend an Indian residential school. There are truant officers who more or less police the schools and the community and who are responsible for bringing into custody more or less any child who is absent from school and they are allowed to use force to do that any force that they see necessary yeah yep so we're starting off chill legal wording that was uh yeah yeah so that's an excerpt from the indian act and we can talk a little bit more about this in terms of like context for the film because there's a lot to talk about. Because it's an act that's been around since essentially the beginning of Canada, since Confederation in 1867.

And it still exists today. So that's cool. But yeah, so that's an actual law that essentially governs all of the federal government's interactions with indigenous people. So to say it's racist is a little bit of an understatement. And this kind of like opening package that Jeff has chosen here kind of helps like highlight a lot of the issues with the Indian Act. Absolutely. like highlight a lot of the issues with the indian act absolutely and i feel like we we goofy americans have a tendency to really romanticize canada as this place of justice that it you know clearly is not um and so i mean even just from the beginning frame of the movie

you're just like yeah no uh we are desperate to feel a way about Canada that is not true. No, no. And it's one of those things, too, that like, you know, don't get me wrong. We have like legal weed and free health care. So pretty, you know, things are pretty good. But on the other hand, yeah, we do still have a lot of the systemic racism and discrimination that exists in the United States. And, like, Canadians are, you know, aren't necessarily all, like, super polite and super, you know, courteous. Like, there's, I think that we have this sort of angel complex with regards to the rest of the world where we're like, oh, we're perfect. We're not the United States. And it's like, oh.

The bar is on the floor. Like all the native people in the back are like, well, I don't, I don't know about that. I'm like, it's like, yeah.

Have you read that law lately? Yeah. Or even just the fact that like, uh, since this year, there's been like a half dozen high profile killings of indigenous people, either at the hands of police or at the hands of our medical system. You know, that's been like a half dozen high profile killings of indigenous people, either at the hands of police or at the hands of our medical system. You know, that's since like January.

Horrifying. So. Yeah. So we open on the movie. It is 1969. We are on a fictional reserve called the Red Crow Indian Reservation. We meet a Mi'kmaq family, including young Ayla. She's a little girl who loves to draw, and she usually draws kind of like morbid horror imagery of like zombies and ghouls and whatnot. She has a little brother, Tyler. We meet her mother, Anna, and her father, Joseph, as well

as her uncle, Berner. They are all drug dealers on the reserve. And then one night, the adults, they're all smoking weed, they're drinking heavily. And then a bunch of tragic things happen kind of all at once, where Ayla's mother accidentally kills her little brother Tyler in a drunk driving accident and then her mother kills herself her father takes the blame for it and is taken away to prison so that's but in like the first 10 minutes of this movie that we're talking about on a on a humorous podcast you know like um and it doesn't then i think that there's like a lot of stuff even in that that uh we should talk about in terms of like depictions of indians using drugs and being broken but again like all of these parentheses are kind of like paragraphs so it

might make more sense to finish with like the uh the plot summary and then get into it because otherwise yeah it's like right we got things to say it is so much it is uh quite a bit of trauma in i think 90 seconds yeah it all happens very very very quickly yeah and then there continues to be trauma after this. Oh, yes. Yes. So we cut to seven years later. It is now the mid-70s. Ayla, played by Davery Jacobs, is now a teenager living with her uncle, Berner. And we also learn that Berner is kind of a snitch in the community, where he kind of rats out his fellow man on the reserve to these white truant officers,

the main one of those being this guy named Popper. And Popper comes to collect, quote, truant taxes, which are basically this family bribing him so that the kids don't have to go to the nearby residential school. And we will also provide a lot of context in our discussion about residential schools and that system. But know that it's a place that you don't want to go. So Ayla's friends, Sholo and Angus, tell her that Sholo had gotten robbed by a stripper and can't pay the truant tax. And Ayla realizes that Popper kind of set up this whole thing. And this I might need a little bit of clarification on. My kind of assumption was that Popper did that, kind of

like orchestrated this whole setup and like robbed them so that they wouldn't be able to pay the bribe so that he could justify sending them to the school. Is that? Yeah. I think that's, that's sort of the idea. And I think that also has to do with the fact that Joseph is coming out of prison.

Like essentially Popper sets up burner in that first sort of scene where he's like, they're at the fishmint and he's like, thanks for telling us you're here. So they'll get the shit kicked out of him by guys in the community so that like Joseph will come home and stay in line. Okay, right. And so that's also part of like why Popper would steal their money is because then, you know, he can get Sholo and Angus and Ayla, you know, scoop them up and take them to St. Dymphina's, to the residential school, as sort of, again,

like a way of sort of being like, you know, this will keep Joseph in line. Got it. Right. Right. Because he gets released from prison. And we also meet Cirrus. Yes.

A kind of grandmother figure for Ayla. And she tells a story about a wolf that's kind of delirious and ends up beautiful animated yeah right that i i didn't i didn't i was i i love when i don't see an animated sequence coming and then it happens and it's beautiful i loved it there's there's one like that in um blood quantum too that's really cool. Oh, cool. And in both of the cases, Jeff's using it as a way to sort of insert some of the oral tradition and the way that our traditional storytelling works and sort of differentiate and distinguish it from the rest of the story.

Right. And it's really interesting because like talking about the animation, I, you know, I also as an animator, like love those sequences. And yeah, I think, I think some people sort of when they first saw the movie were like, I don't get it. I don't get why there's like an animated sequence. And it's like, no, you just got to like experience it as part of the film, you know, like, but yeah.

Sirius also has a cat yes we see uh ayla feeding a couple times i'm like it passes you know what i think is my test is the caitlin test is there a cat in a movie if so it passes the caitlin test you've been all you said a few weeks ago you said you were never going to bring it up again no and now it's the test i'm sorry i'm enabling cat talk okay no we live for cat talk i did i was sad to see it go what i said was i'm never gonna bring up cat facts again because i don't want to talk about cat's nipples anymore okay but i still want to talk about cats they're great okay in general the movie they're great the movie cats i love how we all kind of just like we're like we sort of know the words we can mutter along with this i just know the feeling again right yeah i had a growing up i had a cat soundtrack like on

like cassette tape so i didn't even know it was like a musical because i just thought it was like a concept album because none of the adults ever like explained to me and so like when i found out it was a musical i was like oh this makes so much more sense does it though does it make any sense i had a very similar experience with phantom of the opera where my mom just like put on the cd and left the room and you're like i think i know what's happening but i don't know what anyone looks like and i would just make my hunchback of notre dame dolls kiss right i was like i don't know. Epic kissing. We'll have to talk about this.

All my dolls kiss. Yeah, you know? That's all kids do anyway. It's like, regardless of gender, I think all kids at some point in time have been like, when there are adults around, I'm going to make them smooch.

Oh, I was straight up making my Barbies have sex with each other. Oh, were you the kid that was like. Yes. Correct. Oh, that was a fun friend. That was an elementary school friend. What were we talking about?

So anyway, the Caitlin test. I was like, where are we? What's happening? Oh, the cat. Yes. We got here from cats. So there is a cat. Sirius has a cat.

Yes. So we hear this story about a wolf that is like kind of roaming the land. It's delirious and it ends up eating itself, which I'm interested to kind of talk about like the thematic implications got robbed from them. And we also, around this time, reveal that Ayla has now gotten into this drug business ever since her father left for prison. And her dad, Joseph, comes back and is kind of disappointed to learn that Berner let her get into all this. But because she's an artist, she's like a really skilled kind of craftsperson of like rolling the joints and and like flavoring them and like lacing them and stuff yeah i was like damn she's cool yeah she's so cool she's really cool it's also she doesn't

like uh one of the things that keeps coming back i like and even one of the things that like in that scene you know burner's like been drinking and smoking and stuff like that and she's like you can't roll for shit like she doesn't uh she never like she doesn't smoke weed and that's like also part of like that gas mask is like this idea of sort of like yeah she's she's also sort of like not she's part of this world but she's not like in that world in the same, functioning in the same way as the people around her. She's not going to be a wolf who eats herself. She's not going to destroy herself. Yeah. So Ayla pitches this plan to her friends, Sholo and Angus, that they break into the nearby residential school, St. D's is what they nickname it.

And they're going to steal their money back from Popper. So she orchestrates this heist. She draws a map. There's this little kid, Jujij, who I think, does he attend this school? Yeah. And he will kind of be there as like the inside man. He's the man on the inside. He's like 10.

I don't know what that kid is doing now but oh my god what a sweet kid like i know a star he always calls ayla boss yeah he's like well what now boss um i yeah and juji is like um i don't know if that would be like his given name because that's like a nickname in big ma okay which means like like little bug or little thing oh yeah yeah i'm a stan yeah so meanwhile ayla is having some dreams and visions of her dead mother and brother sometimes as zombies sometimes not but this is kind of like a recurring visual motif throughout the film and then uh one day ayla is out with her dad and they have this violent run-in with popper and his cronies and because burner sold them out to popper and let them know about ayla's plan to break into

the school so popper's like you wanted to go into the school fine now you're you're there so he sends her there as punishment but i if and correct me if I'm mistaken, but it feels like that's kind of part of her plan. She gets sent there on purpose so that she can also kind of be on the inside. Or I might be wrong about that. I'm not totally sure. The thing, you know what, I've gone over the years, I've gone back and forth on it. Honestly, Caitlin, like, I feel like when I first saw the film, I was like, oh, this is definitely like she's improvising sort of like this wasn't her plan.

And I sort of feel like now when I'm seeing it, I'm like, I feel like this was part of her plan in a way because Jujitsu knows to come and let her out of the hole. Uh-huh. Right? Yeah. So like, I think that it was her plan. Right. I was also questioning that because I was like, if that was her plan, Galaxy Brain, genius.

Right? Because the first time I watched the movie, it didn't even occur to me. But then on the second watch, I was like, wait, she's so smart that it didn't even occur to me that that might have been intentional. Right? But I also think that it sort of speaks to the character

that Ayla is. And, like, because I think in a way that she talks about aging a thousand years. And I think that, like, after her mother dies. And I think that there is a certain wisdom in that character that's sort of outpaced with her age, you know? And, like, at the end of the film, you know, Joseph says to her, like, you know, I just want you to know you're a little girl. Yeah. And she's like, I was never a little girl. I think that there is a certain she knows that burner is going to crack under pressure and rat them out. Like, yeah. And she knows that, like, there's a there's a chance of that. So I

think that she's kind of got some ideas in her head. She knows that they're not supposed to go out on the water. They've been out on the water. So I think it is planned. She also engages in that fight where she could have just stood back. And I think maybe if she's fighting, that's going to be the more reason they might send her to the school. For sure.

In any case, she gets sent sent there they cut her hair off uh they put her in solitary confinement that's like that's a scene that still and i've seen this film so many times now throughout the years i still cry every time i watch that scene that scene is so hard to watch because they used to do that to people you know yeah uh and for us like your hair is really sacred because it's your connection back to, like, the earth. So I'm tearing up now even talking about it. So, like, you know, that was one of the things that they always used to do when the kids were taken to residential schools is they would cut off their braids. And I was doing this project with a bunch of youth up north here in Quebec where we were creating this like woven tapestry and it was all made up of these different like lengths of braid that were woven together

into this like five by ten tapestry and we had this one elder who came and sat with us one day and was like telling us about her residential school experience and was talking about how seeing all these braids woven together was like so powerful to her because and this was not you know not something I had really thought about beforehand but she was talking about how like you know you would see all the hair too like after all the kids had their hair cut off just like swept to the side you know like all these braids like on the ground so it holds a lot of cultural significance in that way. Yeah, that scene was devastating.

