Zombie Book Club
Welcome to Zombie Book Club! We're a Podcast that's also a book club! We talk about Zombie / Apocalyptic horror novels, TV and movies.
Zombie Book Club
'Blood Quantum' has lots of GORE, but its about SO MUCH MORE | Zombie Book Club Podcast Ep 54
Join us on this gripping episode of Zombie Book Club as we unpack the powerful film "Blood Quantum" by Mi'kmaq filmmaker Jeff Barnaby. Hosts Dan and Leah, acknowledging their station on the lands of the Abenaki people and the Wabanaki Confederacy, delve into the film's premise: while the dead rise outside the Red Crow reserve, the Indigenous inhabitants are mysteriously immune. This episode isn't just a movie review—it's a journey through history, culture, and the crucial social commentary embedded in Barnaby's work, all while recognizing our hosts' commitment to authenticity and respect.
Step back in time with us as we contrast our childhood education about Native American history with the harsh realities we've come to learn. We share personal stories and discuss the impact of colonialism, the 1981 conflict over fishing rights, and the complex dynamics depicted in the film. We introduce key characters like Trayler, Joseph, Joss, Lysol, and Charlie, and unravel their intricate relationships amidst a zombie apocalypse. This episode isn't just informative; it's a heartfelt invitation for listeners to join our ongoing learning journey and contribute with their knowledge and recommendations.
From the concept of blood quantum and its oppressive eugenic roots to the profound emotional depth of "Blood Quantum," we dissect the themes that make this film a must-watch. We explore the significance of authentic representation in media, the intergenerational trauma faced by Indigenous peoples, and the transformative impact of indigenous storytelling. Tune in to hear about the film's compelling creative elements, including its influential social commentary, and why it's especially relevant in today's context. Don't miss out on this riveting discussion that underscores the need for more genuine Indigenous voices in storytelling, making it essential for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous audiences alike.
Interview with Jeff Barnaby
https://www.vulture.com/2020/05/jeff-barnaby-is-worried-white-people-wont-get-blood-quantum.html
What is Blood Quantum:
https://nativegov.org/resources/blood-quantum-and-sovereignty-a-guide/
Whose Native Land do you live on?
https://native-land.ca/
Symbolism of water and it’s connection to the Mi'kmaq people: https://www.saltwire.com/atlantic-canada/news/value-of-water-highlighted-during-mikmaq-ceremony-141584/
Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women:
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Welcome to Zombie Book Club, the only book club where the book is a movie and the movie is made by a native Mi'kmaq filmmaker, Jeff Barnaby. And the zombies are white people, Aren't we all?
Speaker 2:I'm a zombie Me too.
Speaker 1:I'm Dan, and when I'm not busy being an infected hillbilly townie, I'm writing a book about a zombie outbreak that tears down the systems of power by burning it all to the ground.
Speaker 2:Honestly thinking about it is how I get through the day most days. In other news, my psychiatrist has rescheduled all of my appointments indefinitely. I don't think that's a good thing. I'm Leah. We live on the lands of the Abenaki people and the Wabanaki Confederacy, which is a native nation that is still unrecognized by the US federal government to this day, but I thought that was a fun fact that I'd share before we get into it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and by by it we mean the thing that we're talking about. Yeah, what are we doing today? We're talking about the movie blood quantum by the filmmaker jeff barnaby. Uh, where the dead are coming back to life outside the isolated magma reserve of red crow. Uh, except for the indigenous inhabitants, who are strangely immune to the zombie plague.
Speaker 2:Interesting. There is so much to unpack in this film, so much that I'm not sure we can get through it all in this episode and we're going to have a lot in the show notes for you to keep doing your own reading, because this film is both excellent entertainment and the kind of content if you are not a native person from Turtle Island you definitely need to be watching or thinking about. And just another small note too, if you don't know who the Mi'kmaq people are that Dan just referred to in his intro, they are indigenous peoples to North America, which is often called by Native Americans Turtle Island, because North America is English and clearly not what it was called when we got here.
Speaker 1:Our ancestors got here there were all kinds of names for this place. Yeah, they would have a different name for it.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, and Turtle Island. Again, it's like a blanket name. Obviously, people had different names for their lands all across Turtle Island. So we're going to start with the lighter bits of what we loved, a little bit of what we wish there was more of, and then go into what this film was really about and why, in our opinion, it really is a must watch. I'd personally put it in my top 10 zombie movies of all time.
Speaker 1:Oh, it's definitely in the top 10.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's really really good Just as a zombie movie period, but it's also good because there's a level of social commentary that is unmatched, in my view. Also Jeff in my view also, jeff, make more. We should, I mean frankly, have we?
Speaker 1:looked into what else jeff has made. We need to do that. He is a new name to me. Yeah, it was very good. I need to check it out. Uh, we release episodes every sunday, so subscribe. Give us five of those delicious stars that we eat. We require them for sustenance yes, please, please. Yeah, but unfortunately when we eat one of the stars, we get a lower rating, so we have to keep on feeding the rating with more stars as we eat them. They're delicious. Have you eaten a star? I have not.
Speaker 2:But I mean, I guess I have eaten previous stars, or stars like brains for us.
Speaker 1:A little bit. Yeah, I mean Mario eats stars and you see what happens.
Speaker 2:true, I can like hear the sound in my head of the sound of when he gets kind of like drugs that's not the sound. That's another mario song sound.
Speaker 2:Anyhow, we're getting back on topic yes I have a pretty important statement I feel that we need to make before getting into this, which is I think we've mentioned this a few times Anybody listening to us can probably tell that we are white people. What? Yes, we are white people. I didn't sign on for this. I mean, nobody signs on for their race, they just are when they're born.
Speaker 1:You know it took us how many episodes before we found out that these two hosts were white and why it matters.
Speaker 2:I mean, it always matters, right? Your identity in the world, uh, influences how you perceive the world and the things that you get or have more difficult times accessing, um. But anyways, this is two white people discussing a film by a Mi'kmaq filmmaker, jeff Barnaby, and so we're going to directly quote Jeff many times to make sure you hear his perspective. We've prepared quite a bit and read quite a bit before we discuss this film because, as two white people who, frankly, both of us, in our childhoods, everything we learned about Native people was basically a lie, yeah, we are re-educating ourselves and we're still learning. In our childhoods, where everything we learned about native people was basically a lie, yeah, we are re-educating ourselves, um, and we're still learning. So if we make mistakes, I'm sorry. This is gonna be like a learning live podcast. Do you want to know what?
Speaker 1:um, public school has taught me about native american people. Yeah, tell me, uh, if you put your hand on a piece of paper and draw around the outside, you can draw a turkey.
Speaker 2:That's all you know, and that's what the native american people taught us when they met the pilgrims at least we live in a state now that recognizes indigenous people's day instead of columbus day yeah, and uh and I've I've been, uh, trying to call it that for the past five years.
Speaker 1:Indigenous people's day yeah.
Speaker 2:You know what's interesting.
Speaker 1:Even at work.
