The Canary Effect (2006) User Reviews

A fascinating insight into a massive, ongoing injustice

[bean-daddy · 9/10 · 9 January 2011]

I stumbled across this film last night and I can honestly say that I was blown away by the issues that it highlighted.

In the most part, the film has a very measured and matter-of-fact tone. The astonishing facts and statistics really do speak for themselves and generate an emotional response in the viewer that a drama would undoubtedly fail to do to the same extent.

This really is an important message; one that I hope will reach many people in the future.

I believe that it is also very important for people to realise that colonisation and the systematic genocide of individual cultures is very much a current and prevalent issue worldwide.

Please discredit any blinkered and frankly upsetting reviews that attempt to warp the unquestionable truths proposed in the film. The best thing to do would be to seek the film out, show it to people you know and allow the wider public to decide upon what to take from it.

Racist "Documentary" Raises Suspicions

[charlytully · 7/10 · 22 April 2008]

I'm from the boondocks, but I seem to remember that Tribeca is not far from Ground Zero in New York City. Therefore, after viewing this film at my university as a junior, I am shocked to see it listed on IMDb as premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival not long before the fifth anniversary of 9-11. I do not recall any news stories two years ago about filmmakers being tarred and feathered in New York. Yet the main talking head in this doc is the infamous Ward Churchill, who was fired from his public university (quite a feat for a tenured prof) in the fall of 2001 after crowing that the terrorists "couldn't be all bad" since their sneak attack slaughtered so many soldiers, police and firemen!!

About half of this 63-minute "documentary" is devoted to a cartoon movie-within-a-movie, done in the style of an elementary school educational film from the 1950s or 1960s era. It is obvious the filmmakers either created this inflammatory exercise in racism themselves, or dubbed over some forgotten kiddie show.

The other half of this propaganda piece is a mishmash of lies, I-hate-Americanisms and non sequiturs, beginning a with misplaced effort to connect the canary-in-a-coal-mine metaphor to the movie's themes. The only real message trickles out toward the close, and involves taxpayer monetary reparations to the "Indians in good standing" that have survived decades of membership roll battles among the 304 federally-recognized clans of so-called "native Americans" (who are often much lighter-skinned than those purged, or the members of the hundreds of unrecognized clans which cannot afford the right political connections, such as multimillion dollar mouth-piece Jack Abramoff).

"Facts" included in THE CANARY EFFECT: --George H.W. Bush implemented a policy which sterilized 42 per cent of American Indian women. --"Native Americans" are 525 per cent more likely to be alcoholics than the rest of U.S. citizens. --George W. Bush waited 500 per cent longer to respond to a school shooting on the Red Lake reservation than he did to call Columbine H.S.

The filmmakers imply that all was sweetness and light in the western hemisphere prior to 1492. They never mention that there were NO "native Americans" except mammoths, grizzly bears and smaller non-bipeds until the most recent one per cent of one per cent of world history. They fail to recognize the multiple waves of Indo-European immigration that swept both coasts of the Americas multiple times between 15,000 years ago and now. Each group of newbies had to sink or swim on its own merits; might meant right. Some newcomers became king of the hill, some lost the battle but kept a horse in the war by passing survivors' genes along through interbreeding, and some losers were eaten (just as their counterparts who stayed home in Asia or Europe were during this time period). Those who wiped out the 111 inhabitants of Roanoke Island in Virginia probably felt no more remorse than the Basque who slew the last member of the Neanderthal species. It was survival of the fittest all the way. The main difference with the wave of 1492 and those of the ancestors of current "tribes" was that the industrial disparity was greater than ever before, and that the European's small pox germs trumped the "native American's" syphilis virus.

Sure, if the stream of immigration broached by Columbus had been delayed till 1972, a more enlightened generation of Indo-Europeans no doubt would have declared immediately that the "new" half of earth was to be a nature preserve for perpetuity, left totally untouched save for an occasional episode of SURVIVOR. But it's revisionism of the worst sort to couple anachronistic expectations of history's Dar-winners with a total white-washing of the defects that did in the dodos. The fact that our government recognizes 304 "official" clans, most of which have fractured themselves into warring factions even today, dispels THE CANARY EFFECT myth that there's a "them" and an "us." Whether our ancestors were Apache or Kenyan or Sioux or Welsh or Seminole or Hmong, the only way "we" can be separated into a bunch of disunited "them's" is for people like these filmmakers to amass one group's dirty linen while burying the other side's hatchets.

I did not rate this film a "7" because of its technical merit (it has none) or its unifying theme (again, missing in action). It did provoke my well-received senior thesis: the "7" is my way of saying thank you.

