To Better Understand

Based on a novel, this is a story of hockey and a native boy sent to a residential school. I object to overly sad stories that are not real, but this story is not an exaggeration, despite being quite sad. It is not rated, but I would recommend it for High School and above: I do highly recommend it for a better understanding of the history of First Nations people. Stories help us understand and empathize with a situation.

This movie is available to stream for free here on the NFB's website.

"Fifteen-year-old Buckley (Buckley Petawabano) attends residential school, where he longs for his home and dreams of fishing and hunting. Yet when he returns to the reserve for the summer he feels like a stranger, unable to speak his Cree language or live off the land like his father and brothers. Johnny (Johnny Yesno), an Indigenous caretaker at the school, takes Buckley under his wing, introducing him to Indigenous history, culture, and knowledge. After finding Buckley’s frozen body in the snow, Johnny pieces together the events of the boy’s short life and tragic death, which left him unable to find a place for himself between the white and Indigenous worlds."

The movie is not rated, but we would recommend it for middle school and above. There are some party scenes, but it's overall a very good movie. Definitely worth watching!

This is a contemporary, lighthearted story of life in a remote First Nations community. The local radio announcements were very realistic. The actual storyline of a young man taking his uncle on a bus trip to Nashville to find Hank Williams because he (the old uncle) thinks Hank isn’t dead, not so realistic but quite amusing. This is a wholesome family movie with plenty of talking points; one of the main characters is charmingly, blatantly dishonest. The movie is not rated, but I would recommend it as PG (without watching it again to be sure I didn’t miss something). Definitely worth watching!