Speaker 2:It just shows the colonialist aspect of it. You know what holiday Dan doesn't get off every year? He gets Fourth of July off, he gets Labor Day off, he gets Memorial Day off. You want to know what day he doesn't get? Indigenous People's Day.
Speaker 1:You know what other day I don't get off, which is also kind of messed up veterans day yeah, you are a veteran so that's a little messed up too. They're like happy veterans day and I'm like, fuck you, I should have today off. I'm a veteran, you should be doing my job today interesting.
Speaker 2:Thank you for the lesson in the history of indigenous people, yeah, which apparently you can learn by just drawing your hand and making a turkey yes, that's, that's what.
Speaker 1:That's what they teach us oh yeah, everything.
Speaker 2:I will say briefly everything I know frankly started I got some education in my university experience but frankly, not enough, and then I I threw, honestly, like a bunch of accidental things that happened. I was very lucky to work directly with some first nations in canada, uh, and indigenous folks up there, and I learned so much in that five or six years of my life or that was my main focus that I um realized frankly that, like I think it was the big moment where I realized most of my culture is bullshit. But I'm still learning a lot again. So I can't promise I'm not gonna fuck up, but if you, if I say something and you happen to know more about it, you want to share, like, please come chat with us on instagram.
Speaker 1:I'd love to hear from you yeah, we're not gonna be like, no, we're right and you're wrong. Definitely not because we're stupid, we don't know anything, stupid white people. Much in that same way, like Like when I was a kid I've told this story before where, like you know, when, when you're, when you're a white kid growing up, especially like before the 2000s probably kids played cowboys and Indians and I told the story longer in a different episode. And I told the story longer in a different episode, I don't remember when, but I remember being upset that all of my friends, because they had cowboy hats, they picked the cowboy team, forcing me and some other kids to be the Indians. And I brought this up to my stepdad, who read a lot of nonfiction books. He just liked learning things and he's like, well, actually, you know, the cowboys took the land of the Native Americans. So really, if you think about it, it's the cowboys who are the bad guys. And I was like whoa, my head just exploded, your world just turned over.
Speaker 1:They didn't teach me that in school, no, and I think that was actually a really big moment for me to like learn something different from what they taught me in school.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm glad your dad did that. I'm not going to say the kinds of things that my grandfather said. I will just say that his family was involved in colonizing British Columbia, which is the far west coast province of Canada. For those who don't know, and I remember always thinking, like when I was a kid and even a young adult, like why does he say such terrible things about Native folks? And then I realized, oh, because his experience was taking their land and they didn't like it. That might be what this is about. And my grandpa's incredibly racist that and that took me to, I think, like maybe 30.
Speaker 1:I figured that out, you know it's funny how taking something from somebody else and them having a problem with you doing that can some. We can make some people just be like, wow, those people are assholes when we took away their stuff. Yeah, why don't? Really weird, why don't? Why don't they smile more?
Speaker 2:You know, what's also weird is that the cabin that my grandfather grew up in until he was 14 and his father was murdered by his gold prospecting partner Very long side story, Anyways. That cabin is considered a heritage cabin in Wells Gray Park in Canada and I want to go there one day and I want to see if it tells the full story of that place, not just the like. Look at this great little cabins of white people put to farm cattle.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But we don't know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, who knows?
Speaker 2:I also want to give a shout out to Brandy, if you're listening, for recommending this movie. We made a request in episode 50 for anybody who knew of indigenous native zombie films or books, and Brandy both sent us this film and a whole list of horror books by indigenous authors that we're going through to see which ones are zombie content that we could talk about in the future. So thank you, Brandy and Dan. Before I get into the summary, what did you think this movie was about when I first told you we should watch it?
Speaker 1:I thought it was about time-traveling vampires.
Speaker 2:And why did you think that?
Speaker 1:Because I didn't know what blood quantum meant. I've never heard it before in my entire life. So I was like, well, you know, usually movies that are about blood or something, that's like vampire territory and quantum sounds like quantum physics, which usually refers to time travel in movies. So time traveling vampires, which sounds like an awesome movie, to be honest.
Speaker 2:It does, but it's definitely not what it's about. So what is this movie actually about, if it's not about time traveling vampires? It is, according to jeff barnaby, an homage to his favorite classic horror movies and a commentary on the trauma faced by indigenous people. It's set in 1981 on the migma reserve of red crow in quebec, canada, which is actually jeff's own reserve that he grew up on, and the movie opens on the early stages of the contagion. The zombie contagion ends up turning white folks, and white folks only, into violent zombies, uh, which the red crow reserve folks call zeds. Yeah, because it's canada. Yeah, and still that's yeah, we're not.
Speaker 2:I won't get into proper pronunciation because that's probably uh elitist yeah, and the immune red crow nation have to fight the enemy, these white zombies that are coming in from the outside, while also dealing with some very serious questions within their own walls. Are the migma people duty bound to help the white survivors or do the generations of genocidal acts by white people towards indigenous people, and specifically the migmakmaq of Red Crow Reserve, give them license to just say fuck off and take care of their own? That's the central premise of the movie in many ways.
Speaker 1:I kind of side with not helping white people, me too, I mean help me. I'm just.
Speaker 2:Of course we want to think that we're the exceptional white people.
Speaker 1:I'm the exception. Yeah, I don't know. Let's find out by the end of this episode if I am the exception.
Speaker 2:This is located on Mi'kmaq traditional territory, which the Red Crow Reserve is a very small portion. What we have to remember is that Red Crow Reserve is a tiny slice of the actual land the Mi'kmaq people have as traditional territory, and there are many reserves and reservations in the United States because they're called Reserves in Canada. Reservations in the United States that expanded a huge swath of land all the way from Canada's Atlantic provinces Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland, the Gaspé Peninsula of Quebec and then the northeastern region of maine, that is, in the entire traditional national territory of the migma, and so we're talking about a tiny reserve inside of that much bigger land gave them.
Speaker 2:What a village well, there's, there are many reserves and reservations inside of that, but they're they're still very tiny, you know plots of land compared to what they actually, uh, called their own home and native land yeah, before it was taken from them. This film is also inspired by true events, which I think is worth mentioning, that in june of 1981, lucien lessard, who's the quebec, who was the quebec minister of recreation, hunting and fishing, instigated conflict with the migma people living on restagush gauch restigoush Gauche I'm probably butchering that by demanding that they remove all nets from their traditional fishing waters. This is really important because fish and water play a big role in this film We'll talk about more in a minute Because salmon fishing was vital to the survival of those in the reservation. So there was intense pushback from the Red Crow people and instead of dealing with the issue peaceably, what do you think Lessard, the Quebec Minister of Recreation, hunting and Fishing, did?
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, he probably got like all the cops involved. Yeah, he probably came down with the entire force of everything that's in the area 400.
Speaker 2:Quebec provincial police engaged in a brutal raid on the reservation Wow, I should say reserve because it's Canadian but yeah, that's you know. That's a reminder that 1981, not that long ago still these horrible things are happening, and we'll get into it in a bit later. The action of colonialism is still happening right now for Native folks who are the key characters in the movie Dan Okay right now for native folks who are the key characters in the movie dan.
