 Métis artist Jim Logan paints the agony. This painting is about basically the rounding up of our children in small villages at wherever we may have been. This one particularly is depicting a village up Ross River in Yukon Territory where trucks came in and lists were given to the priests before and the names were called out and they had to go. They had to leave their families and go. It was a lot. So it must have been a terrible thing for the women. It's terrible for everyone. In the picture there you see a grandma crying in the background. In the foreground you've got a young child crying also. Let's you know this is an ongoing situation that the grandma also experienced it. And the young child is also experiencing it now and is going to experience it in the future. I guess in a lot of cases children ran away at this time of the year. And they were always rounded up. They'd wait in the villages for days for these kids to come out of the bush. So they basically starved out or chilled out by the coming of frost in that time of the year. And they wouldn't relent. They grabbed those kids to make sure that they attended school because at that time it was so long. There was no way about it. No way about getting the kids to stay. No escape really. No escape. And all of a sudden they were told that the spiritualism that they believed in was evil and not good. And that the only way for them to get to heaven was to believe in Christ. And through that system they realized that they were indeed savages and they were indeed a lower class of human being. Unfortunately most of them took it to heart. Every week or so the girls would save up money and they'd go to town with the nun, of course. And they'd go and they would buy this makeup and sneak it out. Every once in a while they'd go for walks up in the bushes behind the residential school and they'd run up way ahead and run into the bush and they'd try on this makeup. The punishment and the penance for the girls. Crimes of loneliness. The pee parade. Carrying urine soaked sheets over their heads. Crying and praying for forgiveness. Probably the most powerful one is that one called Night Visit. It's a true story of a fellow I know and how this priest used to come into the boys' dormitory. And he'd just pick and choose the boys that he wanted to fondle that night. And nobody could say anything because no one would believe them anyways. It was a terror to some of the boys. Some of the boys, of course, couldn't sleep. Escape is difficult according to Thompson Highway. I think there are elements essential of certain fundamental features of Christian theology which are at complete odds with native theology. And which essential fundamental differences that have had a tremendous impact on our lives. Senator Bill standing ready of the White Bear Band from Carlisle, Saskatchewan is critical of the conflict between the Feather and the Cross. Even the churches, they crucified a man that they're supposed to respect. Now they have all kinds of trouble, wars and burning the country. That's where he's coming from. Because they didn't respect themselves. They thought they were higher than what the creed has sent down here. The restrictions imposed by the White Government involve the banning of many native customs. I think that varies from tribe to tribe. Some have pierced the skin to sew their sacrifice, their dedication and offering of themselves. And it's an attempt to find revival? It's an attempt to, first of all, to sew appreciation to the Creator for life. They don't only pray for themselves, the Sundance Maker. We'll pray for the tribe, we'll pray for the animals, we'll pray for the environment. And we'll ask the Creator for a blessing on the earth. And if that happens, then all those who inhabit the earth will benefit. That's the whole concept of the Sundance and the philosophy and the teaching behind that. We always had that freedom of religion. But when the Europeans came over, the very people who were searching for freedom of religion, when they came over, our freedom ended. I think a lot of the native teachings will complement the Christian teaching. In that, we're to respect God's creation. And that doesn't mean only the human beings, but we must respect that other creation. The native person has been able to somehow accommodate and tolerate other religions, even if it has not been a reciprocal arrangement. Today, on Manitoulin Island, at the Catholic service, the feather is there, along with the cross, and the soft smell of sweet grass replaces the traditional incense. People don't realize that it wasn't until 1949 we were considered citizens of the province of British Columbia. And it wasn't until 1960 we were considered citizens of this country. So we were awards the government treated as children, and they had to have a department of Indian affairs to minister to us. And instead of being the helping hand that it was supposed to be, I'm afraid it became probably the most destructive institute in the country next to religion that's ever been imposed upon our people. I mean, the reserves are run as concentration camps by the Department of Indian Affairs. And I'm afraid it hasn't changed much. I've said that the Department of Indian Affairs makes the CIA look like Boy Scouts compared to the internal manipulation that they've been able to engage in. And I find it completely disgusting. I get very, very angry about it. If I was the Prime Minister, I would simply strike it down and give the money to the Indians. The Indian agent was, in fact, like a dictator, right? He was a God. He was a God, and he acted as a God. He signed the checks. You see, the purpose of the department, as well as the potlatch laws and all the other federal laws, were to force us off the resources, forces off of the land so that they could be exploited. But the great issue is the land. When you go to most native languages, they classify everything or most everything as being animate, okay? Since the trees are animate, as I've said, they have spirit. Since they have spirit, that's the same as me. How much land is really contested? I keep seeing different figures, and