The Learning Path

Directed by Loretta Todd

Canada, 1991 (documentary, 57 minutes, colour / black and white, English)

Image: © National Film Board of Canada

Film Description:
"Generations of Native children were taught in schools that to be Native was somehow wrong. Native Canadians now have control over their own system of formal education. In this film, we meet three remarkable educators who are leading younger Natives along the path of enlightenment."
-- National Film Board of Canada (source)

Film Credits (partial):
Written by:	Loretta Todd
Produced by:	Cari Green, James Cullingham, Peter Raymont, Kent Martin
Narrator:	Loretta Todd
Participants:	Jane Paul, Anne Starr, Bertha Twin, Veronica Lozo, Lorelei Morin, Jessica Daniels, Ray Fowler
Cinematography:	Kirk Tougas
Film Editing:	Frank Irvine, Janice Brown
Music:	Annie Frazer, John Kim Bell
Production Company:	Tamarack Productions, National Film Board of Canada / Office national du film du Canada

(sources)

Quotes about The Learning Path

"The Learning Path is not a documentary about victimisation or oppression but an account of survival and renewal. The film bears witness to injustice, but it does not present the women's pain for the viewer's voyeuristic gaze. Rather The Learning Path uses autobiographical accounts as a means of displacing the outsiders' perspectives so familiar to us from archival and documentary images of Aboriginal people."
-- Marian Bredin (source)

"The Learning Path (1991) praises the resilience of those who, often by assigning muteness to their pain, while keeping the voices of their peoples alive in memory, survived the brutality of the residential school system and have devoted their lives to the self-determination of their peoples and to education in their own communities."
-- Carol Kalafatic (source)

Bibliography for The Learning Path

Book Chapters

Bredin, Marian. "The Learning Path." In The Cinema of Canada, edited by Jerry White, 152-161. London: Wallflower, 2006.

Web Sites about The Learning Path

National Film Board of Canada. "NFB -- The Learning Path." National Film Board of Canada. http://www3.nfb.ca/collection/films/fiche/?id=26041.