All posts by Carolyn Potts

Teacher. Writer. Mom. Masters' Candidate, Faculty of Education, Western University. Studying Pop Culture Media as a Decolonizer of Education Policy and Practice. I also volunteer as a Girl Guide leader in my spare time.
Featured, Reality, Lifestyle & Documentary

Wild Archaeology: Innuvialuit—A Race Against Climate Change

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This week on Wild Archaeology, Jenifer and Jacob are off on their own to experience salvage archaeology, without the supervision of Dr. Rudy. On this adventure, we are travelling to the far north where climate change is creating a desperate situation for archaeologists. Shorelines are facing accelerated erosion due to rising seas and rising temperatures resulting in a loss of artifacts to the sea.

Our duo travels to the Kuukpak dig site on Richards Island, north of Inuvik, on the Beaufort Sea where the Innuvialuit people would traditionally summer while hunting for beluga whale and store the meat, returning throughout the year. We learn the island was at one time covered in a series of camps and was a thriving summer community centuries ago.

The Innuvialuit people had no written history, and this is truly an example of traditional knowledge being rooted to the land. The land, because of climate change, has been forced to reveal the knowledge it held for centuries. If archaeologists fail in their mission to gather all of the artifacts, that knowledge will be lost forever.

In the initial site tour by Dr. Max Friesen, archaeologist at the University of Toronto, Jenifer spotted an ancient snow knife exposed by erosion. Continuing along the shore, ancient beluga bones were seen exposed and came across an old dog sled runner fashioned from bone and a number of ulu blades. Dr. Friesen estimates many of these finds are up to 500 years old.

I spoke briefly with Jacob on Tuesday, and he had this to share about his experiences on the show:

“I really loved the opportunity to work on this show and I learned a great deal throughout our travels. I have a new understanding of our natural history and discovered how scientists are in fact starting to tell stories that are parallel to those First Nation and Inuit people have been telling for a long time. The show is educational, but it was also an amazing adventure that I hope we can continue in the future.”

Jacob, I really hope your adventure does continue. This show is an absolute delight and I am so happy I decided to cover it.

Artifact tally tonight? Jacob: a rare, intact Innuvialuit arrowhead and a dog sled runner made from bone. Jenifer: a bi-face end scraper. Seems like Jacob is now in the lead.

Wild Archaeology airs Tuesdays at 7:30 p.m. ET on APTN.

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Featured, Reality, Lifestyle & Documentary

Mohawk Ironworkers: Training for Steel

How does someone become an ironworker? It is not like it was decades ago; nowadays you need considerable formal training.

Episode 4 of Mohawk Ironworkers gives us the inside scoop on how to become an ironworker. Elder and retired ironworker Paul Deer—and my personal favourite in this series—shares how things were done in the past. There was nowhere to go to learn, so the skills were shared through family. Fathers taught sons and uncles taught nephews … it was in the blood. Today, you need 1,000 hours of training along with thousands of hours more as an apprentice before you can become a certified Journeyman Ironworker.

We visit a couple of schools that provide this training in Quebec. One such program is offered jointly by Kahnawa:ke and the Local 711 Ironworkers Union. The nine-month in-class program covers the schooling and gives students an opportunity to learn their craft safely in a controlled environment. Upon completion, candidates must find their own apprenticeship positions in order to gain enough hours to finally be tested and certified.

Another program is offered in Akwesasne, offering both apprentice and probationary training for ironworkers. This allows students to receive supervised on the job training in preparation for unionization.

Some of the students are showcased, with many of them coming from long lines of ironworkers. I found it interesting that physical fitness was a part of the training program. It makes absolute sense that you be physically able to manoeuvre at the heights that these men and women do but I was surprised this was a part of the actual training.

Mohawk Ironworkers airs Tuesdays at 7 p.m. ET on APTN.

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Featured, Reality, Lifestyle & Documentary

Taken: Marie Jeanne Kreiser — A Case of Intergenerational Trauma

In this episode of Taken, host, creator and director Lisa Meeches introduces us to Marie Jeanne Kreiser, a residential school system survivor.  By all accounts, Marie Jeanne was a loving mother known for her kindness. However, Marie Jeanne also struggled with alcoholism, depression and suicide attempts. While in the custodial care of the residential school, Marie Jeanne fell prey to abuses that scarred her, making her vulnerable to dangerous relationships as an adult, like so many other RSS survivors. In addition to suffering from abuse, she also became pregnant; Marie Jeanne carried her child to term and the child was forcibly taken from her and adopted by an unknown family. No one knows the whereabouts of her child.

Family and officials are concerned about the man named Al that Marie Jeanne was last involved. Al was described as a very cold, incommunicable man, known to have a violent history, who fell victim to his own dependence on alcohol and, ironically, was killed by a drunk driver.  Marie Jeanne was last seen in September of 1987 in Westlock, AB.

After nearly 30 years from the time of her disappearance, Marie Jeanne’s remains have yet to be found. Originally, her case was listed as missing, but in 1990 the RCMP officials upgraded it to suspicious. (I did a little bit of online research and I found it interesting the web page the CBC has dedicated to Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls still has Marie Kreiser listed as missing.)