And also, if you don't really know whether she planned or not to get sent to St. Dymphinus, all of a sudden you're like, our hero is in this peril. You don't know what's going to happen to her next, right? So it's either like a huge deliberate sacrifice or just her kind of falling victim to these horrible circumstances. Yeah. So while this is happening, her friends Sholo, Angus, and then there's another friend of theirs who I'd never caught the name of.

Maytag? Is that Maytag? Okay. caught the name of maytag is that maytag okay so they are prepping for this heist and they go into the school they break ayla out they rig up the plumbing so that literal human shit comes out when popper turns on the shower which very satisfying so satisfying really good stuff and like a whole bunch of like male full frontal nudity not that it was like

you were wanting it necessarily but it's like this independent Canadian film where you get to see like a whole lot of dick there to see a little bit of shit raining on full frontal nudity right you're just like you deserve this yeah and he's just at the lowest moment in that moment and you're just like yeah so good

oh the catharsis that's been that's been kind of i feel like a discussion that's been picking up in the last couple years of like how rare male nudity is shown period and then on top of that when it is shown like the way it's shown is never humiliating which whatever speaks to who's making most movies but it was that's true right very satisfying to see him humiliated in such a like primal way i don't know yeah oh totally and especially because you've sort of spent the entire movie up to this point just watching him and his goons kick the shit out of everybody you know and it's like i remember seeing this so when i originally saw this film i saw it at a festival and at that point in the film when hopper's like lying on the bathroom

floor covered in shit just like i'm gonna get you people in the film when hopper's like lying on the bathroom floor covered in shit just like i'm gonna get you people in the audience were like cheering it was amazing you know it was like the end of get out people were like full-on like being like yeah oh my gosh yes this would have been a cool movie to see in theaters. God damn it. It got a really limited release, so I was fortunate to see it at a festival, but we'll talk about that. It's also something we need to, like, yeah, I think people need to think about sometimes.

For sure. Yeah, definitely. So he's covered in shit. Meanwhile, they steal the money out of his safe and run away. They get away with, I think, $20,000. But when Ayla gets back home, she finds out that her grandmother, Saris, has been killed by Popper's thugs. And then when Popper comes for Ayla, he beats her. He's about to rape her.

But then little Jujij shows up with a gun and another very cathartic moment blows popper's head off ayla's father takes the fall for it again he gets carted off to prison again and then the story ends with um a is it is that a family friend or a relative jisugu or jisugu i wasn't sure oh the the old man yeah yeah yeah um so he's like a he's like a family friend okay there's a lot of like on small reserves we always joke that's like well everybody's related like somehow it's like they're probably related somehow like right yeah he was the guy who earlier in the story had also there was talk of him having aged a thousand years because he had gone to fight in World War Two and came back like a thousand years older because he had like lied about his age, saying he was older than he was to be able to fight and then, you know, experience a trauma of war and then came back. And he gives Zayla a really interesting piece of advice during that conversation too, that they're having when,

when they talk about him being a thousand years older, because he's the only other character that we hear referred to in that way. And he says this thing that I ended up picking up on and, and I ended up reading a couple of articles about it too, of like, you know, he's like, courage is sometimes moving with the dead,

you know, like as like bodies were sort of piling up, know it's like you have to keep moving and I think that that's almost an interesting like thesis point I think for like what Aayla's doing in a certain way of sort of like despite everything like having to like keep moving forward like you know there are going to be casualties along the way but it's like you have to keep moving forward like you know there are going to be casualties along the way but it's like you have to keep moving forward because otherwise you're one of them you know right so yeah so uh he's an interesting character um he pops up a little bit in blood quantum too it's interesting because blood quantum also takes place on the red crow reserve and yes but like a parallel universe uh so because the fishmint strip club is also

in blood quantum I love an expanded universe that's so cool yeah so there's like these interesting sort of like crossover points that kind of happen where like and a lot of the folks I think in the film weren't actors I think that like some of them were just like

people who maybe had a little bit of outside of like the main cast who are like Canadian indigenous like film royalty. Glenn Gould has been in everything. Like you don't make like you don't make a native film in Canada and not include Glenn Gould. Because what are you doing? Who plays Joseph in the film? He's incredible i mean that like the scene that i think like i mean stuck out to me i'm sure everybody was the scene at his wife's grave was just so oh holy shit it's just like yeah he

was he's incredible yeah um okay so then uh this character shows up who we've seen here and there um it's just saying like ayla i, Ayla, I don't want you. I don't want you to work in this drug trade anymore. And she's like, good. I don't want to either. And then Jujie, the little boy, comes back and he's like, OK, now what do we do, boss? And she's like, I don't know. And that's how the movie ends.

Let's take a quick break and then we'll come back for discussion. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017, was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. the situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhurts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price.

Listen to Crooks everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Pardenti. And I'm Jemay Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, a new podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. When you're just starting out in your career, you have a lot of questions,

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Get ready for a conversation that's as hilarious as it is insightful. Tune in for all the laughs, the stories, and of course, the culture. I feel some Sandra Bernhard in you. Oh my God, I would love it. I have to watch Lost.

Oh, you have to. No, I know, I'm so behind. Katherine Hanken's thing. Oh, I'm really good at karaoke. What's your song? Yeah, what's your song? Oh, I'm really good at karaoke. What's your song? Yeah, what's your song? Oh, I love a ballad. I felt Bjork's music. I just was like, who is this person?

I got to hawk this slalom, Lugey. Not hawk the slalom. I absolutely love it. It was somehow Shakespearean when you said it. It was somehow gorgeous. Yee, my slok, I absolutely love it. It was somehow Shakespearean when you said it. It was somehow gorgeous. Yee, my slok, you hollum. Listen to Las Culturistas on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back.

Yes. Where shall we begin? Well, I think it's probably helpful to provide some historical context for the residential school system, because you really have to have an understanding of what that is to appreciate the events of this film and why the characters are doing everything that they do to not have to go to a residential school for sure and i think that it'd be good too to talk a little bit about um the a little bit about reserves and a little bit about the indian act because i think that there's like there's layers to this right it's not just the residential school it's like it's everything you know and um this time watching it through too i was thinking a lot about like the violence in the film and thinking about how it's sort of it's like it's everything you know and um this time watching it through too i was thinking a lot about like the violence in the film and thinking about how it's sort of it's incessant like it's it's just like around every corner like ayla's just biking down the road at one point and like somebody like comes out of nowhere and punches her and like yeah and that's you know

such a visual metaphor for i think what it feels like sometimes to be a, like, a marginalized person, whether it's, you know, you're black, indigenous, or like a person of color, or whether you're trans, or whether you're differently abled. Like, I think that there's, like, a sense sometimes of, like, things can come out of nowhere and kind of, like, knock you on your ass. So, yeah, just to talk a little bit about and and like feel free to jump in too um but yeah so talk to talk a little bit about the indian act because that's kind of where it all starts off right so the indian act was officially passed in 1876 i hope there's no like canadian history buffs who are like out there like checking my because like like it's the one, like I can remember meeting a person 10 years ago for like 15 minutes, but I cannot remember dates for the life of me. Well, most of our listenership are Canadian history scholars.

Damn. Yes. But I do believe that date is correct. Yes. Okay. I have that in my notes as well. Awesome. Yeah.

So, but before that, there had been sort of a patchwork of different colonial laws that had existed. And then sort of when Canada became like a country as opposed to sort of different, like sort of colonies, you know, like between like New France and Upper Canada and Lower Canada, that it was sort of brought into law in a sort of more official sense. And the Indian Act, the short version of the Indian Act is that it was legislation that was designed to very literally like legislate out of existence Indigenous people. And it did that through a number of ways. So the residential schools, which we'll talk more about, were part of the Indian Act. This idea that you'll civilize, and I'm using air quotes, you'll civilize Indigenous children and assimilate them into Canadian society. The Indian Act also, you know, targeted women. So if you were an Indigenous woman and you married a non-Indigenous man, you lost your status. And Indigenous status or Native status, which exists in the United States as well, is sort of like your only pathway for being able to access things like on-reserve housing,

like certain educational scholarships and benefits and things like that are only accessible through your status card. There's other services and things like that that are only accessible through your status card. There's other services and things like that that are only accessible through your status card. So losing your status, you know, was a big deal. And so we often refer to when women married non-Indigenous men, it's happened a lot in the, you know, early days of Canada, as marrying out, because it was essentially like, well, now you're out of the culture. Goodbye. One less Indian. And, you know, there were other things like the Indian Act did.

You couldn't leave the reserve to get a higher education. You couldn't just like leave the reserve to go see a doctor. There was a whole system of passes that Indigenous people had to have for a long time. Like it was essentially like a passport that said like, okay, I'm leaving my reserve now. And that, you know, there was no thought given to, it's like, okay, well, we don't have a hospital on reserve. I have to leave the reserve to go to the hospital. Or even just like, I want to go visit a friend on a different reserve. Like you'd have to like have that passport signed off on by the Indian agent who could also say no so people's movement was really controlled people's lives were really controlled and and like I said you know disproportionately the Indian Act targeted children and women through things like the

residential school system through things like losing status if you married out which wasn't applied to men if men if indigenous men married non-indigenous women their non-indigenous wives would get status and all their children would get status and they were able to remain a part of their communities yeah jesus christ so it's like it's not even like uh it's so blatant it's almost like a bond villain who's like and then i'm going to set up the laser and then it's going to catch you in half. And then I'm going to take over the world.

It's like the Canadian government essentially said from the beginning, we don't want any more indigenous people. And this is what we're going to do to get rid of them. Um, yeah. However, the double-edged sword of the Indian, of the Indian act,

you know, and you're, I can imagine it's sort of like, well, if it's so terrible and so sexist and so racist, just get rid of it. Unfortunately, it's really one of the major legislative tools that we have in Canada as Indigenous people to be able to hold the federal government accountable because it defines what an indigenous person is. So, which is just like magnitudes of frustrating. Yeah, absolutely. So originally, and this ties into the film, in 1969, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, who's Justin Trudeau's daddy,

was prime minister at the time. And he introduced this, essentially, this act that would have gotten rid of the Indian Act. This is so this is 1969. This paper ended up becoming called the White Paper. And it was this really catalyzing moment for a lot of what we call red power power or like an indigenous like civil rights movement sort of stuff began happening because you know people were really hip to the idea that like if we get rid of the status of indian which is what it would have been called at the time then the government doesn't legally have any enforceable responsibility towards indians if indians't exist, they don't exist. Does that make sense? Right.

In the way that I'm certain. Yes, it makes sense the way you're explaining it. It's just that there's so many layers of mind fuckery going on. Oh, yeah. It's a whole tiramisu of fucked up, which is terrible. I shouldn't do that to tiramisu tiramisu is delightful tiramisu will recover tiramisu's got a good rap you know i feel like it can come back from this but yeah so so what the solution has sort of become you know is because we can't get rid of the indian act is to sort of amend it and a lot of amendments, I think sort of the most recent big push of

amendments, there's little things going through all the time, but I think 2002 was like a big push of like a whole bunch of amendments to it. In the 80s, we had a big push of amendments that allowed women who had lost their status through marriage to get their status back, which was a huge thing. You know, I have a friend a friend who you know at that point in time was already uh you know like a teenager and she talks about how important it was like that moment when her mom gets status back which meant that she could get status and like because even though it isn't like like having status is not what makes you an indigenous person. Sure. It still can feel like a very significant thing in terms of belonging. Sure.