Speaker 1:Okay, so, uh, we have first the um the sheriff, michael. Michael gray eyes plays a character named trailer um, who's also in fear of the walking dead. I think it's season three, uh, don't quote me, um, but he's the tribal sheriff and he's also the father to joseph, yeah, and lysol. He's his father to two of the main characters.
Speaker 2:Now the father to lysol lysol is. Is lysol his son? Yeah, he had a different mother, that's right. Yeah, these are the things I miss.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's not super like one we'll talk more about this later but there are so many like little tiny details that if you miss them at the very beginning or whenever they first introduced these tiny details, you just won't know this for the rest of the movie.
Speaker 2:Yeah, one of the very main characters, and he is doing a lot to try and protect the families on the reserve. Yeah, and also figure out a way to welcome the desperate white refugees, uh, while like killing all of the white zombies that are trying to close in, because, even though they are immune to the virus, they are still at risk, they can still be harmed, which is, uh, again, I think, a really interesting metaphor for this. Who else is in the film?
Speaker 1:um, I'm going to skip to forrest. Goodluck as joseph, because I don't want to butcher the name of his mother, joss, who you can pronounce oh great, this is the part where this is just like stupid white people.
Speaker 2:But you know we keep going talking about forest.
Speaker 1:Good luck okay forest, uh, good luck. Plays joseph um, who's trailer's son, and he's also trying to figure out who he is as a man, because he's a teenager, um, and I was also an expecting father, so, uh, very young, and is about to have to go into adulthood and raise a child on his own yeah, well, not on his own, but with his teenage girlfriend yeah and uh.
Speaker 2:Now we're gonna talk about, uh, the character joss, who is trailer's ex-wife, uh, who is a nurse and is really pivotal in the film because she is caring for her people as a nurse, but also as another leader in the community, and she's also trying to take care of all those white people, refugees in the outbreak. And I'm going to have youtube pronounce her name so that I don't butcher it alamaya tail feathers.
Speaker 1:Alamaya tail feathers that's exactly how I thought it was spelled tail feathers. I just wanted to know if you knew how to how to pronounce it. Um, but I knew exactly that's how it was said.
Speaker 2:Of course you did yes. Who else is in the film, Dan?
Speaker 1:I should also say that Joss is also kind of like this voice of reason, yes, but also Kiowa Gordon plays Lysol, who's Joseph's half-brother and also the anti-hero or the full villain in the movie no, nobody can be sure, because he's, uh, you kind of want to take a side, but also you're kind of like what an asshole yeah, you're like you're right, but do we have to kill everybody?
Speaker 2:yes and last but not least, we have olivia scriven as charlie, who is joseph's 16 year old white girlfriend, who is pregnant with joseph's child, and so one of the crux things in the movie is will charlie and joseph's child be a zombie or be immune? Yeah, also related to blood quantum. So let's get into zombie type, where we get to talk a little bit about what blood quantum is. But first, what kind of zombie type would you classify these?
Speaker 1:these, um, as far as I can tell, are pathological zombies, so they it is a virus or a bacteria in the lake that's infected fish and dogs and other wildlife. Um, it seems like other water sources are clean, so they mention a stream that they can drink water out of and they also mention that there's some animals out of, and they also mention that there's some animals, like deer and elk that seem to be immune that's helpful, because then you can eat them yeah, um, so we see fish come back to life after they've been fully gutted.
Speaker 1:Uh, we've seen a dog, um, be put down by trailer in the first scenes of the movie. Uh, instead of going for a headshot, he, he kind of like he, he, he looks like he's about to aim for a headshot but like can't bring himself to do it and shoots it in the torso, um, and then it comes back to life in his trunk and uh, and then he's gonna, he's gotta shoot it, yeah, and it yeah, and it jumps at him jump scare.
Speaker 2:One of the first things trailer hears about as a sheriff on the radio is the person the uh dispatcher on the radio says we've got some white guy trying to eat this other guy's chickens. Yeah, but not in the normal like like live chicken.
Speaker 1:Yeah there's a drunk. There's a drunk white guy trying to eat somebody's chickens yeah, that's the first allusion to like. This is crossed over to people and as we know from Fallout, a ghoul cannot abide a chicken.
Speaker 2:It's true.
Speaker 1:Also, in the very beginning of the movie, we see a trailer, and actually not just trailer, but also his sons are attacked by a zombie in a jail cell and get bit, all of them get bit and we're like, oh, I thought these were the main characters, now they're going to be dead. And then we find out that they're immune. They can get bitten as many times as they like. They can go out like just go get bit all night long.
Speaker 2:Well, I don't think they want to get bit all night long Get bit all night long, and they can also be eaten, if they get taken over by a horde which does happen and we're not gonna say to who, because I gonna try and leave some stuff to the imagination for you to watch this film imagine um, you find yourself in the zombie apocalypse.
Speaker 1:You're like, whoa, I'm immune. And then you get started getting chomped on by like six different zombies and you're like, oh no, now I gotta not turn into a zombie during all of this and just die yeah, it's very different, and I think it's also different where I've seen.
Speaker 2:You know, every once in a while there's a zombie movie that's like there's this one magical person who's immune, yeah, but in this case it's a whole people who are immune, yeah, and this brings us to blood quantum the name of the film because, again, white people get infected, native people do not yeah, so what, what?
Speaker 1:what is a blood quantum? What?
Speaker 2:did you know about blood quantum? Before the movie nothing, absolutely nothing yeah, okay.
Speaker 2:so as usual, we're giving you the high level info here, but linked in the show notes is a whole very long description about what this is about, what happened and why it has had such an impact to this very day on identity politics and power dynamics around. Who gets to decide who is native and who isn't in this ongoing colonial project that is Canada and the United States. So, unsurprisingly, this concept of blood quantum did not exist before white settlers chose to use it as a form of eugenics. So there was a way of quantifying quote unquote Indian blood by fractions to figure out whether or not somebody was Indian or not, yeah, and whether or not they would get recognized as a native person in their community.
Speaker 1:So when Elizabeth Warren is up there being like I'm 164th Cherokee, that's what that's based on. Is blood quantum?
Speaker 2:yes, exactly, and blood quantum, like I said, is rooted in eugenics, and eugenics is the set of beliefs and practices which aim at improving the genetic quality of the human population, and it's an incredibly racist fucked up um ideology from, I believe, the late 1800s, when all the most important science happened.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that's. You know, like this is, this is the time where the people they would measure the late 1800s into the mid-20th century, when all the most important science happened.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's you know, like this is the time where they would measure people's heads and they would use the size of heads and brains to justify that, like, white people were smarter than everybody else.
Speaker 1:Yeah, based on how many wrinkles were in your skull.
Speaker 2:I think it's also just like how big your head was in relationship to the rest of your body. It was very weird shit, uh, and clearly like why would white people do this? It was obviously a tool to disempower native people by separating from their lands resources, their culture, their identity, their language and their futures. Because if you didn't have enough quote-unquote uh of the blood quantum, you don't get to be native. So it started being used by the bureau of Indian Affairs in 1884.
