“Racism and discrimination is what’s keeping services away from our children and that’s the bottom line.” So says Carolyn Buffalo, mother of 16-year-old Noah Buffalo-Jackson, who was born with cerebral palsy and repeatedly denied provincial health and education funding due to living on an Indigenous reserve in Alberta, Canada. In Jordan River Anderson, The Messenger, Abenaki filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin explores the lives shaped by Jordan’s Principle, a law which was passed unanimously by the Canadian House of Commons in 2007. Inspired by the legacy of Jordan River Anderson, who died aged five having lived his entire life in a hospital due to a government funding dispute over proposed paediatric home care, Jordan’s Principle mandates that any child is entitled to receive healthcare from the government agency that is initially contacted on their behalf. While this sounds sensible, the rollout of the law has in many cases been insufficiently supported by improvements to local services. Obomsawin’s documentary examines the grassroots and political advocacy that led to Jordan’s Principle being passed into law and the continuing gaps in its implementation. Interviewing activists, politicians, and parents (several of Obomsawin’s subjects embody two or three of these identities), the film exposes the disproportionate challenges facing families and children with specialised health and education needs who live on reserves.
Jordan River Anderson opens with an account of the titular boy’s short life. Born with a rare muscle disorder in 1999, Jordan lived in a Winnipeg hospital over 800km south of his family’s home in Norway House Cree Nation in the province of Manitoba. Though cleared by doctors to live in a supported home in Winnipeg when he was two, Jordan remained in the hospital while the provincial and federal governments debated who should foot the bill. (Typically the provincial government covers children’s specialised health and education expenses, but the federal government’s jurisdiction over reserve territories has led to routine disagreements about fiscal responsibility and delayed care for some young patients.) Archival footage of Jordan’s early years is used to illustrate the immense pressure placed on his parents and three elder siblings, especially after his mother relocates to Winnipeg to be with him. The film goes on to trace other Indigenous families’ experiences of bureaucratic red tape and limited resources. As Noah’s parents observe, advocating for children can easily become a full-time job that some families are unable to sustain. In the Buffalo-Jackson family, Richard ends up leaving his job as a high-school principle and cashing his pension funds twice in order to cover costs such as retrofitting a van to transport Noah to schools that offer requisite support.
Using Noah’s story as a central case study, Obomsawin shows how updates to infrastructure on reserves often lag behind changes to policy, painting a damning view of the Canadian government’s commitment to its indigenous youth. Jordan and Noah experiences are regrettably common: we witness multiple accounts of gruelling pressure on families to troubleshoot medical care, education, and transportation (e.g. to hospitals, specialised schools, and urban centres). Many of the speakers stress that bureaucratic gridlock is often merely a front for systemic discrimination and neglect. As in many of Obomsawin’s other films – including Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance (1993), Trick or Treaty? (2014), and Our People Will Be Healed (2017) – simply telling her protagonists’ stories becomes an exercise in detangling obscured national histories. This is necessary: the unequal rights and services afforded to Indigenous communities remains a relatively untold – or at least, inadequately understood – story within contemporary Canadian discourse. Watching the documentary, we learn that families living on reserves have been encouraged to give their children over to foster care or to move off ancestral lands in order to access provincial funding. At other times, the film provides examples of instances where requests for urgent community support have gone unanswered. In one especially painful example, an investigation into the tragic suicides of four 12-year-old girls in Wapekaka First Nation reveals that the regional doctor submitted an unheeded request for youth suicide prevention support two years previously. The question of political will looms large. How have impossible choices that the majority of non-Indigenous Canadians would balk at become the status quo within some reserve contexts? The health of children has long been used as a measuring stick for a country’s basic prosperity: why have Indigenous children been so inadequately factored?
In the middle of a film festival rife with portraits of failed and flailing international democracies (The Kingmaker, directed by Lauren Greenfield, and Desert One, directed by Barbara Kopple, come to mind), Jordan River Anderson reminds a Canadian and international audience of local leaders who are all too rarely recognised. Tenacious activists, politicians, and citizens working, often unrewarded, to improve social conditions are the backbone of an ethical democracy. The film portrays the admirable efforts of advocates Trudy Lavallee, Cindy Blackstock, and Jean Crowder to put pressure on the government and to draw attention to the erratic nature of the support given to families on reserves. Yet Obomsawin’s documentary reminds us that changes to the law, while significant steps, are no guarantee of equitable care. On the verge of Canada’s next federal election in October, the topic feels timely. The choices facing families in the film will no doubt shock many of the viewers who saw Jordan River Anderson’s world premiere earlier this month at TIFF. For others, nothing about the appalling double-standard facing Indigenous families on reserves will be surprising.
Esmé Hogeveen is a writer based in Canada.
