Surveilling the artist

With the Arrest of the artist in The USA for the alleged involvement avec his wife's death, due to his creative work with bio-technical applications and processes is frightening for all of us as individuals in North American Society...Data...was quoted by me for a keynote event panel discussion at The Rim Shot Media Festival June 03 in Vancouver...when some audience and other keynote participants were devaluing the notion of fear around globalization and its affect on regional cultural practice. As an indigenous working artist who utilized various media form to complete the DVD edition of the feature film "7 Fires 4 U...Kitchi Manitou. I tie this latest news flash to my film parce que (because) the premise of this film deals with the dichotomy of surveillance and resistance between Native and Non-Native relations since the US Wounded Knee (1973) at Lakota Territory near the Black Hills (South Dakota), and the Canadian incident at Kanasatake Territory at Oka, Quebec, CDN, 1990. As indigenous people, we have been terrorized by State Apparatuses, while they used fear to create distrust between the "Indians" and the "Whites". RACE POLITCS MUST END, WE R ALL OF THE SAME COLOUR RED (INSIDE) The language of Blood may be used in avarice fornms today, but we can write with this language with grace , honesty, humility, and respect instead of the hate, anger, and disdain that hides in all of us. All ideas, which I presented yesterday to the four races of our times for the black, the white, and yellow races of the four directions....The keynote oral presentation pertaining around these following questions:

Are we moving towards a mono-cultural world?

Are the great Hollywood movie machine and the Internet (and urbanization, globalization, (etc) decimating regional cultural differences?

How do regional differences, idiosyncrasies, or specific cultural interests inform artistic practice?

Are globalization/urbanization and the mechanics of the Internet and the movie machine decimating regional cultural differences?

Do we accept the concept that globalization frees people from the tyranny of geography?

Is the unwarranted side effect of globalization monoculture?

Do we trust the thesis that the dual directions of the information highway (albeit that the rush hour is going from the centre out) improves the opportunity for distinctly regional cultural workers to communicate and broaden the scope of their audience?

Does the technological ability to choose our cultural experiences as an audience enrich our lives, or does it colonialize our cultural appetite?

Are distinct regionally informed artistic practices important? Dying?

What are the strategies that artists and cultural organizations can exploit to preserve and celebrate cultural autonomy?

END OF National Alliance for Media Artists,.

Donald Morin works as a filmmaker instructor, and regularly works throughout Vancouver with various contract work for the community. As a board member of The Longhouse Native Ministry, Donald helps with the Sunday service and meals offered to various folks of the community. He has performed for MAWO,http://www.mawovancouver.org/info.htm, and in defence of John Graham from AIMS history of the 70s. He continues to work for the Aboriginal community, and enjoys helping empower NAtive emerging artists. Previous years, Donald has performed at the Millenium 2000 Downtown EastSide Cross event @ Openheimer Park, and with The 1997 Aboriginal Cultural Festival. He has also performed for the United Native Nations;The Native Education Centre in Vancouver, The Vancouver Aboriginal Friendship Centre, International Earth Day /Water 4 Life benefit for Sioux Spiritual Leader Arvin Looking Horse, Elder's Day, and at Kids Day at the Raycam Community Centre. Donald completed the entrepreneur program at The Management Training Institute (98) in New Westminster. Donald Morin’s theatre, television/filmmaking association began in 1980 with Barbizon Academy for ling and acting. In 1981, he studied film acting with the late Jim Scotland, and Theatre avec Alex Bruhanski. During that year, he did work for the films Zorro, The Blade, and Britt Eckland’s Columbia Connection 1982,he worked with Sylvester Stallone’s Film First Blood, did a light opera, and any performance work for experience. 1983, he was accepted into the film/and fines arts program at Simon Fraser University, whereupon he graduated with a bachelor degree avec Fine & Performing Arts Major, and a film concentration in 1989. A survivor of the sixties scoop, Donald has gone through 16 foster homes by the time he was four, endured physcial and sexual abuse, and is now seen as an example of overcomng adversity and strife to become a strong role model for Native youth. Miigweech, all my relations

Before the dawn of time, the Great Ice Ages, the coming of the skypeople, the supernatural, and everything this world contains or produced, there was the word. The spirit of the word through the four elements, the four directions, and the light and the dark, created our breath, our time and our being. Oka was beyond the times of Canadianization, Americanization, and Globalization. The Oka Crisis(90), which started my 14 year experience of the 7 Fires 4 U Kitchi Manitou Project, was the continuation of the awaking. The awaking of generations to what we are really here for.

Mother Earth opened up its body to connect her people to the Great Spirit. Regardless of our religions , there is only one Creator. Everything else is part of the servant or the master within this ongoing narrative of the cosmic universe. Out there, but nevertheless we must love our neighbour as much as we love ourselves. Forget the hate, the colour of skin, and the class.

