“It’s not worth the paper it’s written on and it’s time to kill it.” Powerful words from performance artist Laurence Paul Yuxweluptun and star of Shooting the Indian Act. The short film brings uncomfortableness to people as filmmaker Claude Latour captures the violent act of literally shooting the Indian Act. This performance is karma in action as all the words of the Indian Act have done is enact untold and unimaginable violence to the Indigenous populations of not only Canada, but Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa.
But Shooting the Indian Act is more than a film. It’s a piece of history caught by filmmaker and multi-disciplinary artist Claude Latour that continues to live on twenty years after its release. “The film had a lot to say back then, but a lot more to say now.”
The film takes its origins in 1997, six years before its filming, when performance artist Laurence Paul Yuxweluptun shot up paper copies of Canada’s Indian Act legislation in the UK, the birthplace of the Indian Act. The performance in 2003, captured by Latour, was bringing the Indian Act home where it was enacted. A task that ironically wasn’t easy due to government firearms legislation. The plan was to have the performance take place at SAW Gallery in Ottawa, Ontario, until the changing of gun laws made the shooting of the act illegal.
Latour, determined to continue the performance, brought Yuxweluptun and the act to his home reserve of the Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg First Nation. The film’s new location, a gravel pit, provides the feeling of a moon landscape that only adds subtext to the film as the Indian Act parrels the moon landing where yet another white man claims a ‘new’ territory as his own, placing his stake in the ground. Yuxweluptun puts a new stake in the ground. Not one that holds a flag, but the Indian Act. Nailing the act up like the white man’s God to the cross, Yuxweluptun shoots the act down.
This brilliant film is filled with metaphor as not only is the Indian Act nailed to stakes, but doors that represent the RCMP breaking down the doors of Indigenous families to take Native children away, violently from their homes. Even the use of firearms in the film is poetic, as the weapons that were introduced to the Algonquins by Champlain, were the very weapons used to destroy the Indian Act in the film.
The brilliance of Laurence Paul Yuxweluptun is captured by Claude Latour through shooting the performance with four different cameras, allowing for some creative editing choices. The slow-motion shots as we see the remnants of the Indian Act fly through the air, the close up on the trigger and reaction shots from audience members on the day of the shooting, allows the audience to feel the catharsis of the man holding the gun. At the end of the film, we see the rain wash over the participants of the performance. Washing away and cleansing them from the violence they have participated in.
Unfortunately, the film did not kill the Indian Act. “The Indian act is a beast with many arms that get chopped off and seem to grow back or get new ones.” says Latour. But the films cathartic act of shooting the Indian Act allowed for the healing to many Indigenous peoples, including Latour himself. “Every pellet that hit the paper took out the letters that have imprisoned us.”
This year marks the 50th anniversary of SAW Gallery. In May, SAW Gallery plans to show Shooting the Indian Act along with the very pieces of the Indian Act that were shot in the film on display.
Claude Latour 1961 was born and raised in Ottawa, Ontario with mixed Euro/ Anishinabe/Kanyen’kéha descent and through his mother’s bloodline, is a band member of the Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg of the Algonquin Nation, Bear Clan. Over the past three decades, Claude has created works of art in various mediums and deGines himself as a multidisciplinary artist.
Claude obtained his Diploma of Fine Arts from Heritage College in Hull, Quebec and in 2001, he received his BFA from the University of Ottawa
Samantha Loney is a Metis writer and podcaster from Barrie, Ontario. She has produced podcast episodes the Indigenous 150+ Podcast and is the writer and star of the fictional podcast series, Herstory the Podcast Series, available wherever you get your podcasts. She currently runs a nonprofit Metis and Me that teaches podcasting and storytelling to Metis youth, whose stories can be found on the Travelling Metis podcast.