Speaker 2:And there were census rules for native people where you would assign often incorrect blood quantum amounts based on having the combined degree of Indian blood from both parents. So, for example, one quarter from one parent and one half from the other equals three eighth blood quantum for the child you see how fucked up this is already, and it would be then based on the blood quantum which child? You see how fucked up this is already. Yeah, and it would be then based on the blood quantum which was identified by the bureau of indian affairs. Then you get native nation affiliation. It is currently used by native nations, though it has a real legacy, because now some native nations actually use blood quantum to determine citizenship. For example, a friend of mine is is Cherokee and her mother is Cherokee. But they had lost their ties to that community and so they had to go through a very long and complex application process to prove that they were Cherokee citizens and come back into that citizenship right as a Cherokee citizen. And basically, prospective citizens with less than a quarter blood quantum are ineligible.
Speaker 2:So elizabeth warren 164th you're not considered native and most native nations don't allow dual or multi-nation citizenship, so it has a real impact and it I think it's one of those things that was invented by settlers, colonists. That, uh, has a really complicated legacy because, like any nation, um, native nations also have to figure out how who belongs and who doesn't belong, and some folks use this, some folks don't yeah, and I I imagine it also like plays a big role in like people who are building families.
Speaker 2:You know, if they have a certain amount of blood quantum they're not going to want to their child to have less yeah, the purpose of this is to make fewer native people, because if they have, basically you make it very difficult to keep your status. Um, for example, another friend of mine's partner has status, but his children don't. Because he married a white woman, they just automatically lose it. Wow, yeah, um, also in canada there was a point in time where if a native woman married a white woman, they just automatically lose it. Wow, yeah, um, also in canada there was a point in time where if a native woman married a white man, their children automatically didn't get citizenship into the nation. So this is just a way of quote-unquote solving the indian problem by making fewer and fewer of them and quote-unquote integrating them and civilizing them.
Speaker 1:Also, in giant quotation marks folks into white culture yeah, and I'm and I'm sure that those uh, three-eighths blood quantum children were fully accepted into white society without any, any issues, any issues.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I forgot the word I was looking for I think the important thing to know here, uh is, this is why it's important not to assume somebody's identity. You could see someone who appears black to you, who's identity? You could see someone who appears black to you who is also native. You could see someone who appears fully white to you, who is also native, and that's not up to us to decide or assume.
Speaker 1:When I was growing up, I didn't really identify with my family or anything. I don't know my father, nobody that I went to school with had my last name, uh. So I kind of I kind of felt like I didn't really have a culture, like I didn't you know, like, like it's, it's white culture, so like it, it is there, it exists, but it just kind of it's fucking lame and it sucks. So, yeah, um, the only thing that I actually knew about my own heritage is one I'm German, turns out, I'm actually not even German because my German ancestors actually came from France and they're not French because they came from Norway. So Norwegian via France and Germany.
Speaker 2:I think this just proves that people move and identities shift over time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, um, but I was born in athens, greece, so I really identified with, like when we were learning in school, like the greek mythology. I really paid attention during those times because I'm like I want to learn all about these. Like I want to know what zeus is up to, what's, what's all this about? This sounds really cool. This sounds like something I can identify with as somebody who who's technically greek because I had partial citizenship of greece at the time um, and the only other thing that I knew about was my grandfather, and I don't know what percentage was. Um was some amount mohawk, uh, from from canada, and I don't know anything about it, but like it was something that I thought about a lot because I'm like I want to know more about this. But you know, I didn't have access to any of this information. It's not like I could open up a book and like learn about, like what it means to be part of a mohawk tribe. You know, like I can't like.
Speaker 1:Learn their customs, learn their um. You know the things that they believe in. I could learn what kind of houses they made and how to make a turkey with my hand, and that was about it yeah I thought when you were a kid, yeah, when I was a kid, yeah, and I, I always, I always, wished that I had more of a connection to that side of my family, because I wanted to learn about it, because it seemed like something that like that, like an identity that you could belong to yeah and I didn't feel like I had anything like that I really appreciate you sharing that, because I I've heard a lot of americans like talk about their even if it's like a tiny bit of this quote-unquote blood quantum history, which may or may not be true.
Speaker 2:Like I like, I believe you that you have knowledge of this and that's the case. But I do sometimes think white people claim this whether they actually have factual evidence or not, and I think it's for two reasons.
Speaker 2:One uh to justify their halloween costume thank you for inserting a joke in a very serious discussion. We need that, uh well, yes, for to be able to justify their, their costume, which I have actually heard of the justification. Someone told me it was okay that they dressed up as pocahontas because their great, great, great, great, great, great great grandmother was native. I forget which nation they were from. Um ps, not okay to dress up as pocahontas or to wear a headdress.
Speaker 1:And if you want to know why, google it you know, it's also not a good, good excuse to dress up as a nazi yeah, in general, don't dress up as other people's identities for halloween.
Speaker 2:Yeah, uh, that's like the general statement. So the other big ones I wanted to mention was, like one, our ancestors, as white people, traded in their cultural identities for this thing that is called whiteness. Because whiteness and the concept of white and other races was invented a couple of hundred years ago. It's actually a very new concept. Again, google the invention of race and you'll learn all about it. Because before we were white, we were Hungarian, we were Welsh, we were Irish, we were all of these things, and you could think of us as, like Anglo-speaking Americans today, or European Americans, if you want to not just use the term white.
Speaker 2:But we traded in, we chose to trade in those identities to some degree for the power that is whiteness, which gives us more access to privilege. Right like, why did irish people over time who still many irish people still do have a strong sense of that identity, but also did opt into whiteness? Because for a long time they were treated just as badly, because they weren't considered fully white or as quote-unquote civilized as my British ancestors. But now, because they can adopt whiteness, they can oppress and have more benefits, even if it's just a little bit than black people, for example, and so I think that's one reason is that it's sad we've traded in our, our sense of identity and belonging for something that is really basically based on a colonial project and capitalism. Capitalism, like every holiday we have in this country, is about buying things like what's your favorite holiday to buy? Like what what's your favorite stupid commercial that you've seen on, like martin luther king jr day?
Speaker 1:I mean I haven't seen, not even commercial on tv you haven't in like 20 years, because I I completely divorced for from tv as soon as the internet became a thing um. But you know, president's day, we go out and buy cars.
Speaker 2:Martin luther king junior day, we go and buy mattresses yep and I mean what a weird holiday thanksgiving, which I call the indigenous day of mourning um, for a lot of reasons again, google it if you haven't heard of that before is followed by black friday. Right, you can't just celebrate with your family, you got to go buy shit, yeah. And so we do have some cultural traditions, we do have a culture. There is a white culture, but it is, um, I think, a really unhealthy culture overall, and it's the dominant culture and I, I think the other piece of this why, why folks often talk with their little tiny bit of ancestry that's not white, is because it can assuage some of the guilt a little bit like, oh, like I do have a right to be here because one, at least some ancestor way back, had a right to be here I can, I can see that yeah, I would just say in general, like I think it's 100% okay if you have a genuine connection to a native nation on Turtle Island.