they say that one figure says 64% of Canada really belongs to the Indian. Is that correct? Well, I don't think 64% is correct. It's all of Canada, because... All of Canada belongs to the Indian? Yes. Why? Well, because if we can follow a recent Supreme Court decision that was decided back in 1983, referred to as the Geron case, or commonly referred to as the Musqueam case, dealing with a small Indian tribe outside the city limits of Vancouver. In that court case, the Supreme Court of Canada said that the Indian's source of title to the land is from time immemorial. Secondly, they said the underlying presumptive title in Canada belongs to the Indian. Member of Manitoba Parliament, Elijah Harbour, echoes a call for understanding. When we talk about the treaties, that when they were now forefathers signed the treaties, it made us, in a sense, landowners that we transferred the land over to the government. And that's why most of our great-grandfathers when they signed the treaties, that their view was that they shared the land and resources with the newcomers at the Red Cure. That it should benefit everybody. Basically, though, you see the frustration that's been building up over the years. Now an instance like OKA do happen, and it'll probably continue happening when something happens to let off the steam. The misunderstandings were bound to lead to confrontation. In Canada, the place was OKA. It is the summer of 1990. People are you. There's children here and you're shooting tear gas at us. We're unarmed and you're aiming your weapons at us. What kind of people are you? This is golf course. That's the road of all the evil. Breathe there. That's what's killing our people. These people here who don't give a shit are playing hitting a ball around the damn field. The battle is over at golf course to be built on an Indian graveyard, and television images tell the world of a modern Indian war. It's hard to come here and establish a checkpoint echo on this junction, and that's my order. I think that it's important to bring out all the atrocities that have occurred because not too many people know what actually happened to the natives of the Americas beginning with the arrival of Columbus. Native people were almost completely annihilated either through wars or through diseases that were brought by the outsiders. And so there's a great deal of documented atrocities that we hardly know about. And so this year, 1992, the Indian people both from Central, South, and the upper hemisphere are bringing those things out. And I think it's just a matter of letting people know what happened. Today the Indian people, I think it's a miracle that we have managed to survive. We've paid a dear prize for the right. It's a constant battle. Right from the beginning, the moment that Columbus set foot on this land, it's been a constant struggle to maintain our identity, our language, in our way of life. Ojibwe artist Carl Beam. I try to carry on the north of Columbus sailing as a voyage. And if you continue that notion, I would say that the voyage is still not over. We are still, in fact, voyaging. To what? I don't know. Manitoulin Island artist James Simon Mishabinichima paints a final warning. Let's see an example of what we're doing to the water. We're the necks on the chain link. If we destroy the water, we're destroying ourselves. If your body's full of blood, you would say it's all water. And you need a substance to water itself because grass, right down to what you eat, that's what we need the water to feed it also. Hydra itself, we're using it to destroy Mother Earth. Actually, we're not taking this force into another force. We're not taking care of it really. We're making things bad as bad for Mother Earth using this force of Mother Earth, you would say. And if the fish go, then who goes after the fish? What's the next in the chain? Man, good man. Well, you can see, also, what he calls the plant, the life itself would go. But man is the one who's going to be sick. We're still far ahead, reaching fast as we're living. Everything is, you know, we're not taking for what you do on Earth, on Earth itself. Cherokee artist Jimmy Durham sounds an alarm. It's a tailpipe of a car, tailpipe in a muffler. There's another piece there. It's a steering wheel on a base. I call them artifacts of the future. And I imagine some far distant future when some archaeologists dug up those things and that they were made by a people who had heard of a myth of white people, that there was this ancient tribe called white people who drove things called automobiles. And this later tribe takes the ruins of these automobiles and makes fetishistic objects, and then much later, other archaeologists dig up those artifacts and try to imagine, were there really ever any white people? What was the white civilization like? And the byproducts of the Columbus Enterprise? Astronauts tell us clear-cutting scars can be seen from the moon. Today, rainforests in the Western Hemisphere, originally at 3.4 billion acres, is down to 1.6 billion. Going, going, going at the rate of 166 square miles a day, at least 140 major animal and bird species have become extinct since 1492. Wilderness areas have decreased by 96%. So now, looking back 500 years after Columbus, are you optimistic that the life for the Aboriginal person is going to improve here? Well, probably my best answer is that I think it's coming this way because I have met with world-renowned scientists who are asking about the Indian way, who are saying the present Newtonian approach to science, the Newtonian approach to Western culture is coming to an end. It's leaving many unanswered, many questions unanswered. We're looking for a new way to look at science. So I see scientists are groping around for a new way to explain nature, and they're finding out that the Indians have the answer. The latest example of that is, but two, three years ago, a UN report on the environment came out. Well, the advice that came out of that UN report was, if you want to know anything about the environment, ask the India. So the new way is the old way? The new way is the old way. They just have to discover it.