By: Sia Garg, SFU Student
I find that monumental political documentaries, such as Dancing Around the Table are a little tricky to navigate. Unlike standard narrative cinema, which demands us to evaluate artistic choices and dramatic pacing, watching a reenactment of searing political acts forces us to reckon with living history. So it was the case with director Maurice Bulbulian’s 1987 two-part documentary, which presents an intimate record of the First Ministers’ Conferences on Indigenous Constitutional Matters between 1983 and 1987.
On Saturday, September 26, from 2:00–5:00 p.m., MONOVA: Museum of North Vancouver is hosting a screening of both parts of this vital National Film Board of Canada (NFB) work. For anyone seeking to understand the ongoing tensions surrounding Indigenous sovereignty, legal self-government, and federal power in Canada, this is an important documentary to watch. I have taken the past week, nearly four decades after its initial release, to reflect on the documentary and what best strikes me most about its quiet, crushing claustrophobia. Bulbian’s camera moves fluidly between two starkly contrasting worlds: from the sterile, wood-paneled conference halls of Ottawa to the vast, lively territories of the First Nations, Inuit, and the Métis communities across the country. Inside the closed conference rooms, men in sharp suits debate the fundamental human and territorial rights of Indigenous Peoples as if they were abstract policy points to be traded or legal loopholes to be micromanaged. Outside, Indigenous leaders, Elders, and youth ground their demands in centuries of lived tradition, ceremony, and profound connection to the land.
Part one of the documentary captures the raw arrogance of state power, in the infamous exchange between Kwakwaka’wakw Hereditary chief Bill Wilson and prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau. By focusing on the 1984 First Ministers’ Conference in Ottawa, part one does an excellent job of tracking the intense constitutional debates over whether Indigenous self-government should be recognized as an inherent right in the Canadian Constitution. This tension reaches a peak when Wilson remarks that his daughters aspire to be lawmakers, the room erupts into patronizing laughter. Wilson’s calm, prophetic insistence that his daughter would one day outshine the leadership in that room is a moment that would decades later be realized, when Jody Wilson-Raybould became Canada’s first Indigenous Minister of Justice.
By part two, under Brian Mulroney’s government, the choreography of political evasion — hence, dancing around the table — becomes explicit. Provincial premiers are exposed to have repeatedly stalled negotiations and had shut out Indigenous delegates from private record meetings. As premiers retreat behind closed doors to reject constitutional amendments on inherent self-government, Bulbian juxtaposes their political maneuvers with scenes of traditional salmon fishing, potlatches, and community gatherings. For Indigenous communities, sovereignty was never something waiting to be granted by a minister’s pen, it was already being lived, even as it was hotly debated by government officials brought in by colonial authority.
If you are able to watch Dancing Around the Table, you will realize that the rhetoric used to delay, deny, or dismiss Indigenous self-determination has changed very little over the past 40 years.
MONOVA’s upcoming screening offers the community a rare opportunity to reflect on the historical roots of our present political landscape and its relationship with Canada’s Indigenous Peoples. Though both parts are available to stream free on the NFB platform, sitting together in a shared space to watch this century-long battle for self-government unfold allows it to garner the collective attention that it has always deserved.
