Etlinisigu'niet (Bleed Down)

Jeff Barnaby’s Etlinisigu’niet (Bleed Down) destroys any remaining shreds of the mythology of a fair and just Canada. His message is clear: we are still here. Attempts to “get rid of the Indian problem” have failed. The future is coming. A howl of pain rips across the land in Etlinisigu’niet as traditional life gives way to Indigenous peoples being starved to ensure compliance with government orders. Children forced from their families and penned into the horrors of residential school. Men, women and children examined like livestock in crowded tuberculosis clinics, where policies that could have prevented thousands of deaths were willfully suppressed, resulting in the highest death tolls from the disease ever reported anywhere in the world. And the land and water continue to be poisoned for industry and profit at the cost of Indigenous lives. Tanya Tagaq’s “Tulugak” carries the voice of the land through Barnaby’s poem of rage. Etlinisigu’niet (Bleed Down) is part of Souvenir, a four-film series addressing Indigenous identity and representation by reworking material in the NFB’s archives.