A free screening of From Wisconsin with Love is coming to the John Elliott Theatre on June 30. It's part of the Town of Halton Hills' event lineup for Indigenous History Month, a celebration of how Canada’s first peoples shaped this land.
The film is the second installment in a trilogy by filmmaker Kahstoserakwathe Paulette Moore, following To Wisconsin with Love, which chronicles the Penokee Hills residents' four-year-long struggle to resist the building of a taconite mine on their land, just south of Lake Superior. Taconite is a type of low-grade iron ore.
Between 2011 and 2015, these residents camped out in the woods near the mine and began a unique experiment. They started what was called the Harvest Education Learning Project (HELP), a five-acre camp which, as the name suggests, was designed to educate the people about the land and why it's important to be responsible stewards of it. The company cancelled its project and left the area in 2015, making their method an effective form of resistance.
In sequel From Wisconsin with Love, which is hitting the local theatre, viewers get a chance to see how residents went on with their lives after that.
“We see all these movies about protests and water protection, but we don't see, ‘Okay, so you’re successful, now what?,” Moore told HaltonHillsToday. “Why did we spend all that time and what happens in the aftermath of something like this?”
The film begins with an elder named Joe Rose saying “it was prophesied that a new way of thinking would be born in the age of the seventh fire. That wealth will no longer be measured in terms of money and political power and materialistic gain. True wealth would be measured in clean water, fresh air, pristine wilderness and a healthy lifestyle.”
A series of vignettes and interviews with some of the residents of Penokee Hills show how that prophecy has come true. The audience gets to hear from a maple syrup maker, a wild rice harvester, wood workers and a father who shows his sons how to skin a full-grown deer, all traditional Indigenous crafts.
“There is a level of empowerment that happens when you work with the land,” said Claire Hintz in the movie. “Even if it is in the most blighted place you can imagine, with what you would think of as the worst possible growing conditions, life wants to thrive.”
Free tickets for the screening, which will also include the documentary Stories from Land Back Camp, can be secured through the John Elliott Theatre box office.
