“Like the miner’s canary, the Indian marks the shift from fresh air to poison gas in our political atmosphere, and our treatment of the Indians, even more than our treatment of other minorities, reflects the rise and fall of our democratic faith,” said Felix Cohen, lawyer and former chief of the Indian Law Survey. On Feb. 13, Guilford’s Native American Club sponsored a screening of the 2007 documentary “The Canary Effect,” titled after Cohen’s quote.

The controversial film was produced in the United Kingdom due to a lack of support by American production companies. It focuses on atrocities committed against Native Americans from the arrival of Columbus in 1492 to today.

“It’s hard to discover an occupied territory,” said Ward Churchill, author and former ethnic studies professor at Colorado University, in the film. “I often go for the first time to visit people who’ve moved into the area. It may be the first time I’ve been in their living room, but I can hardly say I discovered it.”

While colonialism was the catalyst for destruction of indigenous cultures, the U.S. government continued the trauma. “The Canary Effect” highlights several programs throughout history that negatively affected the American Indian population. Such policies are in direct violation of the United Nation’s five-clause definition of genocide.

Clause A of the U.N. document defines “killing members of the (national, ethnical, racial or religious) group” as genocide.

Statistics within the film describe the decimation of the Native American population via military attacks such as the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre which killed over 150 Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians.

Contemporary violations of international genocide laws include the 1970s Family Planning Act which resulted in forced sterilization of Native American women.

While appalling legislation and events are occasionally mentioned in history classes, the stories of individual Indian communities go untold. Problems on the nation’s 304 reservations are overlooked and the film tried to give such issues the coverage they deserve.

In 2005, 10 boys on the Cheyenne River reservation in South Dakota made a suicide pact, hanging themselves in the order of numbers drawn at random. This story was covered locally, but ignored by national media. “The Canary Effect” begged the question, “What if they had been white?”

Similarly, in 2005, a 17-year-old killed 10 people on the Red Lake reservation in Minnesota. There was minimal media coverage and President Bush didn’t comment on the shooting for almost a week.

Following the film, panelists discussed their experiences of being indigenous and overlooked or exploited by the American government.

“I was like a tree without roots – I had my identity ascribed by an outside group,” said Guilford alumus Vivette Jeffries-Logan.

First-year Andrew Slater discussed not only having his identity ascribed but also dictated by the government’s termination of his tribe.

“I, by law, do not exist,” said Slater, a member of the “extinct” Yamasee tribe. While Native American populations have greatly decreased, they still have a strong presence within the nation.

“One of the biggest successes is that we are still here,” Jeffries-Logan said. “We have never gone extinct. We have survived one of the most vile atrocities of all time. I have been given the responsibility of a fire carrier of our culture; I carry on the stories and the traditions of our people.”

Like Jeffries-Logan, “The Canary Effect” serves as a torch for the public – illuminating ideas, showing the forgotten stories, and reminding us of the truth.