Thank you for telling the world the truth! But stick to the truth please....

[velocity50 · 7/10 · 19 November 2014]

I like this documentary, I do. I first saw it at my community college about 2-3 years ago, which got me wanting to teach on a reservation after I get my teaching credential. I saw pain and heartbreak in this film, and it's real. But I do NOT appreciate one-sided debates that paint certain people as villains without showing the good they've done as well. I don't want to see past presidents like George H. W. Bush or George W. Bush as evil or stupid, and I know that they aren't. But this movie wants us to believe those lies.

One big thing I had an issue with was the whole "98%" thing. The video claims (or rather doesn't tell the whole truth about) that white settlers/the American government killed 98% of Native Americans. The video said that there used to be 12-15 million Native Americans, but now only 250,000 remain. And they want us to believe that it is the fault of the American Government and its bloody, greedy hands. But anyone who has ever had an American history class knows that that's not true. Diseases like Smallpox are to blame. In a way, I guess you can blame settlers for bringing diseases with them from Europe, but they didn't do it intentionally to kill off the natives of America, so don't point fingers! That's all the documentary does is point fingers! It doesn't bring up any hope of reconciliation with the American people. It only wants us to feel bad for the past.

But again, I am glad this documentary exists, because the crisis of high rates of suicide, depression, and substance abuse among the 1/3 of Native Americans who still reside on reservations are a major cause for alarm, and the fact that not a lot of Americans know about this is upsetting. But documentaries need to be clearer in what they are trying to say, unless you want to come across as one-sided propaganda.

In response to the the previous comment from charlytully from Rosebush

[robin_davey · 10/10 · 26 August 2008]

I am not usually one to feel the need to defend my own work, however the laughable 'review' of my movie The Canary Effect, posted on this site by charlytully from Rosebush, is so ridiculously bombastic in its distortions toward the content and message of the movie, I felt a little retort and perspective was necessary.

He states that "About half of this 63-minute "documentary" is devoted to a cartoon movie- within-a-movie, done in the style of an elementary school educational film from the 1950s or 1960s era. It is obvious the filmmakers either created this inflammatory exercise in racism themselves, or dubbed over some forgotten kiddie show." Well in truth a 5 minute segment of the movie features about 2 minutes of clips from an 'educational' cartoon from the 60's describing the arrival of Columbus. This was in its original form and contained no overdubs.

He then states that "The other half of this propaganda piece is a mishmash of lies, I-hate- Americanisms and non sequiturs, beginning a with misplaced effort to connect the canary- in-a-coal-mine metaphor to the movie's themes" Our aim as film makers for this project was to convey that, due to the ill treatment of The Indigenous people of America, American Indians now suffer high rates of unemployment, up to 80% on some reservations, high suicide rates (Native teens being up to 10 times more likely to commit suicide than the general population) and along with substantial health issues and poor health care, 25% of Indians are alcohol dependent versus 4% of the general population. These statistics come from government reports.

The Canary Effect reference comes from a Felix Cohen quote in 1953 he said "The Indian plays much the same role in our American society that the Jews played in Germany. Like the miner's canary, the Indian marks the shifts from fresh air to poison gas in our political atmosphere; and our treatment of Indians, even more than our treatment of other minorities, reflects the rise and fall in our democratic faith."

The facts charlytully questions about the movie are all backed up with evidence and he does not add any counteracting evidence to dismiss this. The movie itself contains the Government documents about the sterilization and an interview with the senator who investigated the claims, who does confirm that 'There was indeed sterilization going in'.

We are proud that The Canary Effect is being widely accepted by Teachers and Professors and is now played in classrooms across the States, and presented as a much needed, honest and leveled depiction of the struggles of The American Indian.

Thanks for reading

Robin Davey (Director of the Canary Effect)

Spoilers**

[alexuscayetano · 10/10 · 12 April 2016]

Robin Davey and Yellow Thunder Woman's documentary The Canary Effect (2006) opens with a quote from Felix S. Cohen stating, "…our treatment of the Indians, even more than our treatment of other minorities, reflects the rise and fall of our democratic faith." It transitions to an animation, the story of the Pilgrims and Indians shown satirically. But we know the story, we learned it well. Columbus, 1492, and how curiosity didn't kill the cat. Curiosity killed the Native American. Of course that's not the story we first learned, is it? In grade school with our innocence spilling out of us till there's no more like our juice boxes, we take a history course. There's glue and construction paper and you construct a turkey. You can be a Pilgrim or Indian, it's your choice. What you don't know is that choosing one side equates to the act of grave digging or soul exchanging rituals. One side ends lives, the other dictates this ceasing of existence.