Live life fullests, walk gentle on this earth. May The Great Spirit be with you

Residing about Indian Town.

New Days, New Ways Of Seeing

Colleagues, Associates, Mentors, emerging artists and laypersons:

1: It has been great to be part of this Vancouver community and to develop my artistic career since I arrived here 24 years ago. To read and learn about the other points of view from the emailers and readers is an insight to the complexities of the human spirit, the world we occupy, and our final destinations. I thank you all for your support, criticisms, and challenges which hopefully shapes us into better people. As a cultural professional, filmmaker and performer, I am humbled by the work that I have seen and experienced over the years from the many talented people> out and about, and I know I have so much more to learn regarding the fragile state we live in today, and our roles as artists today. God willing I turn 48 tomorrow July 27. Being a Leo, I have been too dogmatic, opinionate, and egocentric at times, no doubt because of this traits, and my own sense of insecurity. Somewhat older these days, I have mellowed out from the intensity of my early years, but there were many reasons for that intensity, or sense of determination of the times. I was determined not to become the failure that many systemic native and non-natives want others to end up in, when ones sees someone attempting to realize their potential in life. Even today, we are still divided and unsure of the other. Why is that? Politics of survivial? Politics of race? Politics of indifference? Insecurities, jealousy, pettiness, stupidity? What it is? Moving here September 17, 1980, there were two choices for me as a young uneducated native man at the time I left Edmonton, Alberta. Death by drugs or ending up in jail. I kid you not. Finding acceptance in all the wrong places was normal for native people in a society, which is still systemically racist and expects to see the native under the white man, black man, or yellow man.

With the historicity of colonialism, capitalism, empericalism, and the> ideology which came out of the baroque, romantic, modernist, contemporary, and now our "Age of Terror" period of cultural politics, the "Indian" was seen as part of the heathens and infidel classification which developed out of the manifest destiny, and was seen as sub-human. This positioning crept into the dime novels, the folklore, romantic novels, cultural, political, and education apparatuses of the colonial states, and eventually the filmic, radio, and television forms which still exist today. It still exists today in how people> attempt to define Natives today. Moving out of the red neck racism of my early years I was determined more than every to do something with my life when I saw the opportunities in Vancouver. Repressing all the hate, anger, rage, and damaging experiences I endure as a child growing up, I did not look back except at time in my life where I was weaken by the challenges we all must endure at times. I tell you people this because, I believe in what I experienced as an uneducated man to reasonalbly intelligent man, even though I am still haunted by the> experiences of my past. You see I received a package last week from a lawyer in Edmonton, who is representing victims of child abuse during the hundreds of thousands of adoptions of Métis children by the Alberta Government. Not good, now I know what people experience when they have to remember the experiences of residential school, and other institutions which were created to suppress a people or race. All the physical and sexual abuse I experienced as a child flooded back to me. To remember the hate, and anger of that time was haunting> and forlorn. Yet we must carry on. I joined the suit because the system has to be accountable to the suffering many young Métis Children experienced under foster care. I was just one, and many have not survived and not here today.

If any of you ever get a chance to see Dairy of A Métis Child an NFB docu-drama by Alana Obomsowin, check it out. Sad film, but tells the story of Richard Cardinal, who committed suicide at the age of 16 after 16 foster homes. I empathized with the story because I could have been Richard. To find out that I was in 16 foster homes by the time I was four in 1994 was astounding. Now I know why I was so intense, so determined. So determined to success in asystemic society, which hated Indians. People laughed at me, ridiculed me and told me to get out of the business when I was a young actor/model. Perhaps all that rejection at an early age helped, because my skin was as tough as nails and all the adamant hate towards me only made me more determined to success and be better than the "white" man at their game. Racist, maybe, but this world and its cultural politics has been based on the colour of ones skin, and at those times in my life, I was cold, uncaring, and determined to stay alive in a society which wanted me dead or in jail. Today, I am stronger, brighter, and more caring, even though I still experience the racism today and yesterday. I will get through this lawsuit, and I will continue to create stories about life and our journey to our Creator. I may turn 48 tomorrow, but today, I will still have the opportunity to realize my> potential in life instead of settling with life.

2: Thanks for reading, and taking time to learn more about me, and what has defined my character, my development as a human, and my determination to make this world a better place for all of us. I incuded my CV to give you an update on my work.

3: Next current project is the feature film story of Metis Winter Morning. The project will tell the story of young Metis love in the 40s and the> apprehension of Metis children by The State system. If people are interested in being involved with this film project, please email CVs, a letter of interest as to why you would want to be involved with a summation of your goals and aspirations.
Miigweech to all my relations in you.
Donald Morin, ba
DAMOGRAPHY MEDIA
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