Yeah, of course. Yeah. So it's this whole sort of mess, unfortunately. And the Indian agents, like we see Popper in the film, were the enforcers of this incredibly racist law. So Indian agents had total like unchecked control. It was like even worse in some ways than sort of like you know how we talk about like oh you know the sheriff in the old west and you know

they could sort of make up the rules as they go along indian agents were sort of that except they were white racist assholes so you know i've read different things over the years about like people talking about how like oh well is popper's and behavior are a little bit extreme. It's like, well, like some of the stuff did happen. Like some of the stuff we know has happened because we've heard stories from people and it's also been documented, you know, by the time that we get to the late sixties, early seventies, the Indian agents were starting to be phased out because we were starting to

move into a new period in terms of like like the Indian Act and like I said some of those like um big changes that were to come in the 80s but uh at the time we still had Indian agents that were quite sort of literally allowed to do whatever the fuck they wanted with impunity um you had Indian agents in the states as well and they were uh this made me chuckle, not because it's funny, but because it's sort of, again, Machiavellian. The original Indian agents were under the U.S. War Department initially. Oh. Which is like very blatantly like, yeah.

Any less like clear about how you feel? Jesus Christ. Yeah. But what happened with the Indian Asians in the States is as we moved through the 1800s and into the 1900s, they sort of transitioned into being superintendents for what the American equivalent of residential schools is, the Indian boarding school system. And that position shifted into more of a civilian role later on. But yeah, it was it was like a government,

Department of War position. It was essentially, like I brought up in the Twilight reading, it was to swindle people out of their land, whatever way you could. uh yeah it was it was about like this idea of like manifest destiny you know it's like well we've we've arrived and now it's ours like yeah so uh that's a little bit of background on on the indian act and so like i said the the residential school system was established as part of the indian act under the mandate of kill the Indian and educate the child sort of thing, which is just like a real cool, chill sentiment to have. And so they started out, you know, we had Jesuit schools, especially coming into like New France.

So sort of what is like Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, like part of Quebec, like New England sort of area. So we would have had like early Jesuit schools and like, you know, those were a little bit less rigorously sort of organized. And those were mostly were in the 1600s, some in the 1700s. But like I said, it functioned a lot more sort of like, what's that word? It's a missionary sort of effort. Like it was like we're gonna go and christianize sure this there's nothing colonial about this no we're just talking about

jesus and it's really interesting because we uh from that the migma converted to christianity in 1604 and like a lot of that had to do with the presence of like Jesuit missionaries in Mi'kma'ki and Mi'kmaq territory at the time. But moving out of that period, moving into the 19th century is when we sort of get officially into the like what we call the residential school period. And these were schools that were government funded, managed by Christian churches. So there was like different denominations that were government funded uh managed by christian churches so there was like different denominations that were involved the roman catholic church was a big one of course uh but like there were presbyterians um i think anglican anglicans yeah the church of england was very big um just kind of this not facilitating i'm getting all tripped up on my words but like essentially administering the

school so like they were all run by nuns and priests and and like Laker clergy as sort of like the the only attendance at the school and and we estimate that about 150,000 children indigenous children in Canada went to residential school and is it is safe to, I just, for our listeners who are not fully clear on what the intent was, the intent of the school is to take your culture from you and replace it with something else.

Yeah, it was essentially that. It was this idea that like, like I said, you know, like it's the idea of like killing the Indian through education. So you'd be taken away from your community. You'd be taken out of your community you'd be taken out

of your language so uh you only spoke English at residential school um they would cut off your braids much like we see in the movie you'd be wearing western clothing um you'd only be educated educated uh and sort of like European centric like history and like customs and mannerisms. In the States more than in Canada, there was also like this idea of vocational training. But yeah, it was about westernizing indigenous kids because they were seen as being savages. Yeah, I like it was forced assimilation. And then in addition to that, it was also the like officials at these schools inflicting severe amounts of emotional, physical and sexual abuse upon the children. A lot of children died in the residential school system. Throughout the years, there was a lot of like malnutrition i read i even read some

cases of like experiments being done on the children yeah and there was just like not really much education happening it was just abuse no and that's sort of the problem right is that their primary goal was was forced assimilation you know their goal wasn't to sort of build young people up so that they'd be able to stand in the assimilation you know their goal wasn't to sort of build young people up so that they'd be able to stand in the world afterwards you know like um like one would hope that the education system does to some degree it was it was really about like you are bad you are dirty we're going to make you clean and pure and you know we can't bleach you, but we'll make you as white as possible. You know, it's estimated now that about 6,000 children died as a result of the residential school system. However, those numbers don't take into account, well, one, you know, the records

are not complete. A lot of schools, as they were shutting down, you know especially in the the 80s and 90s you know burned records just like wholesale got rid of stuff was like we don't know uh graves were often not marked so there's been a whole process even now sort of like trying to figure out like people trying to figure out where their relatives are buried uh conditions in the school were really terrible you know so kids were not only dying of like malnutrition, but also disease, also of abuse. Like at times the abuse would be so severe. Like there was one case that I was reading about where the children were routinely like electrocuted in like small doses. And sometimes they would die because they were like as a punishment being

electrocuted and that doesn't even take into account the i think what we see through ayla's parents is like the after effects of that abuse and how if you do make it out what is life like after that you know coping with all that yeah trauma oh exactly and and you know that's just it too like how many people you know their whole lives have had to struggle with you know the the weight of that abuse have you know people who have died by suicide like yeah it's it's it's a very hard thing to put a number on it you know the fatalities of of people coming out through the residential school system because it was this terrible terrible terrible terrible machine that just like like i said you know

was meant to get rid of what the prime minister at the time sir john a mcdonald which was he was like very famous canadian prime minister from my back uh when canada was sort of created as a country you know like he was like the ind Indian problem. People were seen as a problem. It was like, oh, well, we'll just get rid of them. You know, you know, we talked about this a little bit before the phone call. You know, you two were sort of saying, well, you didn't learn anything about this in school. I learned a little bit about this in school, but it's really only been the last like couple generations that we've even started like talking about this openly. So the last residence of school in Canada closed in 1996.

Yeah. You know? So, like, there are people my age whose, like, parents went to residential school. You know, and their aunties and uncles and, like, were really directly impacted by that. Yeah, and we just didn't talk about yeah and we just didn't talk about it we just didn't talk about it we'd like there was a sense that uh for a really long time even like in 2009 the prime minister of canada stephen harper was like canada doesn't have a colonial history you know like we don't uh everything's great you know when we start looking at like the time in which the rhyme for and ghouls is

coming out in a lot of ways it was like a big piece of media that was made about this terrible terrible system and yeah and and and so i think that a lot of the violence and stuff that you see in the film was really done with the idea of like trying to convey just how destructive this was you know was there anything caitlin, I don't know if like, you had mentioned that you had like a specific timeline for residential schools. I don't, I kind of jumped all over the place. Oh, sure.

And I mean, I think what you covered was really helpful context. I have just some kind of dates scattered through and some additional numbers. For example, like the 60s scoop was this moment in history that was actually several decades long, where I think an estimated 20,000 indigenous children were taken from their families and placed into foster care

or adoption homes, often with non-Indigenous families. This was happening from like the late 50s into the 1980s. Yeah, so I know folks who were scooped and like, which is a weird way of putting it, but in some cases it was literally like, oh, you know, these social workers arrived at your house and they loaded you and your siblings in a car and then you never saw your siblings again because you were all adopted by different families which you know the term that we would use for this now is child trafficking you know um right absolutely and this was a government this was government mandated this was like government endorsed um so that's another way in which like the indian act has been used to sort of

um separate children from indigenous communities right it's through things like the Indian Act has been used to sort of separate children from indigenous communities, right? It's through things like the 60s and 70s scoop, which really could be called, like you said, like started in the 50s and went until the 80s. Yeah. And now another thing too, that has become, that's gotten a lot more attention in recent years and is something that there's been a lot of call to abolish is we call them birth alerts. So what can happen, unfortunately, is that like social workers can essentially seize a newborn from an Indigenous mother if they deem her to be potentially not a good parent in some way. It was a couple of provinces have abolished these like birth alert systems but

it's still upheld in saskatchewan and i believe alberta as well here so yeah so if you're an indigenous woman giving birth in a hospital can be very risky because if you're not if they're like oh you're kind of young you know or are you a single mother? You know, like essentially the staff will alert child services and they will come and take your child before even like the drugs have worn off from the birth. You know, like it's a really, really horrific system. this i was reminded of a news item that i read not too long ago in september around um just issues uh that would have certainly been affecting ayla in particular uh forced sterilization as well which when i did a little more research i found out it peaked in the years that this movie is covering. It peaked between 1966 and 1976. Over a thousand Indigenous women in Canada were forced to be sterilized. And the reason that the story is relevant right now is because it's still happening.

Yeah. Like you said, you know, it is still happening. There's still a lot of pressure in terms of, you know, in California as well. Like there were a lot of Indigenous women sterilized and you know in california as well like there were a lot of indigenous women sterilized in california um during the 60s and 70s not that i'm picking on california it just happened in all those districts of california but uh yeah it's it's it's still going on today there's still a lot of pressure especially if women like have any sort of even minor health concerns like a lot of times like

there still is this pressure of like well, we could just sterilize you. If women are incarcerated, there's also pressure. Yeah, it disproportionately affects the Indigenous community, of course, because of colonialism, because there is still huge bias, unfortunately, with regards to Indigenous people. Absolutely. Oh, I was going to say, on top of the 60s scoop, if you want to know some other sad

statistics, I feel like we're just like, oh, and this thing. That's also really depressing. So today, talking too about the birth alert system, you know, even though the last residential school closed here in Canada in the 90s, in 1996, which like, spoiler alert, we were all alive then? Wait, how old are you, Jamie? We were all alive then. I was like, Jamie's young. Jamie's scrappy. I was there.

But yeah, so it's within our lifetimes, you know, and I think that that's a really important thing to remember. However, a lot of Indigenous folks will argue that the child welfare system has taken over the place of the residential schools in terms of like taking kids out of communities. You know, you have the birth alert system. You also just have like tremendous like scrutiny and surveillance of Indigenous families. What should be shocking and upsetting to people is the fact that Indigenous children represent 53% of the children in foster care in Canada, even though they only represent 7% of the youth population. Oh, wow. In Quebec, it's estimated that one out of every Indigenous family has a child that's in foster care with non-Indigenous people. And it's endemic it's it's just like you know if it's not something you have experienced directly it's something that like you know other people who have and when you start looking at things like that you know with regards to kids in the

child welfare system with regards to you know suicidality with regards to incarceration you know with regards to like drug abuse like all the things that we sort of see in this movie you know you can draw a straight line from one to the other and it can't be an accident at this point right right you know there's just so much like paperwork and documentation of how things have intentionally been done you know throughout the years to make that this is the case at a certain point in time you have to kind of be like well it's not even a conspiracy anymore because you know it's all documented and to speak to your point from earlier that's just the documentation that still exists

yeah right what what was burned and what was destroyed and and what was lost and you know and uh what will not come to light you know for whatever reason and on and on and on unfortunately yes let's take a quick break and then we'll come back and we'll discuss how this context informs the film shall we Shall we? My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhearts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, I'm Gianna Pradenti. And I'm Jemay Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, a new podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. When you're just starting out in your career, you have a lot of questions like, how do I speak up when I'm feeling overwhelmed? Or can I negotiate a higher salary if this is my first real job? Girl, yes. Each week, we answer your unfiltered work questions. Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in experts who do, like resume specialist Morgan

Sanner. The only difference between the person who doesn't get the job and the person who gets the job is usually who applies. Yeah, I think a lot about that quote. What is it like you miss 100% of the shots you never take? Yeah, rejection is scary, but it's better than you rejecting yourself. Together, we'll share what it really takes to thrive in the early years of your career without sacrificing your sanity or sleep. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everybody, this is Matt Rogers. And Bowen Yang. We've got some exciting news for you. You know, we're always bringing you the best guests, right?

