Film Review

Keepers of The Fire

National Film Board

The lady who brought you Women in The Shadow (Best Documentary, 1992), producer Christine Welsh, has returned, now offering viewers a glimpse of the role of women as warriors. It's a trail many have blazed, but few are noted for.

When it comes to warfare, society generally tends to think of the male. Not so, and this film makes the point in a not-so-subtle fashion as it projects the real-life struggles of valiant women who are willing to lay their hearts and their lives on the line for the sake of their families and their lands.

This is a film all should see. More importantly, it's a film the public will learn from, and if any one lesson is to be learned, it lies in the fact that women do play a vital role in the scheme of things.

Here is a film, that shows that this is not just a man's world, it is everybody's. It is also everybody's responsibility -- women included.

The opening is the heated situation of Oka in that sizzling hot summer of 1990. And, while "the great staredown" between two men from opposing sides made world history, the unsung heroes were the women who were right up there on the front lines being pelted with canisters of tear gas.

Yes, the fights of the Indian nations are alive and well in the women as well as the men. From Oka, the film sends on cross-country to the Haida road blockades in B.C., where 72 protesters were imprisoned. Through it all, the women remained strong, in the forefront, at war.

There is some great film footage, and a lot from behind the lines which people are not generally exposed to. The movie tends to present that other side, the one that nobody else ever seems to see. It is, nonetheless, every bit as significant. These same women, the clan mothers, install chiefs and sway what happens at the community level of

the Six Nations and West Coast matrilineal societies.

The years of legal struggle against the racist and outmoded Indian Act, an act that discriminated against women, are also revealed. So is the situation in one of Canada's longest-operating women's shelters in Toronto, where women have to overcome the physical, financial and mental abuse that has beaten them down. It is a continual, on-going struggle

for many who know there is no easy way out. That's why they are warriors.

This film speaks for itself, as do the women. It is they who man the front lines, defying what they perceive as the suppressors and oppressors.

Producer Welsh has, again, done a masterful job. If you ever wondered about the strength that women possess, you don't want to miss this film. It's definitely worth seeing.