Speaker 2:I think it's okay to know that and respect that history and learn about that nation. But what's not okay is cultural appropriation where you start to, without any connection to the actual community, claim that identity and start to like claim all the uh, the cultural aspects of that identity without actually being a part of the community. Reconnecting with the community is really important. So, yeah, that's my ted talk for the day it's it's.
Speaker 1:It's easy to do that now, like I um, because I wanted to learn more about indigenous cultures in this area, the Northeast. I couldn't specifically find anything for Mohawk, but I did find a YouTube channel that's run by the people of Akwesasne, which is a tribe in upstate New York, and they post a lot of really interesting stuff, like a lot of community stuff that doesn't really apply to me but it's still interesting to see it, but also just like a lot of uh stuff that, like um, helps, helps them talk about their traditions and and what it means to be a part of their tribe yeah, I think that's really great, like I think it's valuable to learn whose land you're on or what your ancestral connections might be and learn about that culture.
Speaker 2:I don't think that there's anything wrong with doing that. Yeah, but back to the movie.
Speaker 1:Yeah, let's talk about this movie.
Speaker 2:Blood Quantum. I think I mentioned this earlier, but the Blood Quantum concept obviously plays out in the who gets to be immune, who doesn't, who belongs on Red Crow Reserve and who doesn't. It creates a huge power shift where suddenly the Red Crow Reserve people have in some ways more power than white people. But the central thread, I think, is that Joseph's girlfriend is white and we just don't know until the very end of the movie whether her baby's going to be a zombie or they're going to be okay, and that baby's blood quantum would be half, assuming that his girlfriend, charlie is, is 100 percent white, which we also assuming that Joseph is 100 percent.
Speaker 2:That's very true.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's, you know he could. He could be a lower percentage because there's, you know, the white people have been here for a couple hundred years. Anything could have happened.
Speaker 2:That's very true? Yeah, because we are. This is why race is an illusion. We are all the same species. We can make babies create families with each other.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they, let us do that Well not always.
Speaker 2:Not always A lot of history of not letting that people do that, that's true. But I'm saying technically, biologically, we are all one human family and we've created false divisions that are, for the most part, harmful. I think it's important and healthy to have a cultural identity, but it's not helpful when it's used to have power over other people. Yeah, but don't have that identity. So let's get into what we loved about this film, because there's a lot you want to know what I loved.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I loved the movie film because there's a lot you want. You want to know what I loved. Yeah, I loved the movie. Yeah, all overall, I'm gonna just give it zeds right now 10 out of 10.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm gonna you know what I rarely give something a 10 out of 10.
Speaker 2:God, it's like really close it's like I was gonna say maybe nine and a half for like literally one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's there's only a couple points where I was like that could have been done better um, yeah but no, it's. It's a solid movie. I'd say easily nine and a half out of 10.
Speaker 2:Yeah, why don't we get into what we didn't love about it? Because it's so short. Yeah, let's do what we didn't love.
Speaker 1:And we'll come back to our love list.
Speaker 2:Yeah. What didn't you love about it, Dan?
Speaker 1:It's too short. Yeah, it has a lot of characters in it and I think it would have been a great TV series. And also because it was short, I felt like the story was a little bit condensed in areas. So I mentioned this earlier. If you missed some tiny detail like Lysol being Joseph's brother, I didn't know that we watched this movie twice. I didn't know that the watched this movie twice. I didn't know that the first time through I mean I mean either. And the second time I learned that lysol was um trailer, son, trailer, son.
Speaker 2:And in the first time through I wasn't even sure if joseph and half brothers. I thought they were just friends the first time I watched yeah, and then at a certain point I'm like, is it?
Speaker 1:is that is lysol his uncle? He looks young for an uncle yeah, so there's.
Speaker 2:I think that there's such good story here like this could have been. I think like this could have been um, a walking dead equivalent multi-season series. That would have been super fascinating to watch. It still could. Yeah, I would. I I don't know who we got a call to say do that.
Speaker 1:But if there was one uh movie I've watched in the last year that I would love to be a tv series, it's this one yeah, I mean, I think the people to call are the white studio executives at netflix to be like, hey, when you, uh, when you talk to the filmmaker and say this is a a great script, we love it so much, too bad, we can't do that, that happened, just do that. It was in his interview where he submitted scripts so many times and the executives are like this is the best script I have ever read. It's too bad, we can't do it. What the? And it's all because it's centered around the experience of being indigenous.
Speaker 2:Oh, no one will know why people can relate to that we can't relate to that. It's like such a ridiculous concept, because people who aren't white relate to white films and literature all the time, and this is why we talk about media representation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, in the show notes we will link an article and it's about the filmmaker. It says it's called Jeff Barnaby is worried white people won't get blood quantum um. And in there he talks about a lot, of, a lot of stuff and it was really good to read because it really really talked about the movie in a way that, like really opened up what it's really about yeah, agreed.
Speaker 2:So what did we love? Why do we? Why do we want I'm gonna say 10 seasons, because I'm traumatized with the 11 season arc of the walking dead why do we want 10 seasons of blood quantum?
Speaker 1:oh, I mean I, I love the setting, I loved everything about it. I love even without the um political narrative of like this is what it's like to be indigenous in this world without any of that. If I'm just being a dumb white person and I'm just watching it because I'm like I heard there's zombies niche movie, it's still just great. Like everything about it was really well done and it was exciting and it was engaging and it made you think.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's excellent. I'm going to say like right at the top, dan, you didn't see this parallel, but I sort of felt like it was there. They have these beautiful scenic landscape and like car driving angles that to me is reminiscent of Night of the Living Dead 1968 version, and that beautiful cinematography happens throughout.
Speaker 1:Yeah, living dead 1968 version, and that beautiful cinematography happens throughout. Yeah, there's, there's some interesting stuff, stuff that they uh did with like some drone shots of the town, where it was like it was kind of like doing some extreme dutch angles, just like tilting that camera up, sideways and sometimes even upside down, and it was just like it's telling, like in the very opening credits. It's like trying to tell you like this story is going to turn your understanding of the world upside down yeah and yeah and literally the world, the world and all the power dynamics of that world flip sort of.
Speaker 2:There's still obviously an impact of white people who are zombies attacking um red crow reserve. What else do you love?
Speaker 1:something that I really liked and this is something that I want to think about a lot more is I like that, the virus, the zombie virus? There was immunity. There were some people who were immune, and I don't think that this is really ever explored in zombie movies, with the exception of Z Nation, who had one immune person.
Speaker 2:Right, that's always had one immune person Right, that's always the super exceptional person.
Speaker 1:And I'd like to really see something that really explored the dynamics of what it would be like to exist if some people were immune and some others weren't Give us more, make it multiple seasons.