Well, this week we're taking it to the next level. The one, the only, Katherine Hahn is joining us on Lost Culture East. That's right. The queen of comedy herself. Get ready for a conversation that's as hilarious as it is insightful. Tune in for all the laughs, the stories, and of course, the culture. I feel some Sandra Bernhardt in you. Oh, my God. I would love it.

I have to watch Lost. Oh, you have to. No, I know. I'm so behind. Katherine Hanken's thing. Oh, I'm really good at karaoke. What's your song? Yeah, what's your song?

Oh, I love a ballad. I felt Bjork's music. I just was like, who is this person? I got to hawk this slalom, Luge. I'm not going to hawk this slalom. I absolutely love it. It was somehow Shakespearean when you said it. It was somehow gorgeous.

Yee, my slok, you hollum. Listen to Las Culturistas on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. I wanted to, if it's cool with everybody, share

some quotes from Jeff Barnaby, please, about the production of this movie and just kind of his motivation behind writing it and sort of where he was at I I still I mean especially after watching this movie a couple times I it I can't believe that he is not a more mainstream name like it's so he wrote directed and edited this movie which is fucking unbelievable i'm like god imagine having three skills i can't well he he he did the same for blood quantum and then i think he also co-wrote the score to that film yes he did yeah so he's a composer as well

and he also has a small cameo in uh rhymes for young ghouls oh wait which which yeah yeah he's uh the priest who puts ayla in the hole he's in the film for like three seconds and it's funny because i've i've met jeff sort of like subsequently uh-huh cool just through like montreal film sort of stuff and it's very like i totally agree i think he should be a household name um but it sort of touches on some of the ways that like uh it can be really hard to make a film when you are not a straight white man yeah you know and uh for blood quantum he was working on that project for years and like different things were shot at different times and you know there was like self-funding at different points and like well even for uh rhymes for young ghouls there was, like, self-funding at different points, and, like, well, even for Rhymes for Young Ghouls,

there was, like, you sort of get to see, it's like all of the Canadian film funders contributed, because it's like, we have tiny little bits of money that we can give you. So it's, you know, it's unfortunately still, like, an uphill battle in a lot of ways, just to, like, have a film made, and then to get people to see it you know um yeah and this i mean this movie's budget was only a million five hundred thousand which i mean for a movie it certainly uses that budget to its fullest extent it looks incredible and we had we had

sort of a similar conversation not too long ago in our um a girl walks home alone at night episode and just like the number of barriers that are put in front of filmmakers who are not straight white male and how many different avenues you have to go for funding and even when you have this finished product and it's incredible and it's you know very exciting and different distribution becomes a whole issue. And so if you're listening right now and you haven't watched the Barnaby Canon, get on it. But I really liked, there was an interview he did, I believe around the time this movie was first coming out in festivals with Muskrat magazine.

And he was asked by the interviewer, let me get their name, Jemais da Costa. He was asked why he chose to have a female protagonist for this story. So I thought, relevant to our interests. And here is how he replied. He said, My nation is a matriarchal society, and paying respect to that archetype of a woman and the strength that is

there, particularly in First Nations women, it's imperative for me as a First Nations man who loves his mom and loves his wife and loves his sisters to pay reverence to their struggle and their strength. I think women are awesome. Great quote. Wow. My mom had me as a

T-shirt, you know, a new merch right up there with our Robert Eggers. Oh, yes, women. I've heard of them. Jeff Barnaby thinks women are awesome. My mom had me at such a young age and didn't have a lot of support around her but still managed to make it work. She and my stepmom were a big influence along with my sisters and seeing what they went through at such a young age gave me a measuring stick in terms of the things you can complain about in life and then he said um kind of going off of that why he chose the era in residential schools that he chose i believe this movie is set in the year that he was born in 1976 but he says about that in the same interview

quote i thought if there was ever a point in time that this residential school was going to crumble it would have been in the 70s it just made sense to me to have a young native girl bring this institution of ugliness to its knees it made sense to me because first nations women are the language and cultural keepers they are the epicenter of our matriarchal society i've mostly only known strength to come from the women in my life which isn't to say that men haven't been influential but the rock steady power that doesn't waver seems to only come from women unquote which i think he compliments his wife for a long time um which is nice but i'm not gonna read the whole thing his wife is really

lovely too oh very nice well i think you see that in the film this this like ideology with like of ayla's peers who seem to be entirely boys she is the smartest and most competent of them not even of just her peers of all the like adult men around her she seems to have kind of the most awareness of what is going around because like there's scenes where like sholo and angus are just like oops i got robbed by a stripper doe like tiki they're kind of laughing about it you know he's like oh well no big deal we'll just sell some bottles we'll get the money back that way and ayla's like no like do you see what's happening do you see what we have to do and she's by far the most competent and and like wisest we talked about sort of having to age prematurely

almost and having to be wise beyond your years not in a like precocious child tropey way that we you know always take guff with on the podcast but in a when you're growing up in these horrible like systematic oppression situations there's no other choice you can't like it's that's just it it hardens you and it and the fact that the story of the wolf eating itself that becomes so important um to how she views herself and how we view her as the audience comes from really the only other woman that we get to know besides her mother in the movie of like she i mean i guess going off of um what jeff barnaby said she was the keeper of that wisdom and passed it along. For sure. And I was going to say, too, that just like a little bit of like added Mi'kmaq context,

there is this huge reverence in our culture for not just women, although, you know, like Jeff says, you know, it's a very matriarchal, matrilineal culture, but also grandmothers in particular are really revered, you know as elders as elder women there's a lot of stories of uh gluscap who's our our sort of um how to describe gluscap uh he's a trickster figure and he's within traditional storytelling um but he's also like a protector figure for the mig'kmaq um you know he was sort of helped when creator made the Mi'kmaq at the beginning you know to shape the landscape so he he plays this really important role throughout all of our our traditional stories and there's a lot of stories about Glooscap just like doing stuff with his grandmother

um and even the word that we use for grandmother uh Nug midge comes from what gluscap calls his grandmother which is nugu me and jij that like adding that j on the end is like how you sort of like talk about like something being smaller like we talk about jujij is like a small bug um so like our grandmothers are like a small version of gluscap's grandmother, you know? And there's also a lot of reverence in Mi'kmaq culture for figures like St. Anne. There's a very important cathedral called St. Anne de Beaupré where a lot of Mi'kmaq folks do pilgrimages to. Because like I said, we converted very early on. So Christianity has gotten very tied into our traditional culture.

And St. Anne in the bible i'm now i'm talking at my ass a little bit i'll be honest i cannot help you because i have never read the bible but uh saint anne is is um jesus's grandmother and so uh you know she she remains very symbolic and very important for the migma in that sense So the fact that Saris is really the only female figure that we know in the film, I think, is very emblematic of Mi'kmaq culture. And I love those scenes so much because they're actually speaking Mi'kmaq.

Oh, there's my cat. Wow. This episode of the Bechdel cast passes the Caitlin test, because a cat is present. Yeah, I was gonna say. But yeah, I love those sections with Saris, because they're speaking in Mi'kmaq. She's making Bannock, you know, she's doing like all these things that like, are so familiar and are so like grounding. And when we're in Saris's house, too have a sense of like ayla doesn't have to be

you know the smartest you know most sort of like aware person she can just kind of be there and like is comforting it feels like the closest scenes to where she feels like being a kid because it's really easy to forget that she's a kid because she has the weight of the world and then some on her shoulders. But yeah, in those scenes with Sarah's, and I think like part of why it's so devastating to see that Sarah's has been murdered is because that's, I mean,

one of the only times you sort of see Ayla relax the smallest bit and, and just feel like you said, comfortable. Yeah. Big big time you know and uh it's also interesting because what you're saying too about her like i think like i really see it as after her mother's death and her father's in prison you know ela kind of has to become the adult has to become the parent you know and like you know you both mentioned like that's not rare unfortunately for kids who grow up in circumstances where there is like substance abuse or there's like a parent absent um for whatever reason you know and i really refer to i always think about like all

the men in the film kind of as like lost boys in a sense because there is sort of like this waywardness this sort of sense of like there's not like any other kind of like parent like child relationships really depicted and sometimes it can kind of like feel like that in in circumstances um you know where there is so much intergenerational trauma is like everyone's kind of like lost and everyone's kind of like separated from each other you know? And so I thought that that was really interesting the way that they treated that in film. Yeah, particularly with Ayla's relationship with her father, which I thought was the way that that was developed was, I mean, really emotionally effective, but really interesting too where it's i don't know every character in this movie is so multi-dimensional and so complex where it's like i can be mad at ayla's dad in one scene and then in the next scene

be like oh but i but but i understand where he's coming from where i mean when we flash forward ayla is essentially her uncle's boss She's clearly the brains behind the operation and her dad is not able to like, I don't know, get emotionally where he needs to be. And the anger sort of is lashed out towards her when it is his anger with the circumstance, not with her and seeing them navigate that relationship and reach I mean go full circle in the best and the worst way by the end was just so so so impactful it was just yeah so beautifully written yeah and and and sort of you know you're right and sort of like seeing that full there's a lot of like circular sort of narratives that happen in the film and i think that that's very intentional in the sense of like

kind of being caught in systemic racism can often feel like you can't escape this vicious circle that you're in right like any kind of systemic oppression but uh we sort of we open the movie with her father going to prison we close the movie with her father going to prison you know the amount of journey that he has to do in between you know in terms of his relationship with ayla is is huge sorry my cat's eating my my notes um as i am trying to read them uh you know is is absolutely huge you know and i think that exchange at the end of the film where joseph like just comes out and says you know like you're you know and I think that exchange at the end of the film where Joseph like just comes out and says you know like you're still a kid I want you to be a kid you know I think that that you finally understand in that moment what the stakes are for him and like the

fact that like you know he understands even though he's like I want you to be a kid he understands that like Neila can never really be a kid? Like, that's just not on the table. And I think that's kind of interesting in terms of, like, looking at this film as, like, in comparison with, like, other films about, like, teenage girls. Because I think there could be an argument made that, in some ways, Rhymes is a coming-of-age story. Yeah. But it's just, like, you know, you look at that and then you look at something like Booksmart and you're like oh you guys talk so much about how

often times teen movies take place in a very narrow sort of class and it's sort of interesting to see the way that this film steps kind of outside of that to tell this story of it's like well sometimes coming of age means having to be your own parent at, you know.

Absolutely. As a teenager. Yeah. I mean, and I feel like I would, I would qualify this movie as, I wrote down all the different genres I felt like this movie touched on at different points, which is another thing that I loved about it was like, there's just, there were whole sequences that were a heist movie yeah there were whole sequences that were very much drama there were whole sequences that but I it feels like a coming of age movie yeah to me yeah and I don't know I mean maybe not at first

glance because it's not an experience that we usually see reflected on screen, but we definitely see her come of age. Right. It's like, I mean, it's almost like you might not necessarily immediately recognize it as a coming of age story because... There's no party at a rich kid's house. So maybe that's where... Right. There's no like, oops, I smoked weed for the first time and now i'm tripping balls at my at my friend's mansion that i'm hanging out at right it's like but it but it's like yeah a movie about a young indigenous teen girl in the 1970s in canada like, that is what coming of age would look like. Absolutely.

