Just weeks before filming was to begin, the Canadian government denied permission for Hollywood to shoot the movie Hard Powder in Rocky Mountain national parks in Banff, ATLA., the Lake Louise town site and ski hill, and the Columbia Icefields.
Parks Canada, the federal agency responsible for issuing permits, said they had concerns about the film’s plot.
Here’s the story. The Hollywood revenge-drama Hard Powder is about a bad-drug-gang-leader called ‘The Viking’ whose drugs kill the young son of Nels, a good-snow-plow-driving man.
The Viking is feared but his money is loved. Nels is loved by the townsfolk who stay silent. It’s an old formula—Nels takes justice in his own hands to right the wrong.
Played by Liam Neeson, Nels replaces Dirty Harry’s magnum .44 with a snow plow.
According to Hollywood journal Variety Nels’ desire for vengeance sparks a “turf war” in the snow. He’s after the Viking, described by Variety as a vegan who drives a black Tesla “a fastidious gangster who wears Tom Ford suits” and murders people. Variety reports that Hard Powder ends in a “final showdown that leaves almost no one unscathed.”
Variety says showbiz heavyweight StudioCanal financed Hard Powder for worldwide release in Britain, Germany, France, Australia, New Zealand, and North America. Studiocanal was left scratching its showbiz head over Park Canada’s refusal. Parks Canada listed eight deficiencies that the film’s producers say were addressed by the film-company.
Parks Canada finally admitted that the film’s plot was the major concern. The Viking is a drug-lord located on an Indian Reserve played by Order of Canada recipient Tom Jackson.
Parks Canada is located practically down the hallway from the Department of Indian Affairs (DIA) in Hull, Quebec where everyone has ‘reconciliation’ on their lips these days. Parks Canada seems to have a censorship mandate from DIA to sanitize Indian Reserve life to the outside world. The unsaid message of truth and reconciliation: “keep the truth about reserve life quiet.”
In other words, lie.
In February Six Nations’ social service workers were presented with the truth about the threat of fentanyl in the territory. Health Services and New Directions told the truth. A gathering of mostly women heard that fentanyl’s deadly danger could now be added to the cocaine and heroin threat at Six Nations.
They also watched “Fentanyl: the drug deadlier than heroin”, a documentary filmed in Alberta. The film showed the presence of fentanyl in the Blackfoot territory at Standoff, ALTA. The film shows how policing focuses on users and the small-time operators selling the drugs. The deadly drug industry is widespread.
Women across in many Rotinohnsyonni territories agree that drugs are the main threat to our society. In meetings on both sides of the medicine line in Canada and the U.S., our women cite prescription drugs, date-rape drugs, and the market for marijuana remain the source of our troubles. Drugs like cocaine, heroin, and now fentanyl are destroying our future—the women say. Crime is rooted in the need to buy drugs.
Ironically, our women already knew the reality portrayed in Hard Powder. Faced with the grim-reality that our own people may be exploiting the drug trade there is an uneasy silence about what to do. Surely someone must be fighting the drug war.
Drug related deaths and crime statistics show the effects of the drug trade. Yet, Indian Reserves have an immunity from prosecution and the suppliers go unpunished. It’s the best kept secret that is not really a secret.
How did our people deal with criminal behaviour in the past? How did we maintain order and stability in our territories? Who kept the peace.
In the last 100-years the older tradition for traditional policing was replaced with provincial police and the RCMP. Stories told by old timers talk about a process called “grabbing”. The older word for policing was shakotiyenas, which means “they grab them”.
“Once in a while you’d see a man running naked through the field,” recalls Mohawk Worker, the late-Sylvanus General. “We knew that man was grabbed.”
According to elders the men would hear stories from the women about men who were creating hardships. These stories included men who committed physically abusive and violent acts against women and children. The anguish was heard.
The response was clear. The shakotiyenas would grab the offender. The man would be blindfolded and taken by horseback or car to a remote location. Carefully disguised, the shakotiyenas would tie the man to a tree. Using red-willow whips, the man would be flogged. He would be told about his acts.
“You have a lot to think about if you make it home,” the man would be told by the shakotiyenas. The man would be abandoned but still tied and blindfolded. “That’s why you’d see him running home naked.”
The shakotiyenas were led by men identified in the Great Law (Kayeneresherakowa) as Tehatirontenanohnha (They Watch The Log). The shakotiyenas act was performed by men who were also called Oyenkwe’ohntohn (Tobacco Hanging). These warriors were replaced in the 1900s by the RCMP and provincial police.
The drama Hard Powder poses an older conception of Indigenous justice. Deemed negatively as “vigilante justice”, Nels no doubt uses his snow plow to push The Viking in his black Tesla over the cliff. Parks Canada didn’t want it to be one of their cliffs but also hid the reality faced in many Indigenous territories.
The Government of Canada can kid its citizens that everything is turning to sunshine and roses in many of our territories. But we know. We live with The Vikings of the Indigenous world every day.
Listen to the women not Parks Canada.
Thohahoken Michael Doxtater is an educator from Six Nations.