Jody Stonehouse, researcher of Faculty of Native Studies at the University of Alberta, discusses some of the effects RSS survivors face as a result of their abuses. Children apprehended from their communities oftentimes suffered from depression and post traumatic stress disorder. When returning home, these same children no longer knew the language of their parents and did not know who they were, so they abandoned their home communities and returned to a large urban centre where they began to use alcohol or other substances as sedatives, particularly when they had suffered abuse.

The underlying theme of this episode of Taken focuses on the lateral violence and intergenerational trauma Indian Residential School survivors and their families face. Multiple generations across Canada were forced to attend these schools; as a result when these children grew into adults, the life partners they chose also struggled with the same issues of depression and PTSD. This results in descendants of these families living with the symptoms of their parents’ trauma as their own trauma.

Once again, this episode brings attention to the discriminatory clichés authorities sometimes use to repeatedly brush off this sexualized and racialized violence.

Taken airs Fridays at 7:30 p.m. ET on APTN.

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Featured, Four in the Morning

The episode of Four in the Morning where they blow up the moon

We begin this episode of Four in the Morning, appropriately entitled Moon, with Jamie (Michelle Mylett) waxing poetic about how fabulous the moon looks whilst William (Mazin Elsadig) is completely indifferent. It makes him feel insignificant. William  hasn’t been reacting to anything at all lately and that is pissing Jamie off. They head into an empty Patrician Grill as the lone patron, Coralie (Shiva Negar), rushes out. She slim jims a car and William and Jamie tag along for a trip to the observatory. It seems a group has gathered to watch the destruction of the moon.

Meanwhile, Bondurant (Daniel Maslany) just cannot catch a break with his trumpet playing. This time, he is called away by William in order to save the moon. Seems our musician Bondurant is also a world-class mechanical engineer. He also suffers from heavy fingers. It is only once a year, when the moon is at perigee, that its gravitational pull balances the heaviness of his fingers, making his trumpet playing c’est magnifique.

But these are just the surface stories. Mitzi (Lola Tash) discovers Bondurant lied about getting into Julliard, and she confesses that she had an abortion … but did she? Jamie and William fight about his lack of emotional engagement and William almost confesses about his time with Mitzi. In the end, William finally reacts, putting Jamie and William back on track and  Bondurant terminates the moon for Mitzi! Yep … Parker had Bondurant blow up the moon! Guess we are significant after all.

As I sat down to watch this episode, I was thinking “OK, here we go again, we have a pattern established … yawn.” But, about halfway through “Moon,” I didn’t have a clue where we were going. Then there was a fabulous bullet time sequence edited with “Che gelida manina,” from La Boheme scoring the scene. This was absolutely perfect for Maslany’s physical theatrical style. Sure it was gimmicky, but it was perfect and I loved it. I also realised I am starting to care about these characters, albeit some more than others.

Let me know what your thoughts are about tonight’s episode in the comments below.

Four in the Morning airs Fridays at 9 p.m. on CBC.

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Featured, Reality, Lifestyle & Documentary

Wild Archaeology visits “Little John” (Part 2 of Beringia)

Last week  on Wild Archaeology, we left off at the Little John site and Jacob had just broken his freshly-found artifact: an 11,000-year-old piece of bone. OOPS!

We begin this week’s adventure learning Dr. Norm Easton and his team have found artifacts at this sub-arctic dig site estimated to be between 11 and 12,000 years old—more than twice as old as the pyramids of Egypt. What is singularly unique with this particular dig site is Dr. Easton’s approach. Not only is he an archaeologist, but he is an ethnographer. As a result of his loyalty to White River First Nation, he has gained the people’s trust and been formally adopted into the family for whom the dig site is named. The community has his back.

A significant chunk of Tuesday’s instalment focuses on culture: regaining, establishing and maintaining connections to traditional culture. We also get a glimpse into Jenifer and Jacob’s connections to their own cultures through song and stories as we begin to get acquainted with our hosts.

Dr. Rudy and Dr. Easton discuss how they believe ancestors of White River First Nation experienced the land and utilized the resources available to them. Trails still exist that were used millennia ago, the ground still hard-packed beneath overgrown vegetation. Jenifer and Jacob demonstrate the use of atlatls. Acting essentially as arm extenders, these tools serve to amplify the force of a spear throw. Using their ingenuity, these ancient people created technology from the materials they had available in order to hunt the mega fauna.

On the artifact discovery side of things, Jacob finds the remains of an 11,000-year-old bison bone that was subjected to an impact fracture, indicative of human interaction with the local fauna. I think that makes these two tied for interesting finds.

I cannot help it, I know I am a broken record but I have to repeat myself. I LOVE THIS SHOW. One of the perks of reviewing is that networks supply us with advanced screeners. So what did I do? I binge-watched the whole season last week despite having other work to do (a thesis thing I have looming). That same day, I also  shared a brief conversation with co-host Jenifer Brousseau and we chatted about her own experience as she tunes in to watch.

“I’m glad they’re capturing our authentic journey, of what really was a powerful journey of reclamation,” she said. “There was something spiritual that took place, to touch these artifacts and be a part of history. Seeing the beauty of my ancestry and the strength and resilience of my ancestors.”

Wild Archaeology airs Tuesdays at 7:30 p.m. ET on APTN.

 

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