Inconvenient Indian

Author and activist Thomas King appears as himself in the film.

Inconvenient Indian blends scenes in which author and indigenous rights activist Thomas King, filmed in a taxi cab being driven by actress Gail Maurice in character as an indigenous trickster, narrates portions of his own book with video clips of historical representation of indigenous peoples as well as segments profiling modern figures, such as Kent Monkman, Christi Belcourt, A Tribe Called Red, Alethea Arnaquq-Baril and Nyla Innuksuk, who are reshaping the narrative with their contemporary work in art, music, literature and film.[2] It does not follow a traditional documentary format, using evocative imagery instead of talking heads; King is never seen to speak, appearing on screen independent to his narration.[3]

The film also uses dramatic juxtaposition to deliver its message, including scenes with King's narration overlaying an image of him eating popcorn while watching old film Westerns and following a scene of Dakota Access Pipeline protests with one of a man distributing seal meat to indigenous Canadian families, having previously clubbed it to ensure it was shot dead. Director Michelle Latimer said she did this to highlight the cruelty towards human protestors,[4] as well as suggesting that mainstream society is more angered at cruelty towards animals (rather than people) because hunting allows indigenous peoples to be self-reliant and live their history outside of society in the present.[5]

Maurice and Monkman appear as trickster figures in the film, both in a way Latimer described as gender bending and two-spirit; she incorporated Maurice's Coyote character and Monkman's alter ego Miss Chief Eagle Testickle to reflect on "the colonization of sexuality in Western culture", saying that "it was only with the onset of Christianity that we started to have judgment based on sexuality."[5]

The film premiered at the 2020 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF),[7] where it won the People's Choice Award for Documentaries and the award for Best Canadian Film.[8] Latimer said she would donate the CAD$10,000 Amplify Voices Best Canadian Feature Film prize to five emerging indigenous artists.[9] At TIFF, she also premiered her television series Trickster, which Refinery29 and Latimer described as the answer to her own request, through Inconvenient Indian, for better indigenous Canadian representation.[10][11] Latimer has expressed an interest in the film being used as an educational tool in schools.[12]

An image of Allakariallak, portrayed as "Nanook" in Nanook of the North; critics like Cinema Scope's Adam Nayman note the power of the gaze of indigenous peoples in Inconvenient Indian watching through the colonial lens of Nanook.[15]

The film was named to TIFF's year-end Canada's Top Ten list for feature films.[16] Barbara Goslawski, for That Shelf, wrote that "if there is only one must-see film at TIFF, it is [...] Inconvenient Indian."[17]

For The Georgia Straight, Radheyan Simonpillai praised the film, comparing it to early documentaries and ethnographic films, like Robert Flaherty's Nanook of the North, which generally spread disinformation about indigenous communities; he said that "the propulsive and poetic lesson on how history frames Indigenous people [...] experiments with the doc form while challenging the genre's definition of truth and representation."[2] Jude Dry of IndieWire called it "an evocative and visually ripe love poem to Canadian Indigenous culture",[3] and Luke Gorham of In Review said that it "[justifies] its existence as a visual text" in a way many documentaries fail.[18] Gorham and Alissa Wilkinson for Vox both opined that it tackles colonization of the image of indigenous peoples, noting that the medium of film is ideal for this reclamation, as film was originally how the narrative of indigenous people was taken away through processes including negative movie tropes.[18][19]

Jason Gorber for /Film reflected on the successful conveyance of the documentary's purpose, saying that it is not optimistic for change but aims to educate on the realities of indigenous life past and present and "helps both showcase and celebrate a group of peoples too often presented as inconvenient at best, primed for extinction at the most heinous."[20] Comparatively, Goslawski suggests that it "is the kind of film that inspires action [...] grounded in the promise of a better future."[17] Brief Take's Daniel Reynolds opined that "we shouldn't need a film like Inconvenient Indian. Not in 2020, and not with Canada now at over 150 years old [...] What Latimer's film illustrates, however, is that [Indigenous people] are already doing more than just surviving in the face of this indifference — they're thriving."[21]

• Inconvenient Indian on IMDb