Yeah. You know, and even I think that, like, you know, there were even things like, like, I think that in my own coming of age that, like, I, like, resonated with me in terms of the film, you know, like, like I said, I didn't grow up in a res, but I did grow up with two parents who had serious substance abuse issues and yeah there were definitely things about like Ayla's story that resonated so so strongly with me like on this very profound level and uh I think that's important I think that's so important in the media that like young people can see you know I was older than

Ayla when I saw uh than Ayla would have been than when I saw the film um but it's a media that like young people can see you know i was older than ayla when i saw uh than ayla would have been than when i saw the film um but it's a film that like i try and like show young people too because it's important you know we're talking about like representation you know it's important to sort of see like yes it is this very brutal violent i don't think particularly optimistic story but jeff barnaby talks a lot about this idea of like wanting to portray the res in you know in a way that's like true to his experience you know and i think that like whether you're indigenous or not if you're a young person who is living in like in a precarious situation with a you know that's because you know it's always

because of things like that you can't control, then I think that there's things you're going to relate to in terms of Ayla's story. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, even getting back to the relationship with her dad, I mean, just navigating a complicated relationship with, I had a number of people in my family who had substance abuse problems, but you love them. And you feel like it's not especially when you're still a kid, you can't really sever that cord. And I, I don't know, it's something you almost never see in teen movies. And if you do, it's kind of framed like a joke, instead of, you know, a problem that is something, you know, very sensitive that needs to be navigated. And another thing that kind of, I guess, I'm curious at what you both felt about this, but I also was really affected by the, I don't like Ayla is so mature in ways that I'm

like, I currently don't even know if I can be where the amount of grace and understanding that she's able to extend to both of her parents consistently, even when she is particularly with her dad, who she's often pissed off at the decision she's making, she realizes he's lashing out, he's compartmentalizing, he's not able to fully, you know, deal with what's in front of him. But she has this very, I mean, there's that scene with her and her uncle where she says the jail didn't break him. We did, which is her putting more blame on her. You know, we know as a viewer, she's putting a lot of undue blame on herself, but just the amount of grace that she extends the people in her life, because she has such a thorough understanding of how

circumstantial a lot of their problems are, I thought was like, really cool. And again, just something you don't see that subtlety expressed in this genre really ever right and something you mentioned about the there's this kind of ongoing discussion throughout the movie about characters kind of having to age too rapidly on a maturity and kind of emotional and psychological level there's also this idea of characters being broken and there there is that discussion between Ayla and Berner talking about Joseph saying, you know, like you said, Jamie, like, Ayla thinks that like, we, we broke him. And it's not necessarily clear if she means like, we as the family, or we as a community, or what exactly. But then there's another quick interaction between Ayla and Joseph at the end,

when he's saying the whole, like, you, you're just a little girl. And she's like, I was never a little girl. And then he says, you know, your, your mother was broken way before what happened, meaning like way before the accident that killed her brother. And this has nothing to do with you. And that, you know, is a reference to them becoming broken, being survivors of this residential school system and of this systemic podcast and I was thinking about other films that you've discussed that that have like teenage female protagonists and and I think that Ayla has a certain amount of like is portrayed as having a certain amount of stoicism and a certain amount of like restraint and a certain amount of like ability to see the larger picture that you kind of see crack at the end when she's like you know right before popper arrives when she's crying after she's found saris

and she sort of says you know the for the you know the last rule of surviving in the kingdom of the crow is never let your emotional guard down and i think that sometimes uh for kids who grow up or people just in general who grow up in difficult situations, I think that sometimes like in order to survive, you need a kind of compartmentalizing. You need to kind of like have a very calm, steady demeanor because there's nothing else in your life that is that way. Right. You know. And so I think that there's like a certain amount of that as well. And there's a certain amount of it too that like I kind of question how realistic it is. Because I mean, I work with teenagers, you know, and like, and they're all lovely. And none of them are going to listen to this, but I adore them all. And, you know, I think that there is a certain amount of that that is sort of like creative license.

But it is really hard to like place Ayla's age. And it's really hard to like, I think that like a more turbulent character wouldn't have worked for the film. So I think that like also from a storytelling perspective, you know, Ayla being this rock is sort of important for the narrative, but also sort of perhaps a little bit idealized. I see that. Yeah. crosses over into how she remembers her mother and how which was kind of another I thought pretty different incredible approach by Jeff Barnaby that I totally agree if she were acting you know like your average teenager may not have been possible but I I mean it's I I forget I think it's her uncle uh or I think it'sner Early in the movie, once we flash forward and everything has happened, who insults her mother in front of her. And she immediately, because she has, I mean, this understanding of the circumstance of what happened was so tragic and so terrible and even though it was a an accident

that involved her mother you know she's able to kind of see the fuller picture and protect her mother's memory are you talking about the moment where he like he calls someone an old witch and then she's like don't call her that and then he's like sorry the old lady yeah i thought he was talking about cirrus there was he i think he might have been okay then i misunderstood that because i think yeah he's talking about because she seems to be cirrus seems to be sort of it's at her house where like they're growing all the marijuana i think that they sell yeah and he he's so there's certain kind of debts to her that they owe because like she's supplying stuff and then and then yeah so and then they're like kind of moving the product around but yeah i think he's he's talking to her but even so i think your your point's still valid

jamie of like i mean everyone is broken and everyone's having to kind of compartmentalize. And that's something that Ayla has. I feel like just you were touching on this a little bit. We're in a world where there is not a lot that she has control over. How she views her mother and how she holds her mother's memory is something that she has control over. And it's interesting, too, because I was going to say, you know, even though indigenous women have been, you know,

a target of colonialism and colonial violence through the Indian act and in other ways, you know, indigenous women are also at the forefront of a lot of activism that happens and is still happening you know uh one thing that was going on when this film uh first came out in 2013 was the beginning of idle no more which is an indigenous rights movement here in canada and and in some parts of the united states as well like at standing rock there was idle no more folks and it was started by four women, three Indigenous

and one white ally, because they wanted to stand up against this bill that the government was introducing that would have changed not only a lot of Indigenous rights, but also a lot of environmental protections. So they got together and they're like, we're not going to be Idle anymore. And it spread to becoming this national protest movement and spread to becoming a bigger sort of movement for indigenous rights here in Canada and that was started you know by by four women sort of sitting around a table uh in the prairies like just like deciding you know we're done so there is like I think in in the character Vela like and and understanding some of like jeff's like motivations for wanting to to create a character that way like i think i understand like that he's also

paying tribute to women like that you know who have like held it together and who are like trying to make change and who are in so many ways taking all this garbage that the world puts on them and trying to like make change and do things that are different and also like the compassion that it takes to take all that shit and and still turn around and be able to say like you know I'm gonna march and I'm gonna I'm going to write letters and I'm gonna do a hunger And yeah, I think that that's really, really powerful. And I, and I think that like, so I think that there's also like that element too, of, of like, when I say that Ayla is a little bit of an idealized character, like, I think that there's also a measure of that that's like paying tribute in like a positive way to the role that

indigenous women play in politics and in their communities. Mm-hmm. I hear that, for sure. There was one thing that just kind of coming off of something that I think you mentioned, Caitlin, about, like, the selling drugs and, like, being broken. And I wanted to talk a little bit about that. So I'm interested in what your first impressions of that were because we're so used to seeing these images of, like, drunk Indians. And, you know, that's been so prevalent in North American cinema since the beginning of North American cinema.

Yeah. So did you feel at all sort of, did you feel any kind of way, I guess, like sort of like seeing those scenes in the beginning? I honestly, I mean, I, my first reaction was, I don't, I mean, I knew that, you know, Jeff Barnaby is an indigenous filmmaker. I'm like, I'm going to, I'm on this ride with him. He, and I knew he was speaking to his own community. It did like make me go, oh no, for a moment, only because, I don't know, we've all seen movies where those stereotypes have played out,

and then you get no context for anything, but this movie felt like it was all context for what led to those stereotypes being so widely perpetuated without context entirely so yeah i think it it gave me pause for like a second but then when it was clear i mean the first frame of the movie is context yeah um so i i feel like this i and i was reading in just this same interview with him in muskrat magazine that he had experienced some pushback um from other filmmakers in the community that were just like well you're showing these stereotypes and like you know like i don't have any interest in seeing that portrayed on screen in any way and his response being something you've

already referenced just where he was just like well i'm showing you my community and reflecting my own experiences growing up so like how can you tell me what i can wow like i can't reflect my own experience right it almost it's like sort of finding a balance of like do i do a disservice to my community by ignoring some very real truths of what is taking place or do i i mean we talked about this a little bit on a recent episode we recorded uh on the matreonion about what we do in the shadows, where it was written and directed by both Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement, who are both Maori. And we were talking about how cool it is to see because there's like this kind of discussion around, it feels like there's a lot of pressure on filmmakers of any marginalized community to only talk about that it's like if you're black you can

only make movies about racism and like that's your expertise so that's what you have to make art about and and how it was like really cool to see this like really goofy vampire mockumentary that's like so funny and just like so silly made by these indigenous maori filmmakers but then there's also like you know taika made boy which is about his upbringing uh in his like maori community i mean and you can speak to this as a filmmaker too jess of um feeling this pressure of like do i make movies that i want to make that are fun and silly if that if those are the movies i want to make or do i you know it's like this kind of ongoing dilemma oh for sure and it's i i mean like taika also directed one of the thor films i think right

yes you know one of those thor films tiny little uh marvel mcu movies that no one's ever heard of right um and it's it's interesting because I think that like yeah I I feel so acutely where Jeff is coming from especially because you know we all kind of in terms of like filmmaking here in Canada we all kind of have to navigate the same systems uh the same funders so you know we're fortunate in the sense that like we do have public funding for the arts you know i wouldn't trade that for anything but that also means that and and you know this is changing a little bit now but you know i've been doing this for like a decade close on and uh you know a lot of the funders are not like bipoc people they're not queer people they're not you know a lot of the funders are not like BIPOC people they're not queer people they're not you

know a lot of the funders are still like you know a very specific type of bureaucrat so when you're talking about like yeah it can feel sometimes like you're you're just ticking boxes of sort of like okay I want to make my film but I want to make it this way and it's like you know a funder is not necessarily going to be like well you know you're an indigenous filmmaker and you just want to make like a zombie movie like I don't know you know like so it's it's complicated some of the way that we have to navigate that um I also make work and and want to continue to make work that is also in that genre sort of space um yeah it yeah it can be really it can be really difficult at times and there is all this kind of like

uh pressure sometimes to yeah like to to not show certain things because like it always comes back to the reality of representation because you know this is like blood quantum we keep talking about blood quantum people are just gonna have to watch blood quantum. We keep talking about blood quantum. People are just going to have to watch blood quantum. We just have to do blood quantum for Halloween next year. Absolutely. I will come back if you want me to. No, please. Yes.