Speaker 1:And this one. It was easy to tell who was immune and who wasn't. But imagine a story where it's just like luck of the draw Like I'm immune, but you're not. Like does that mean that I have to be the one that always has to go on the food run? Am I treated differently by the rest of the community? Are they afraid of me? Do they think I'm infectious?
Speaker 2:Do they want to have sex with you to hopefully have babies that are immune?
Speaker 1:Yeah, do they want immune babies?
Speaker 2:Back to weird blood quantum politics they want my blood quantum yeah, um, another thing I love.
Speaker 2:That is absolutely not serious and I usually am not excited by gore, but I will say the gore was really well done. In this film there's a scene of a mom eating her newborn baby. There is, uh, this very innovative way of keeping white people out, which there's a bridge that connects the reserve to the townies quote unquote which is what they call white people. That they've put this like massive industrial grinder that they funnel all the way people do and they just like grind all of the zombies, it's a, it's a it's a snowblower.
Speaker 2:Oh, is that what it is.
Speaker 1:It's a giant snow I never knew what it was.
Speaker 2:I just was.
Speaker 1:I just knew it was grinding them into my uh my stepdad used to drive one of those um on tug hill. Like they use them in areas that like get a lot of snowfall um typically not like heavily traveled areas like this. This is where you have to like really cut your way through the snow, but that was like really ingenious and I love that idea yeah, and then last one at least.
Speaker 2:There's lots of other moments, but the moment where I was like I love the score is there was a person who had been sawed in half, partly except for their intestines, by a guy with a chainsaw, and his bottom half was hanging by his entrails from the second story window and it was great.
Speaker 1:And you actually see his legs through the? Yeah, and his top half came down for a jump scare, yeah it was great. And then he's just hanging there by his intestines, yeah like this has.
Speaker 2:This is why I think this is a great film. It has all of the things you love about zombies yes, but from a different point of view than I've personally seen before, and has a whole layer of social commentary on top of it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Something that I loved and I think this is great and it's something that I've thought about a lot with my writing is like how great shipping containers would be for a settlement Just in general. The improvised weapons of the people at the settlement, the makeshift armor, the punk rock aesthetic of 1981. And the whole appearance of everything tells its own story about what happened between the beginning of the movie and the point where they jump six months ahead.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's actually a good point with the movie too. That's really enjoyable is. They do a really good job of showing the early days of the outbreak and then like how quickly things have shifted six months later. Yeah, there's also really good indigenous music the whole way through, and at the end there's a song called Mommy's Little Guy by Fawn Wood. I'm going to definitely put it into our Zombie Book Club podcast soundtrack, which is on Spotify and available for you anytime you want to go enjoy, Because it made Dan cry, if I may say. I mean it's a beautiful song.
Speaker 1:I have a complicated relationship with my mother where I feel a little bit uneasy thinking that she cares about me yeah, um, and it wasn't necessarily like tears of happiness, but like feeling like I wasn't good enough and that I, uh, don't deserve to be loved.
Speaker 2:Oh, I want to reach across this table and hug you now, but I think, like whatever that song will evoke emotion from you, no matter what your parental relationship. That's what I feel, because it's just so powerful and it's an incredible ending because of how the story ends, which I'm not going to tell you. What else did you love, dan?
Speaker 1:uh boy, I think I ran out. There's so many things, I can't name Absolutely Everything. Something that I absolutely love and this is regardless of what story we're telling is I love a story where the characters don't have plot armor. You know, the thing that I disliked the most about World War Z was Brad Pitt was fucking untouchable after the first act. First act, he seemed very killable. The next two following it, he seemed like you could drop a building on him and he'd be fine he's brad pitt yeah, but uh, but we learn.
Speaker 1:We learn the hard way that there is no one safe in this movie.
Speaker 2:It's true and I think that that's always fun. Yeah, uh, and it's heartbreaking. Just prepare yourself to lose people you love in this film. Yeah, the other thing that I thought was interesting and I'm not sure if I would have noticed it if I'd watched it in 2020 so, like vividly, but joseph is wearing a cafea, which is the traditional scarf or head wrap of the palestinian people, and he wraps his baby in it, and I think that that's like, um, when his baby is born, I feel like I just gave something away.
Speaker 2:Oh well, there's a baby, there's a baby. He wraps a baby in it and I feel like it's like this, like small nod, uh, to solidarity and, um, mutual understanding with the Palestinian people, who are also an indigenous people, who have experienced very similar things to what indigenous people here in Turtle Island have experienced. And also it was like a symbolism of that like ongoing resistance and will to live and to keep keep moving through the generations that this baby is born, and like wrapped in this traditional scarf from the Palestinian people. So I don't know if I'm making that into something. I didn't read anything that jeff said, but it certainly stood out for me, given the current political situation and ongoing genocide of palestinian people you know, I think that there's going to be a lot of storytelling in articles of clothing that we're not even seeing.
Speaker 1:Um, I I put this somewhere else in in our, in our outline, but I'll talk about it now because I think it's very interesting. Um, there's a, there's somebody that shows up to the settlement and, uh, and they are a white person carrying their daughter who's been bitten in a blanket, and the blanket itself has h3 on it, and I'm like, what blanket is this? Why does it say h3? And I had to look it up. It's a bulgarian officer's blanket, something that is issued to a bulgarian officer in the bulgarian army. And what I learned about the significance of that in the early 80s is that the Bulgarian army had a campaign of forced assimilation that they waged against ethnic Turkish minority in Bulgaria, who they forebode to speak the Turkish language, and they were forced to adopt Bulgarian names. And that took place in 1984. It's not 1981, but I think it's close enough that I feel like using that blanket in that moment where the white person was standing there telling them to speak English. It's a little too close to not be on purpose.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that Jeff Barnaby is kind of brilliant. Yeah, too close to not be on purpose. Yeah, I think that jeff barnaby is kind of brilliant. Yeah, uh, and that's I mean like, again, that is a moment of solidarity and like acknowledging the connections between peoples who are experiencing similar things.
Speaker 2:The last thing I want to call out that I think is really special about the movie is that, while it has this huge commentary about colonialism and the genocide of native peoples in turtle island, it also doesn't forget, uh, and highlights really, the humanity of every single, uh, migma person.
Speaker 2:Like. There's a trailer and joss have this moment, their ex, their exes they're not together anymore and she's stitching him up from one of his many zombie bites white zombie bites and you can just feel the love between them. Yeah, and I think that that's a really important balance, because I think also, you know, we can talk about like indigenous people in this giant, like broad conceptual way, especially as white people, and not remember that they are also just people. There are people caught up in this system that they didn't choose to have and they're people who are doing people things just like anybody else. And there's another moment where Joseph and Charlie are talking. She's talking about her being afraid her baby's going to eat her from the inside out, and it's like such a lovely, intimate moment that it just really humanizes people and I think a way that's, I think, really important.
Speaker 1:Yeah, all in all, it's like top tier storytelling. You've got yeah, all in all, it's like top tier storytelling. You've got the political statement which is almost necessary in a zombie movie. Yep, it's got great action, great gore. It's exciting and has real feeling characters that have real moments.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's wonderful. And now we?
