Short film takes a runaway’s perspective of the residential school experience

Jon Elliott had worked on film projects focusing on residential schools, but his short film Ohskennón:ten Owí:ra (Little Deer), which will be screened at the imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival on June 5, has more of a personal touch.

That’s because the film is based on a pair of young Indigenous girls who run away from the Mohawk Institute Residential School in Brantford, Ont. 

Elliott, a member of Six Nations of the Grand River, had some of his own family members attend that nearby residential school, which was nicknamed the Mush Hole, partly a reference to the poor quality of food served to its students.

“Obviously, I knew about the Mush Hole for a long time,” Elliott said. “Growing up on Six Nations, I've met survivors who have been there before.”

Following the 2021 discovery of 215 suspected unmarked children’s graves at a residential school in Kamloops, B.C., Elliott said a new group for Mush Hole survivors was formed for them to start preserving their stories and their history.

“They started working alongside different organizations to do all the ground penetrating radar and the search of the ground,” he said. “So, at that time, as soon as I kind of heard that that was happening, I knew some of the survivors already and I started asking if there was anything that I could do to help kind of get the message out there and share some of their stories.”

Those discussions led to the idea of making a film depicting the students while they were in the school.

“I thought that that was really interesting because I felt like it would make their experiences maybe a little bit more visceral and easier for people to kind of digest and understand, seeing kids actually going through the experiences that they had there,” he said. 

Through the Mush Hole survivors’ group, Elliott was able to reconnect with a much older cousin named John Elliott.

“He was a survivor of the school that was called The Runaway because he was there for five years and he ran away over 35 times, pretty unabashedly and really unafraid of any kind of repercussions that would happen.”

That included physical abuse he would endure when he was caught and returned to the school.

“He told me stories that sometimes when he came back after running away, even just for a day, just because he wanted to like go and see his mom or his grandfather, they would put him in a closet and starve him for 24 to 36 hours,” Elliott said.

Elliott spent two years doing research for the film. He said he felt a close connection to the survivors and they felt at ease telling stories to him.

“They all felt more comfortable that I was there trying to tell their stories the right way,” he said.  With some other initiatives, some survivors felt their experiences were being exploited.  “But this was really meant to be holistic and community driven and survivor led. So, I wanted to make sure that they felt comfortable that I was there for the long haul and we worked for two years to develop a script and the backbone of the story about the two girls running away to get back home for Christmas to their family.”

Though the film features two young females running away from the residential school, Elliott said it was actually based on his family member, who recently passed away.

“That was based very much on my cousin John, and his personal experience, because he would always run away at Christmas time to go and spend Christmas and the holidays with his mom after his older brother and older sister got taken and put into foster care,” he said. “So, it was a very personal experience.”

Stories from others were also blended in.

“We kind of pulled elements from all the survivors in the group, whether it was names or situations that get alluded to or scenes that happen,” Elliott said. “We just tried to combine as many of their experiences as possible to kind of create this film as accurately as possible.”

Elliott’s grandparents on his dad’s side had also both attended the Mush Hole.

“This whole issue of the residential school experience, it has lasting intergenerational impacts on Indigenous peoples today,” he said. “Most of us all have cousins or relatives or know somebody who attended a residential school. And it's something that is still very much in our recent history.”

Elliott is hoping those who view his film will come away with a better sense of what life at residential schools was like.

“I really hope that people can watch this and maybe, from the perspective of the kids and the characters in the film, really be able to understand that this was something that had a real, lasting, emotional impact, an intergenerational impact on Indigenous communities,” he said. “And ideally to help spread some of that awareness of what those survivors experienced while they were there.”

Elliott said he talked to various survivors about the best methods of healing.

“The big thing from the survivors that I worked with was that they were saying that they wanted to focus on this message of positivity,” he said. “Essentially, these terrible things do happen, and it really takes a lifetime to be able to kind of come to terms with what happened there. But the only way to move forward is to heal, acknowledge the past, but to still be able to move on in a positive way and share this message of community and healing and the power of family and friendship and what it takes to be able to get through these hard times.”

The Toronto-based imagineNATIVE festival, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary, began June 3 and continues until June 8.

Elliott’s film will be screened June 5 at the TIFF Lightbox at 4:15 p.m.

Tickets for all screenings are available at https://imaginenative.org/festival/schedule/

The online festival runs from June 9 to June 15. Ohskennón:ten Owí:ra (Little Deer) is part of the online offering for Canadian audiences.