I waited like four years for that film. Anyway, that's another story for another day. But when you're talking about Rhymes for Ingalls, it's such a singular film. You know, it's a coming of age story. It's a heist movie. It's a story of revenge. And it's taking place a singular film you know it's a coming-of-age story it's a heist movie it's a story of revenge and it's it's taking place in this you know it's a historical piece as well like it's such a particular thing that like when the pressure is on you it's like you are the one

that we are giving our small amounts of canadian money to to make this film it's like not only are you just like the only like at that point in time, you know, like one of the most high profile, like Mi'kmaq filmmakers, one of only a handful of indigenous filmmakers. It's also like, you know, you've been awarded this like highly sought after like money, you know? So yeah. So there are all these like weird pressures sometimes and and I just finished making a film with the NFB about queerness and migma culture like a short personal documentary and that process was really interesting because it's the first time I'd worked with the NFB is the National Film Board here in Canada sorry I feel like I'm using all

this jargon it's like I was like guessing around I was like yeah I was like is it National Film Business Board got it National Film Business here it's like it sounds so vague um so the National Film Board is sort of is like a Canadian institution that uh funds and supports film and new media production in Canada um so it was my first time working with such a big funder that has like such a not just a storied history but also you know they won oscars like it's a big deal and it was a very interesting process because i definitely found myself at times like getting feedback that i was like well that's not how i want to do things you know and i was was fortunate to work with a production team that had worked with other Indigenous filmmakers before and was very understanding. But like, there was also a lot of times where I had to like, be like, no,

that's not how protocol works. Like, that's not how, you know, when I was going into communities and like spending time with other queer Mi'kmaq folks, I had to be like, well, I have to let them know, like within this time delay, because I like like I can't just leave it till day of like because there's protocols you know there's there's things that you have to do to be polite there's things that you have to prepare you know if I'm going to go talk to an elder there's a certain amount of things that I have to do before I go talk to that elder like just out of respect right sure it's like going to visit a foreign country you know like there's just things that you have to do and there's still a big lag even like

understanding those things sometimes so yeah sigh you know it's like you you sometimes like as an indigenous filmmaker you can feel like you're battling against like so many different like things that you might have to compromise on you know like okay you're battling against like so many different like things that you might have to compromise on you know like okay not everybody's gonna like that I'm gonna show this in this way at the same time am I working with a funder who understands my nation's culture you know am I just being tokenized am I like wasting this like tiny little bit of money but it's the only money we have, you know? Right.

So there's all these different things that kind of play into that. But, you know, we're starting to talk a lot more about narrative sovereignty. Even just the idea that it should be Indigenous filmmakers making Indigenous films is very new, which it shouldn't be, but is a very new idea in Canada and the United States. So I'm hoping with that, that there'll just be more opportunities, you know, and if there are more opportunities, and there can be more people making films, therefore, you know, the one Native person making a film doesn't have to make a film that represents all Native people, you know, they can just make the one Native film that they want to make. And then me over here, I can make

the Native film that I want to make, you know, like, and they don't have to be the same thing. And it doesn't have to fit into sort of like this very specific expectation, you know. Right. And they can be all different kinds of stories and they can span all different genres. And it's almost just like, well, I'm wondering if like Jeff Barnaby is like, this is my one chance to make a film. I have to just like pack in every genre that I can. It's not as though the movie is like feels muddled or anything like that. But it's like we need to get to a place where. There just should never be that much pressure on a single filmmaker.

Yeah. Like it just it doesn't make sense and i'm glad that he spoke to that issue and and also just said like there are indigenous filmmakers that didn't like the movie i made and i disagree with them and it is what it is it is what it is yeah yeah and there shouldn't have been that much pressure on his movie to represent everybody but like like you were saying, just that there's not katherine bigelow you know often people are like oh well she's so exemplary as like a as a female filmmaker because she's making like action films you know and it should be fine for a woman to make an action film it should be fine for an african-american filmmaker to make like an experimental video work it should be fine for

an indigenous filmmaker to make a alien movie you know. It should be fine for an indigenous filmmaker. To make a alien movie. You know like. It should be fine. Because when a cis het. Like a white straight. You know filmmaker. Wants to go and. Make a film about.

I don't know let's just pick. Like a female coming of age story. Nobody's like well. Are you sure? Are you sure that you can speak to that? You're like, nobody, nobody scrutinizes. And I know that like, I know we pick on white straight men an awful lot, and they're awful fragile. But it's true, you know, like I, I've had conversations with like filmmaking friends, you know, people that I absolutely adore,

you know, who are male filmmakers, and nobody questions them about like why they want to make a film that they want to make they're like oh i just want to tell this story it's like well are you the person to do it though yeah i'm like well you know i want to make like a a film where it's like two dudes and they travel through time people are like are you sure though are they going to be native dudes and you're like you can't win you can't win it's infuriate yeah it's if there was a i mean there's a just a news item from this past week where there was that conversation where lulu wang was uh critical of ron howard because ron howard like, I want to make a film about Chinese pianist Lang Lang

and he's Ron Howard so he can just do that. He can just do that. He can just do anything he fucking wants and Lulu Wang basically made the argument and Jess, that's my first time coming up hearing that term narrative sovereignty, but I love it

because that's essentially the argument she's making of like well why the fuck does ron howard get to do this and i think that you know not even picking on ron howard specifically but that is such a trend but it's like well no one has really been allowed like no one has been allowed to ask those questions until so recently that like yeah however you feel about ron howard what the fuck entitles him to make a movie about something like it's just yeah and and that should just be a basic question as opposed to it oftentimes it gets construed as like an attack and like like brought back to her for like speaking out about that because i think she's

brilliant but like like it's also ron howard like i feel like he has so much cultural cachet that within even very recent memory this would be a piece that wouldn't even like it would be a non-issue like nobody would run this piece because it's like well who are you you know like yeah you know just like fund the movie don't direct it like if you can help get it made by a chinese filmmaker do that don't direct it like you don't and then i mean oh gosh i mean your your example jess uh i feel like you perhaps were referring to eighth grade which is a movie that i love and i hate it pisses me off that i love it so much because I'm like Bo Burnham what do you know and it turned out well but I'm just like damn it that wasn't your story to tell and how did

you get it so right well I mean I love that movie too but I think even just like going off this conversation we're having that movie was held up so quickly as a classic of the genre in a way that may not have been true for for someone that would have you know an actual familiarity of of that character's experience where it's just like well you know Bo Burnham love him and again it's like framing it as not an attack but just a valid question of like exactly why does this work get elevated to instant classic of a female coming of age story and so many women can't even get their fucking movie made you know like it's just no absolutely and and like i wasn't thinking of a specific i didn't have a specific film in mind but i feel like there's so many examples right you know and it

drives me up the wall because i see so much talent and I and I work, you know, like I said, I work a lot with with teens, especially like teens who are interested in art and are interested in filmmaking and are interested in animation. And truly, there is so much talent out there and there is so much brilliance out there, you know, like especially with like how accessible technology is now. i didn't learn how to use photoshop until i was in university and like i will be talking to like a 13 year old that's like oh yeah look at this like cool thing i made in photoshop the other day and i'm like all right you know like my cousin uh my my nephew my my cousin's son is uh 13 and he's already like

making little animated films i'm like that's that's amazing you know like i want to see more of that not less of it and i feel like we're fed this this idea of scarcity this idea of like it has to be you know like these like select few people who get to have the keys to the kingdom and it's just not it's just not true and and like and so any shift away from that that we can have, I think, is a positive thing. I mean, it's unfortunate, but, you know, we're talking so much about, like, Jeff's work, you know, and, like, seeing his films and things like that. And I feel like, as brilliant as this film is in so many ways, more people have probably seen Pocahontas. More people have probably seen Dances with Wolves. More people have probably seen dances with wolves more people have probably seen dead man you know these films that like are super dubious and do a lot of damage in terms of like

their representation of indigenous people and yet when i'm like oh hey you want to talk indigenous cinema people are sort of like uh i don't know what that is yeah or they might know they might know taika but that's like it you know right um which is better than nothing but it's not enough sure it's certainly not enough well that i mean there should be more indigenous filmmakers who are household names period period absolutely according to and i don't know exactly how accurate this number is but according to box office mojo.com ever heard of it uh this i do consult it a lot mojo just makes me think of austin powers i know i'm just like come on i'm just thinking bombshell and that makes me want to die oh gosh but um this movie earned at the box office one thousand five hundred dollars and like five

hundred twenty four dollars or something like that basically fifteen hundred dollars um because of its very limited distribution and exhibition so yeah i mean i think that's why a lot of people haven't seen this movie a lot of people haven't heard of this movie. Admittedly, we were not familiar with it until quite recently, Jamie and I. So it's just a matter of their, and I don't even know exactly how to fix this, of like getting the word out there. I mean, hopefully this episode of this podcast encourages people to watch this movie. It's accessible i watched it on it's available on hoopla and like um canopy which is free if you have a library card you can rent it anywhere if you want

to take some money back yes yeah i rented it on youtube like it was it's easily accessible you know and and increasingly easily accessible i own a copy of this film because that's the only way that i could like keep watching it after i saw it you know in a show and festival um but yeah people can see this movie it's it's i mean so i would say that we have to do this like we have to go old school on this so this is the plan that i've come up with in the last like five seconds i don't know why it's particularly old school except for um so everybody listening to the podcast you have to watch the movie and you have to tell five friends about the movie or you'll be haunted by an ancient

indian burial ground that's how we bring it around invoke the burial ground it's a good old it's a pyramid scheme for good yeah exactly right oh my gosh remember those emails though write back in 24 hours and send it to five friends or else you'll be killed yeah i feel like aunties always send those along that were the number one perpetrator of the year about and it was like i'm your niece why are you sending me this email saying i'm gonna be murdered like i don't know 25 people i'm seven i'm tough it's like i think sometimes like it's just like yeah i i sort of miss like stuff like that sometimes because it's weird like it's sort of like it's paranormal in a weird way.

But yeah, Auntie's being like, you got to pass this one on and all your wishes will come true. You're like, right. Your crush will fall in love with you if you send this. But if you don't, you'll die. You'll be murdered tonight. You're like, okay, Auntie Debbie. Isn't that what The Purge is about though oh is i still have not seen any of the purge movies it is it's if that email were a movie that's what the movie is

i don't i've never seen the purge but like i have a feeling that it's like they didn't respond to the email and now it's like well now it's purge time the email comes to life i actually would really enjoy watching that movie let's write it yeah an evil chain email comes to life and like almost in like a like final destination kind of way yeah it's like the internet's the villain unseen and then and then it's like there's all these moments that it's like society and you're like you could also you could also shoot it the way that like unfriended or like searching is shot where it's just like all on a computer screen wow this is a this is a billion dollar idea right here perfect and you don't you like you'd spend like what 25 to make it yeah it's gotta be so cheap

uh let's talk about the ayla test oh yes yes really quickly um and i wanted to talk too about ayla being a two-spirit character but we can do that after oh yeah absolutely um so the ayla test uh we obviously talked with the uh of the AILA test, but the AILA test, just as a reminder to all of our listeners, we discussed it on the Frozen 2 episode, but the AILA test was inspired by the Bechdel test, and Ali wrote it and named it after AILA from Rhymes for Young Ghouls. The AILA test asks three questions about a film's character.

Is she an indigenous or aboriginal woman who is a main character she cannot fall in love with a white man and third does not end up raped or murdered at any point in the story so obviously this movie passes the AILA test or wouldn't be called that but I wanted to just, for people who are looking for more movies that pass the Ayla test, I have a list from the Ayla test Tumblr that names off some movies where there are characters that pass this test.