The Canary Effect unapologetically speaks of the genocide committed against the indigenous people by the American government, troops, and people. The documentary focuses on revealing the horrid accounts of the mistreatment of the indigenous people. The film is structured in a chronological manner. It begins with the history of the Natives. Professors, historians, and historical data are used to illustrate the tragic times past. The film then transitions to present time (which was then 2006 for the filmmakers) and focuses on interviewing people who live on the reservations. While watching it your world won't shatter. You will feel the guilt that one does when they've done nothing wrong and everything wrong for not knowing of the wrong thing to begin with. Your world won't shatter, but it will shift. The documentary launches with a history of the Native people, beginning with the discovery and escalating to the torturing of the innocent. Filmed speeches from Presidents showing how something as beautiful as language can be contorted and manipulated to mask scars, wounds. There's a clip were Reagan states he doesn't know what the Natives are so angry about, since some of them made money from the casinos and oil. Another clip shows George Bush Jr. not being able to define sovereignty, his dismissiveness. The documentary includes facts about the Indian massacres, such as the Sand Creek Massacre in which blameless men, women, and children were killed in Colorado. It lists so many massacres committed against the Native people that you will begin to feel uncomfortable, you will know that something of this sort occurred, you wouldn't know how it still lingers round their lebensraums today. It is shared of how through the Americanization of Indian children, they were forced to changed their names. Children go up to the board choose a name. Children who haven't lived long enough to understand the depth of a name. Mom's tongue releasing her love for you. It's changed by a person who doesn't care about you, or your mother. You won't understand this, but you'll feel the loss. This America, or The United States, has neglected the people whose home they invaded. As of 2006, the unemployment rate on the reservations was at eighty-five percent. In the documentary interviewees spoke of the blatant discrimination they face when seeking employment. As a result of the mistreatment of these people, chaos ensues. The jails are stuffed with communities of people, too small to shelter the persons mostly arrested for public intoxication. Familial bonds impossible to strengthen, kids on their own. Suicide rates among children at a disturbing level. Almost half the girls at a school attempted suicide. Suicide attempts occurred three to seven times weekly on the Cheyenne reservations. Soulless people wandering through their borders searching for some sort of salvation. There's soulless people existing on our land. This concept of being American seems to not be applicable to everyone. As expressed in Ted Roosevelt's "True Americanism" you can come to this country just leave your past life at the door. Well what he actually said was, "after passing through the crucible of naturalization, we are no longer Germans; we are Americans." Or, you're no longer who you were, you're what we want you to be. This same Roosevelt described the Sand Creek Massacre (1864) "as righteous and beneficial a deed as ever took place on the frontier." Are the Natives not true Americans? If this land is not theirs, then how can one expect them to live? You will ask yourself, can you live without a home? The natives' truths are relevant to all of us. We are taught that history is boring, and it is the way it is presented through texts at times. Everyone remembers bobble-heading their way through history classes in high school. This documentary is not that history lesson. This documentary is the match lit in the dark room. My intent in writing this review is awareness. Perhaps it is pointless to know something that you can do nothing about. But maybe, if enough people know of a certain thing, the nonacceptance of that thing will become intolerable. And the change that we once thought unfathomable will not only become a realistic notion but a necessity. Because if, as people, we continue to waltz whilst cradling the unacceptable, we will reduce our state to a definitive sorrowfulness. It's not about focusing on one group of people, it's about loving and caring for our singular race, the human one. This documentary is one that you should watch. Your moon and stars don't shine so brightly everywhere. And this term America doesn't fly so elegantly out of everyone's hearts, we should understand why.

A Powerful Masterpiece

[aclarner · 9/10 · 24 January 2020]

The Canary Effect is a powerful film that depicts the devastating impact that US policies had on the indigenous people of America. The title in itself explains that workers in mines would take canarys down with them in order to test for lethal gases. If the canary dies in its cage then the workers would know not to go down any farther. I like to interpret this, both in relation to the topic of the movie and to other parts of history. In relation to the movie the canary effect is that the indigenous people of America have been treated like the canary in the cage; however, instead of the workers, or America in this example, leaving the cave or trying to fix the gas in the first place they continue to go deeper and deeper, killing more canaries in the process. Maybe the workers would assume the bird is at the bottom of the cage because of a broken wing and try to patch it up with a bandage, much like how America gave the Indians reserves, but no support or water, but its impure. It is impossible. You cannot fix a bigger problem with a quick and simple solution and this movie gives continuous examples of that. I highly recommend watching this vigorous and moving film. I would give this a 9/10.