Speaker 1:have a very special zombie from Ollie Ellie eats brains, hi ollie, hi ollie um his website's ollie brain, ollie eats brainscom, that's right, yeah, you can find them there and all their awesome writing.
Speaker 2:Check out, maze. I am midway through it right now yeah, you can find the zombits there kind of of the zomb bits, but you can also find Ollie's writing, which is excellent. Yeah, this is what Ollie has to say. Ollie gives five brains. Wow, five entire brains, which I agree. It's definitely a five brainer if we're going by a five brain scale, and do you want to read the plot the way that Ollie summarizes it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, a zombie plague causes tension in a First Nation reservation when those who are immune disagree on how to handle those who aren't.
Speaker 2:Shout out to you, ollie, for using First Nation, which is a term that nations in Canada use to describe themselves, whereas in the United States I often hear folks describe themselves as part of a tribal community or a tribal nation. So good job on getting that right. Azomboid's thoughts. When I finished this movie and the credits began to roll, my first thought was just wow, me too. It was an intense ride from beginning to end, from a suspenseful buildup in the beginning to the last stand at the end. Blood Quantum kept the tension and intrigue strong. The first act of the film was one of my favorite buildups in a zombie movie intrigue strong. The first act of the film was one of my favorite build-ups in a zombie movie. That's high praise, yeah. Where the characters were beginning to learn, understand what was happening. Initially there was panic and confusion and understanding was slow to settle in blood. Quantum portrays those early moments of the first night very well and even hits on a massive taboo that would be an inevitable consequence of the undead returning to eat anything human. I know what ollie's referring to there, but that definitely would be a spoiler. Let's just say that there's some scandalous zombie eating of human parts. Oh, that's all I'm gonna say watch the film.
Speaker 2:A few reviews, I'll go on. This is what ollie says. A few reviews commented on the racism in the film and while it is a prevalent aspect, I came away feeling like the point was, quote racism ruins everything for everyone. Yeah, yeah, great. It was an act of racism that inevitably led to the major conflicts of the third act, an unfortunate end of a character. Oh, you're very. I gotta just sidebar, ollie, you're very good at like describing things without giving stuff away.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm gonna take notes on that and also very succinctly yeah, we take 90 minutes, it's all he gets it in a zombit beautifully. Um, I'm not saying stop listening to us and just read all these zombits, but if you have, don't have time read, you know yeah, just read all these hurry and you want to know if this is worth your time yeah, go to ollie eats brains on instagram, twitter, tiktok, all the things, and also ollieeatsbrainscom to get some quick reviews.
Speaker 2:And then the last paragraph says one thing I really genuinely enjoy about this movie was some of the creativity and logic put into it, like doors collapsing under the weight of the dead or using tripwires to temporarily immobilize zombies.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I like that one too.
Speaker 2:I totally didn't notice those things, and so thanks for pointing that out, ollie. There are a few scenes that are unmatched in any other zombie media I've seen to date, and that's why Blood Quantum left me with just one single word on my mind Wow, that's a great review. Yeah, I love it. We should have just started with that and then been like optional to listen to the rest of us talk. I could put put it at the beginning I mean you can try, yeah, yeah, go for it I.
Speaker 2:I mean, I think it'd be a good way to start yeah, you'll know right now, if you're hearing me say this, that it never got to the beginning.
Speaker 1:So we'll see what happens yeah, we'll see, we'll what I do.
Speaker 2:I am so curious if this is going to turn into a two episode or because there's a lot more to talk about, about the social commentary of this film and what Jeff Barnaby really wanted people to get, and was worried quoted being worried, previous knowledge I would not have picked up on as many of the things that I did, and I'm sure that there are still many aspects of the movie that I did not pick up on as a white person, because this movie is, uh, written by and for native people and also for white people to learn yeah, and it moves fast.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like I mean, we watched it twice it was worth watching twice, oh yeah I'd watch it a third, fourth, fifth time. Me too. Do you want to watch it now?
Speaker 2:No, I'm going to go hang out in my pool with my friend after this, but you can watch it, leah.
Speaker 1:What is this movie really about?
Speaker 2:Normally we have the racist, ableist, capitalist, colonialist, misogynynist ableism of the living dead you want to go through those um real quick. I think we could do it real quick, real quick what I was gonna say is that there's so much more to this that I think that that is actually a disservice. So I'll just say briefly I think it passes if there's good representation of women.
Speaker 1:Yeah the passes the bechdel test obviously passes the race test.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's two white people uh, the, the person who becomes a zombie, who does a thing that's scandalous to a human. Uh, the actor themselves as non-binary? I'm not sure if we saw. Did we see any lgbtq plus? Not really.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I don't think it's also in 1981, so true, you probably wouldn't advertise that in 1981 if it was a zombie apocalypse yeah, and there's so much that needs to be told in this story, like I totally understand.
Speaker 2:That's the kind of thing, that why it needs to be a series. That could become a part of the series, yeah, um, but to do that in the film would have probably done an injustice when there were so many other important things that barnaby was trying to get across there was a lot going on and then uh, ableism, the living dead. Were there any disabled people?
Speaker 2:uh, there are people who are injured, who needed help I, I don't think so yeah, but again, I feel this is why I will always say, like those tests are interesting, but they just scratch the surface and I don't think fully tell the the story of, uh, a film's ability to represent people who are often underrepresented in media. Getting back to what this movie is really about, I'm going to read this quote from Jeff Barnaby from Vulture's article quote Jeff Barnaby made an apocalypse movie to watch the system fall, then a pandemic hit because it was released in 2020. Wow, so I can't even imagine watching this in 2020.
Speaker 1:It would have been amazing. Did Jeff Barnaby say whether or not the pandemic was good for him?
Speaker 2:when it came to the movie yes, because there were very few movies coming out and it was relatable, so it got some interest because of that.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's good. At least something good came out of the pandemic.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this movie, I agree. Well, it was made pre-pandemic but I'm glad that it got some extra attention because of the pandemic. So the interviewer says you've talked with a traumatic post-colonial native experience essential to understanding the layers at work in the movie. And since I don't want to be one of those viewers just missing the point, could you break down that experience in the context of blood quantum? And he says this interviewer says don't be one of those people missing the point, because earlier in the article Jeff says like I worry why people are just not going to get this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think a lot of them didn't. Yeah, based on some reviews that I read, oh, really I don't.