So really quick. Obviously, Ayla from Rhymes for Young Ghouls. Let's see, Annie Shorty from edge of america seven from apocalypto cheeto the fragile from mad max fury road eva benitez from freedom writers wilma man killer from the cherokee word for water moat from avatar question mark Susie Song from Smoke Signals Jashon Winters from Songs My Brother Taught Me it's a criminally short list but if you're looking for

other movies to pass the AILA test at least in regards to one character those are some options. Was Moana on the list? Oh that's because there's a separate category for animation because Lilo and nani from lilo and stitch also pass that so moana lilo not nani katara from avatar the last airbender

cora from the legend of cora uh elisa maza from gargoyles never watched gargoyles nita from brother bear 2 um yeah sorry there was a separate animation category but definitely milana excellent um i was gonna say too uh if people should definitely all watch those movies and tell five friends to watch those movies yes or you'll be haunted uh because this is how we change the world also looking at um there's also a lot of characters that appear in comics. There's a really fabulous, mostly Indigenous press here in Canada called High Water Comics. And they release a lot of comics that are either featuring Indigenous characters or Indigenous focused. And they're all really awesome. The one series I really like, it's following this girl named Echo.

And it's called The Pemmican Wars and uh it's a series I think there's maybe about five books in it now but they're really fantastic and I always recommend them to my students because Echo is like a a very similar character to Ayla you know sort of like a teen girl she's growing up in an urban setting in Winnipeg and it's just they're just fantastic they're very immersive um there's also some video games too that uh feature indigenous characters and storylines that pass the AILA test um so there is media out there but you're right it is like criminally small and and a lot of these are from white directors and creators as well but in in any case um if you want to continue following we love ali nadi and you can

follow all the updates on media that passes the ala test because they they do also discuss graphic novels and comics and video games and tv and books even all of all of which are things we've never heard of in our lives so books we Books! We, not big readers. Everyone's in a while, a listener's going to be like, would you read a book? And we were like, we would not read a book. Sometimes I get really self-conscious. I'm like, oh no, I bet listeners of the Bechtel cast

actually think we never read books. And I do want everyone to know that that is not true. Famously anti-book. We don't cover books we don't have the time to read books lord of the rings it literally is just because of the lord of the rings episode where they're like you didn't read five trillion pages you're like i simply didn't i just i couldn't i was listening i'm listening to nicole byer and lauren lapkus's newcomers right now and they're talking about lord of the rings and they're talking about The Hobbit and I read that book and I still like I read that book I watched

those movies and like listening to Lauren and Nicole talk about it I feel like I'm like on the same page as them I'm like yeah who are all these people like what's that guy's name what's he doing here um also just the fact that like nicole habitually calls bilbo uh diplo is very good it's very choice i haven't started listening to the lord of the rings office i listened to all the star wars episodes and it's a great podcast yeah um but you can for all media the ayla test like the beckville test can be applied to any kind of narrative media. And you can find the full list and all the updates at the dash AILA dash test dot tumblr dot com. And try and follow Ellie on Twitter. She's at Ellie Naughty.

N-A-H-D-E-E is how you spell her last name. So listen to the Frozen 2 episode. You know what to do and then tell five people and then tell five people is there anything else anyone wants to talk about regarding i um i mean i still have pages and pages of terrible sad statistics uh but we don't have to get into those i did want to just add that that one of the things that I've come to appreciate about Ayla is that I think that whether it's intentional or not, I think she can be read as a queer character.

And a lot of that has to do with some interpretations of two spirit, which is a pan indigenous term that was adopted in the early nineties to describe LGBTQ plus Indigenous folks. One of the interpretations of Two-Spirit is coming out of sort of like an Ojibwe perspective, is that like you have male and female energy and they're balanced. Another interpretation of it coming more sort of from like Eastern woodlands or like more sort of like migma and hodanishani traditions is that you walk between worlds and that's what it means to be two-spirit and so you see that a lot in this film where ayla sort of uh doesn't have like

stricter boundaries in terms of like like the visions that she's having of her mom and you know the dreams that she's having and also uh you know she sees uh tyler at one point her brother um you know she's sort of having these these moments where you know worlds are not um yeah she's passing sort of between worlds yeah she's also shape-shifting which is also a part of some of the the conversations around uh queer identity and from a traditional perspective um so she goes from having long braids to having very short hair she's wearing costumes at one point she has like that witch's face like on the back of her head yes yeah which is like also a very interesting sort of like um duality in a sense yeah so as i've grown with this movie and as i i you know

continue to watch it and continue to grow in terms of too like my my own identity as like a queer and trans indigenous person i like understand her better now as also an indigenous character that's so cool yeah yeah and it's it's like it's interesting. Like it's, it's something that like, I don't think I, I'll have to ask Jeff about, um, but I don't think it was ever intentional because it's never mentioned in anything. Right. But yeah, it sort of fits really interestingly in that way. Um, with a lot of traditional beliefs. I love growing with movies. That's the best. Yeah. There's so many things that don't hold up anymore. So it's really nice when you can like, watch something that's so cherished,

and you're like, Oh, you won't betray me. Yeah, I can still love you. Something interesting to to think about in the context of this film is the idea of unsettling um so we talk about unsettling in terms of like something that disturbs us right but we also talk about unsettling as a process of decolonizing you know you're becoming you're not a settler you're becoming unsettled and i think that that this film is such an interesting representation of that, of sort of like Jeff Barnaby's so there's this sense of sort of like this desire to disturb and kind of like upset but also that that's a path to kind of like interrupt and get some movement in in what can be sometimes a very stagnant conversation with regards to canadian history and indigenous history and uh in the country so it's like it's it's interesting that that exists in this film in that way so it's like it's it's interesting that that exists

in this film in that way and there's also a conversation to have around the idea of like revenge or reconciliation you know i think that you know indigenous people aren't a monolith there's always going to be people who you know like we were talking about earlier aren't going to like you know the type of films that jeff barnaby is making um and there's going to be you know people who do like them that don't like other Barnaby is making um and there's going to be you know people who do like them that don't like other types of films and then like there's going to be certain types of discourse that like certain indigenous people are going to really support and there's going to be other ones that they don't agree with you know but it's very interesting this

conversation is sort of about like revenge versus reconciliation because in an interesting way we can only really decide what we ourselves as individuals are going to do and because of that yeah there's so many questions that kind of exist out there about like whether that is even like meaningful you know if it's just like an individual sort of thing but i don't know i i'm a big believer in that like our individual actions are important so whether we go to the revenge side of things or the reconciliation side of things it's just that we make that choice you know ultimately in the end yeah i i think that's kind of kind of all i had to say yeah oh

i do have recommendations please yes please so if people are interested and I'll talk to you guys more about this off mic, but if people are interested in learning more about Indigenous issues, if like this episode is like catching you totally off guard and you're like, I've never heard of Indians before in my life. Well, welcome to 2020. I don't know where you've been living, but congratulations, I guess. But I would say that learning about Indigenous issues isn't as difficult as we might think. So much of our school system, you know, has been set up in a way that maintains weight supremacy. So we have to do a lot of the work ourselves. And that can be intimidating, especially if you don't know where to start. For both, you know, Caitlin and you, Jamie, like, I feel like, you know, the process of learning about residential schools this past week, even though it's important, like history to learn

about, I imagine it was also very, very taxing, because it is very taxing, because it should be. It's genocide. Yeah, you know, it's not a fun thing to learn about. It's not a fun thing to discuss, but it's a necessary thing for us to learn about because we have to stop it. It's actively still happening. And we have to, you know, make that decision, that personal decision, whether we are are going to be with it or against it, in a sense. So with all that in mind, there are a ton of resources out there that exist for folks who are interested in learning, uh, that are really easy to access free even, you know, um, and I will, uh, you know, put together some of those, um, maybe we can time it so that like, we'll put, like put a bunch together for like the release of this episode. Yeah. Yeah. We can release a

resource guide, the whole thing. For sure. Cause there's like, there's so much stuff out there, even like really little things. Like, uh, there's so much stuff out there, even really little things. There's an app that you can download for free called nativeland.ca. It's a world map. And you essentially use it like Google Maps. You look up different locations, and it tells you whose traditional territory you're living on. And just even little gestures like that are really, really important because there needs to be that recognition. There needs to be that starting point.

You know, I think that a lot of us feel very attached to the places that we grew up in different ways. You know, whether we spent physically long periods of time there or whether it's a sentimental sort of attachment. And just being able to recognize that it's like, OK, that's Mi'kmaq territory or that's Lena Lenape territory, or that's Osage territory, that's Sioux territory, then even just understanding that all of a sudden can be such an opening of a door. Because then it's like, oh, when you hear about protests happening at Standing Rock, it's not like, oh, those are nameless, faceless, indigenous people protesting, we're not sure what. It's like oh i

get it those those are like dakota and and lakota sioux i you know i grew up on sioux territory like all of a sudden you have a much more personal tie to that there's also tons and tons and tons of indigenous activists out there people like uh pam palmetto who are doing great work and all their stuff is like on YouTube, and they're active on social media. So there's like, so there is hope, there is hope, you can learn about these things. It might be uncomfortable, as any kind of unlearning, unsettling process is. But I would really encourage people to do that work. Because, you know, we've seen with this past year, we cannot continue to live as black, indigenous and people of color.

Like we carry this tremendous weight all the time of this violence of the system. You know, even though I'm not currently in Nova Scotia, I am connected to the Mi'kmaq in Nova Scotia right now who are fighting for their treaty rights. You know, I am as an indigenous person, I am connected to the struggles of other Indigenous people. I'm connected to the struggles of Black people because it's all part of the same system, you know? And that's why you care and that's why you have to be mobilized and that's why you have to educate yourself and that's why you have to speak out and try and do better, you know? My grandmother, who was Mi'kman is like was like my anchor for my migmaness for a really long time passed away a couple of years ago and her dying words were

i love you all and love is such a important value within migman culture that like i love you all is not just talking about i love you all as in like the people who are physically in the room there but like love is something that influences all of our actions you know we have a a lot of intention and a lot of thought that goes towards like how we are in the world in terms of like how we relate to everything you know and so yeah like starting to educate yourself is like starting to take responsibility as like part of that interconnectedness yes yes it's like a big change no no no i i think as a lot of us who are you know on a pretty steep learning curve honestly because they're i mean like we were saying there's just so much of this I mean this is just things I didn't learn in school I feel like you hit the same three points

in at least American public schools and that's kind of it and it's like the information is accessible it's just making the commitment to do it like it that is all it is yeah and and i was going to say there's this um this fantastic film that i just got to see it at the toronto international film festival but will hopefully get wide release soon and everybody can check it out it's a documentary based on thomas king's book the inconvenient indian which everybody should read but But there's this fabulous line in the film at the end that is, I think, sort of very emblematic kind of about this whole conversation, you know, and it's essentially, once you know this story, you can't unknow it. You just have to live with the fact that you know it now. So now that you know about residential schools you can't say oh well i didn't know you know and and therefore it was allowed to go on there are

still residential schools open in the united states by the way i don't know if you guys found that in your research but i did yeah so sorry yeah so it's like well now that you know you know and go forward with that and you can do do it. I believe in you. Thanks, Jess. I didn't write this quote down from a YouTube video. I love watching YouTube. I love going to boxofficemojo.com. Classic Caitlin. Yeah. Senator Murray Sinclair said, and again, I'm going to paraphrase this, but he was talking about how people have said to him regarding oppression in the residential school system, saying like, you know what, that was in the past. Why can't you just forget it?

