Art, Truth & Reconciliation

By Gerald McMaster

Chapter

Lisa Jackson, Savage, 2009

A girl in a uniform stands in a darkened school.

In Savage, Anishinaabe filmmaker and multimedia artist Lisa Jackson (b.1974) of Aamjiwnaang First Nation in Ontario compresses colonial dislocation, cultural loss, and Indigenous resistance into six minutes of genre-bending film. It begins with pastoral, gently beautiful imagery: a young Cree girl riding in the back seat of a car through the countryside juxtaposed with the image of a woman in a kitchen singing a lullaby in Cree. These early moments are suffused with longing and nostalgia not merely for a singular moment in time but for what is about to be lost. The lullaby, quiet rituals, and domestic space evoke a world of relationship, language, and care—things residential schooling threatened to sever.

A woman in an apron sits at a kitchen table

A busy schoolroom with uniformed students.

Then comes the transformation: the girl is led into the school, her hair is washed and cut, and she is dressed in a uniform. The film’s visual style shifts; instead of open landscapes and lyrical sound, there is harshness and uniform order. In scenes of rote writing, heads bowed, behaviour controlled, Savage evokes the pedagogical violence of assimilation: the suppression of language, the elimination of identity, the systematized removal of innocence.

Jackson does not leave her characters as passive victims. In a subtle yet important intervention, when the teacher leaves the classroom, the children—who until then have obeyed quietly—rise, break the imposed discipline, and perform a synchronized dance. At first, the movement is almost zombie-like: unthinking, uniform. Yet, within that performance there are moments of individuality, solos and improvisation, showing that even under an oppressive regime, identity, creativity, and resistance survive. The apposition of gentle lullaby and then this burst of rhythm and improvisation stages a tension between what is lost and what endures.

Genre, too, is bent and shaped. In Savage, Jackson weaves elements of musical, horror, historical drama, and lyrical imagery. The “residential school musical” label captures this hybrid form—part historical allegory, part performative critique. The musicality implicates viewers into the power of song, dance, and voice as survival tools, while the horror elements such as the zombie-like uniformity viscerally signal the dehumanization inherent in residential schools.

Savage works through ambiguity and restraint rather than graphic depiction. Instead of illustrating obvious violence or explicit cruelty (which residential schools undoubtedly included), Jackson focuses on an emotional and symbolic register: loss of self, silencing, transformation. She allows the lullaby to linger and for the transition to feel sudden and wrenching, but she also gives space for resistance—to show that even in forced silence, voices find an outlet. In not quite six minutes, she moves through historical memory, familial grief, corporeal transformation, and a subversive reclaiming of identity within the schooling system that sought to erase it.

Savage reminds viewers that historical colonial practices, far from being confined to the past, are rippling into the present. The contemporary resonance of forced schooling, the loss of language, and generational trauma remains. The film insists that remembering is not enough. Resisting dehumanization and reclaiming language, movement, and song are necessary acts of survival and identity.

Art, Truth & Reconciliation

Lisa Jackson, Savage, 2009

Gallery of A New Generation of Witness