And his response is always, why can't you remember? No, and that's just it. And like I said, you know, earlier in our conversation, like, these things are still impacting us today. I still have friends who, you know, grew up in the foster care system. I still have friends whose parents were in residential school. I, you know, this is an ancient history. And that's the most fundamental thing is that, you know, so often we portray Indigenous people as being relics and being like of the past and even when i was growing up i was like i feel like the most like contact i had with indigenous culture was like a racist diorama at like a history museum you know and we have to remind

ourselves that like indigenous people still exist and colonialism still exists and ignoring it is what we have been doing and that has not been effective so yeah so it it is like it is something that like i think people especially here in canada are very are starting to become a lot more aware of but it's it feels sometimes like such a slow process you know that like i wish everybody could get a copy of tom king's inconvenient indian and a copy of like uh rhymes for young ghouls and it's like this is your homework like citizen you know like this is what you have to do this weekend well to speak to that and what our podcast is about is that like you know there's so much erasure of indigenous people in media there's so much just ignoring the existence of them that because mass media is how

so many people especially today learn things and people learn things by going to the movies and seeing a movie about a thing that again just speaks to why it's so important for there needing to be space made for indigenous filmmakers to tell their stories. And for those films. And serious money invested in as well. Yes. Because it's important that we each as individuals say we are going to seek this out. But the fact that you have to seek it out speaks to there not being enough money behind it either because it's like i don't need

to seek out you know like shit i don't even want to see like i didn't you know there's constantly money thrown in our faces of things we have no interest in where you know to find rhymes for young ghouls you have to look for it um yeah and you have to you know it has to be a word of mouth situation and there needs to be yeah an increased investment uh and and not just like these uh it makes me so mad yeah no it's really true um is there anything left to discuss are we at the test portion of the show the test well we know it certainly passes the ayla test uh because it's um although ayla uh is almost uh raped at the very end of the movie and i i guess i i had this in my notes where you could i mean she's technically rescued in that moment but it doesn't bother me we know her so well we

have seen her overcome and plant i mean i was totally fine with it. That didn't even occur to me as a rescue almost. Like, it didn't... I mean, I think technically, but it's so badass and so cool. And I don't know. So we know it passes the Aayla test, for sure. I was going to say, in terms of that rescue scene at the end, because I had the same thought, and I think that the reason that it's Jujic that shoots Popper

is because he is like an actual like a student at the school and we've seen like popper talking in like the boys dormitory about like you know you do this and you'll get beat and you do this and you'll get beat so i think that it had to be jujitsu in a way like pulling the trigger at the end as like a symbolic thing like and so i don't necessarily see it as a rescue either i think you're both right on that and it can and that kind of completes his small but significant arc in this story too i love juji he's just stand i gotta find out what that kid's doing i know what is he up to does he have his own franchise yet what's going on with him and then he gets the closing line. Anything he does passes the Bechdel test for me. But I believe, Caitlin, I had this movie passing the Bechdel test.

Yes. Between, there's a scene at the end where Ayla and her, she's watching sort of like her own flashback from afar toward the end of the movie where she and her mom, Anna, are painting something by firelight. And they're kind of discussing what they're painting and why. And just weeping. And then it also passes between Ayla in series, I think, when she relays the story about the wolf. Yeah. Yeah. And that whole conversation. So, so yeah definite bechdel test passing yeah it uh and like that's another reason that like

i was so excited to talk about this film because i was like i know that it passes the bechdel test because i was watching it with that intention you know seven years ago hell yeah um so that's that's awesome um yeah and then that's uh that brings us to our nipple scale so zero to five nipples based on examining the movie from an intersectional feminist lens and um it's gonna i mean it's very high yeah i mean i feel like it could be a five nipple situation yeah i think so and i'm interested to hear i feel like i'm trolling you guys in the video and nobody can see it you're like i mean it's five nipples for me but i also feel like i'm a little bit biased because i mean i just this film has meant so much throughout the years and I love it so much and just you know have a badass Mi'kmaq female heroine fuck yeah like yeah yeah I don't really

have any like notes for like I'm not there's nothing that like rubbed me wrong or anything show me a more motivated female protagonist with more autonomy like she's running the show yeah and with higher stakes i mean this that it's wonderful and i and again that that phrase narrative sovereignty um and having this be an indigenous filmmaker writing directing editing this amazing character who yeah i i have no notes i i think the more we talk about it i i do feel like it is very squarely a coming of age film of sorts just not the tone we're used to um in that genre but it's it's such a like you said j, it's such a singular movie. And we are seeing a community that is almost never represented in movies. And on top of that, we're seeing Ayla, who is not just dealing with systemic

oppression, in as it pertains to being indigenous, she's also experiencing sexism within her own community and navigating that and just navigating all this stuff. And she, you know, is not a Mary Sue character. She makes mistakes. She just I just yeah, I feel it's it's five nips for me. Mm hmm. The plan where they're like, you know what, we're gonna make shit shower down upon this guy and then try to steal the money. Like their plan wasn't maybe like. Danny Ocean could never. Never. He could never.

But I'm also like, it's great. And the catharsis of it is great. But I'm just like, like he's right there. He knows that you're there. Maybe like steal the money first. And then like, you know, just like, but it's like teenage. It's like there. He knows that you're there. Maybe like steal the money first. And then like,

you know, just like, but it's like teenage, it's like teenagers. Yeah. Of course they're going to come up with a bit of a hair brain plan and it works. So yeah. And it's so rewarding too,

because the shit, like at one point when they're putting the shit, like in the van, like getting ready to go to the school, they're like, yeah, everybody contributed. And I can just like, getting ready to go to the school, they're like, yeah, everybody contributed. And I can just, like,

I can just picture, like, everybody just being like, oh, you need some shit? We got that. Yeah. And it's just, like, the fact that it's, like, a community effort to, like, shit on this OP. They crowdsourced this shit.

Yeah, I love it. And that sequence, we didn't talk about it too much but that sequence is it's just like another way this movie is so cool where there's i mean understandably so there's so many very very emotionally heavy scenes and plot lines in this movie and then for this i mean it fits very well inside of what the movie is, but it's also this moment of like, you're in Ocean's Eleven for a second, but it fits very clearly inside this world and it's like fun and they win and it's exciting.

And it's just, that sequence is so cool. Agreed. I mean, and even just like, we talked about the little bit of criticism or like some pushback that Jeff Barnaby received like from his own community. Like, are you really going to like show these stereotypes? Which again, like I don't I this is an exploration of what like systemic racism and oppression does to an indigenous community, does to families and does to individuals. And like that's this is just an authentic story about this young

woman this teenage girl and it's just an incredibly crafted and told story what more could you ask for i'm so glad you like it i'm so glad you're like because i think there's also like this nervousness on my part of like i'm like oh no what if they don't like it I'm gonna have to sit on this call and like explain like why it's a brilliant film but I'm so glad you guys liked it and thank you so much for this opportunity and for holding this space for

indigenous film and for me and for Ayla and yeah thank you so much thank you for being here and providing all your insights information everything thank you so much we're extremely grateful

and just like stoked that you're on the show yeah thank you and do come back for Blood Quantum or any movie that you want to talk about anytime I will come back to read for Jacob Black I will come back to talk about Native stuff I'll come want to talk about or yeah anything anytime um i will come back to read for jacob black i will come back to talk about native stuff i'll come back to talk about non-native stuff i can talk about trans stuff too i can talk about horror genre stuff i i love it all so amazing i

can talk about films made on the east coast of canada that are exclusively about fishing and or cancer okay i can talk about all of it um finally we've our listeners have been like but what about movies in the east coast of canada that are about fishing or maybe cancer it's i say that as a joke but i was a programmer for the atlantic film festival for a couple of years and that is a genre all into itself in like the atlantic region you know that is so cool i love it well jess thank you again so much for being here yes this is so fun where can people follow you online check out your stuff anything else you want to plug people can people should follow me on instagram at underscore rad underscore babe underscore um or you just search jess merwin um

that's sort of the aggregate of like everything gets put i don't have twitter anymore because people are too mean and so that's just that's really the only social media i do you know good so people should just check it out there uh i have a website jessmerwin.com but really just check out my Instagram. I post everything on there anyway. Plus you get to see my cat. Yes. Kremlin, an icon. So your Instagram account

passes the Caitlyn test. And that's really the goal at the end of the day, you know. Yeah. You know what we're all trying to really do. I feel like for 2020, that's about it it you know just like can't can't anymore i think i'm more i follow more cat accounts than uh human accounts

i was like caitlin i feel like your your account pat will you post cats whenever your cat's sitting yes i have all my instagram stories are always about cats. My cat is having a really complicated day today. I was just trying to figure him out. He wants another cat friend, I think, because there's a lot of alley cats in our neighborhood. And my neighbor feeds them. It's like a whole ecosystem. But Flea will just sit at the door in the mornings and just meow until a cat comes to talk to him. And I was like, he loves other cats.

He wants a cat friend. Jamie, get another cat. Get another cat, Jamie. I know. Sunny ignores him, and Flea's always trying to play with him. And Sunny's like, ugh. The whole thing. I think you should definitely get another cat.

I've been thinking the same thing, too, though, because I travel a lot for work. And so Kremlin stays at home a lot of the time so some cats are loners but it's but oh see cat crave other cat company i was like it would be it would be cruel because i think that they live in packs right like cats in the wild tend to live in packs so i think i mean one cat two cat there's not that much difference just right you know i think it really only changes when you sort of get up around like five six seven cats then it's like whoa then you have you might have a problem right then it's like who at that point you very firmly know who saved who and it was not jesus but like four cats or less that's reasonable yeah oh yeah four cats is

nothing although edward gory the children's author oh i love it yes oh i adore him i want to be him when i grow up because he just walked around in fur coats and like rings and he had always had five cats and he always had five cats because he said you have to have an uneven number of cats because otherwise they get too organized and you can't have more than five cats because it just gets out of hand so i think that's advice to live by i love him so i have i have edward gory cat wine glasses it's a whole thing i gotta get a second cat i love it so much oh gosh well i guess you can follow us on social media sorry we just started talking about cats follow me at caitlin durante on instagram and check out all my saved uh stories because they're all cats doing funny things set

to music that's what i want to plug today um and also you can follow the bechtel cast on twitter and instagram at bechtel cast we've got our patreon aka matreon which is at patreon.com slash bechtel cast and that is five dollars a month and that gives you two bonus episodes every month as well as access to the entire back catalog and it's november so after many years of avoiding it we're doing mary kate and ashley month on the matriarch amazing amazing my sister loved those movies growing up uh i'm like i think i love none of them but and yet i've seen all of them oh that's very much where I find myself as well. Where you're just like, how do I know the song, the intro song to like Mary-Kate and Ashley Mysteries?

Right. And then you're like, wait, I have no attachment to this. And yet it's so osmosis-ed on to you that you can't avoid it. So we're doing it. We're doing it. And yeah, our tpublic.com slash the Bechdelcast is where you can get all of our merch. And be kind to each other.

Get out there. Do some mutual aid. Educate yourselves. We will be releasing resources at the same time as this episode. And do the damn work. And do it with five people. Yes. Or you'll die.

Or you'll die. Or you will die. Something to keep in mind. Bye-bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017, was assassinated.

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Hey, everybody. This is Matt Rogers. And Bowen Yang. We've got some exciting news for you. You know we're always bringing you the best guests, right?

Well, this week, we're taking it to the next level. The one, the only, Catherine Hahn is joining us on Las Culturistas. That's right, the queen of comedy herself. Get ready for a conversation that's as hilarious as it is insightful. Tune in for all the laughs, the stories, and of course, the culture. Don't miss Catherine Hahn on Las Culturistas. Listen to Las Culturistas on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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