Speaker 2:Maybe that can be a casual that we can read, yeah or not, I don't know if we want to give them any more room. So Jeff says, quote it's talking about intergenerational trauma. The thing you liken it to the most is the holocaust. You talk about holocaust survivors having ptsd, but you don't really talk about their children going through the same thing, children of survivors who are flocking to psychologists and psychiatrists because they are carrying around this grief inside of them and don't even know why. This is actually referred to as blood memory by many tribal people, native peoples. Uh, that recently has been proven to be true by scientific ways of knowing, even though obviously they already knew this was true in the in the book man's search for meaning by victor frankl.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he was a holocaust survivor. He talks about stuff like this as well because he's one of the first people to actually talk about trauma and PTSD before they actually had a diagnosis for PTSD. So it's interesting that First Nations had an understanding of this and it wasn't until the Holocaust that white people in Western medicine was like I think this is a thing yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's ridiculous. Western medicine was like I think this is a thing. Yeah, yeah, it's ridiculous. Also, sidebar, like smudging uh with sit with white sage is also something that uh, not again, this is not all nations uh, native communities do this, but some do as a tradition, where they use it to, like, cleanse a room, and that's also been proven that the smoke from that can actually, like, get rid of bad bacteria and literally clean the air. So there's lots of things that the smoke from that can actually get rid of bad bacteria and literally clean the air. So there's lots of things that people who are not white have been doing for a long time that we could maybe learn.
Speaker 1:I don't know and other remedies is that it's interesting how the things in nature that we find to be very appealing, like fragrant or flavorful, are often very good for us and do really great things.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's very true. So, going on to continue the quote from Jeff, he says I think that's true of Native peoples who have had this long history of genocide and then social oppression and then everything that comes with losing your culture and your language and your land. You carry that around with you and it manifests in different ways in some people it manifests as drug use and in some people it manifests as self-loathing. I want to pause here too, because it makes me think what we were just talking about with uh, you and wanting to feel like you had a culture that yeah, um, it's a very, very important point to make here that, because of colonialism and genocide, a lot of, like, native languages have been lost and they're trying to reclaim them. A lot of the cultural traditions were literally illegal. Um, there was a certain point in canada where you couldn't have more than three indigenous men together without it being considered, uh, legal them gathering.
Speaker 1:That sounds familiar, like in uh in in la in the 90s that was. It was a. It was a law. It was an anti-gang violence law that was passed in los angeles, where um black men couldn't gather in groups of more than three people yeah, which basically that's.
Speaker 2:I love that they also did this to black people and they I'm like they, as if I'm not white. I love that we did this. Yeah, you know, it's hard sometimes to fully accept what our ancestors are responsible for and that we now have some responsibility to address.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But briefly, that specific law kept people from practicing their traditional ceremonies, and so there were actually ceremony keepers who would hide and illegally come together in the woods in the middle of the night to practice those ceremonies, to keep them and that knowledge to be able to pass on to the people coming after them, and so-.
Speaker 1:That's incredible.
Speaker 2:Yeah, culture loss is also not also is a huge thing. That happened and is still happening and, uh, indigenous people are fighting back against every day. So now let's talk about a character from the film. Yeah, lysol lysol. Tell me what you think about lysol before I read je quote.
Speaker 1:Lysol is a troubled individual who frequently gets in trouble with the law, who does a lot of drugs and drinks a lot, and he even tells Joseph, who's his half-brother, that Joseph shouldn't look up to him. He doesn't act like this to impress Joseph.
Speaker 2:He does it because he's an asshole yeah, and he's also the person who convinced joseph to go climb on top of a bridge and shit on white people's cars.
Speaker 1:Yeah um is hilarious. It's also so gross yeah also a form of gore.
Speaker 2:So this is lysol. Lysol is the anti-hero. So this is what Jeff has to say about Lysol's character. In Lysol's case, I think this is everything. He's this self-loathing post-colonial native person because he grew up in an environment that was trained to fucking hate him. For instance, wrap your head around being a native person living in Washington DC and having to get up every fucking day and look at that stupid ass caricature of the football team, and that's the way the culture at large looks at you. And I'm not going to say the name of the washington dc's football team from before it changed, I think a couple years ago, yeah, in 2020. I'll just say it is a slur against indigenous people and it's been the name for as long as that, or I think it was 1932 yeah, it's been the name since 1932 and it was, I think, a very intentional slur.
Speaker 2:Uh, you franchise a genocide and you it becomes a part of a capitalist network of selling things, having that work on you day in and day out. You become trained to hate yourself, and I think that's exactly what I mean when I'm talking about post-colonial native people. And you have a hundred years of this just packed into one person. He's going to be angry and self-destructive and the worst thing about it is he's going to be a righteous in the sense that he knows he's right. So anything he feels like he does afterward is justified, including destroying himself or anyone around him. And that's Lysol. There you have a post-colonial Indian.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he's a really interesting character because he often says things that sound harsh, it sounds angry, it sounds cruel, but what he's saying isn't really wrong. He talks about how their settlement has like a hundred white people in it and they're all ticking fucking time bombs.
Speaker 2:Quote. Unquote is what he says. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And Trailer is like hey, you can't be like that. And then he storms off and um and uh. That's when a voice of reason comes by and she's like, well, he's not wrong oh, the other like joss no, joss yeah when joss yeah, joss comes by the nurse who's a main she?
Speaker 2:comes by and um, and he's like, he's like he can't, he can't be saying stuff like that, and she's like well, he's, he's right yeah, there's a really amazing part of the film where joss says like I used to be angry all the time too, and you have every right to be angry, and I think that that was a really important message.
Speaker 2:Uh, I don't remember exactly what she said after that, but I think she was something along the lines like you can't let that eat you yeah uh, which I think is an interesting if it was exactly said like that, I don't remember, but I think like that, consumption is also really good metaphor in a zombie apocalypse kind of situation, and there's lots of ways of um being a post-colonial indian, as as jeff calls it. Like you see trailer and there's a moment where you see all of the bite scars all over his back and that's to me a representation of the scars of colonialism and the continued social oppression. But he's still here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I mean that's the thing about like, like trauma that we take on like emotional trauma, the emotional scarring. If those represented as actual scars, we'd just be covered with them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, particularly like. I think it's very interesting that it's white zombie bites. Yeah, literal scarring from white people, um, and that's very accurate because, again won't repeat what my grandpa said, but I, uh, his attitude is exactly why people like the ones that are um depicted in this film, would have metaphorical white zombie bites on their bodies. Yeah, so let's talk more about lysol, because there's just so much to unpack here. Jeff says, quote like way back when we first started testing the film, the question popped up the most is why is Lysol so angry? I was like, really, you don't grasp why he's so angry within the context of the film or as a broad overview of society.
Speaker 1:You know that's kind of funny because it's not just Lysol that has words like that said about them. It's like every marginalized person that white people don't understand what they're going through like. You know, like uh, in the in the 1960s during the civil rights movement, like why are the black people so angry?
Speaker 2:I can't even imagine. I can't even imagine like jeff having to sit there and receive that kind of feedback on his movie and or just being anyone who's had that, like the stereotype of the quote unquote black angry woman. And like having that being said about yourself or your people and being like what the fuck do you mean? What do I have to be angry about? Have you paid no attention?
Speaker 1:yeah. Why are women so angry about the most recent supreme court rulings? Why are they so angry? Why are palestinians so angry right now?
Speaker 2:yeah, they should just be fine and polite yeah, if you know what kind and respectful. If they were more respectful, we'd give them more respect you know if they didn't vote for hamas?
Speaker 2:can you imagine if someone clipped out just this part? It would misrepresent our podcast so badly. Um, so I'm gonna continue reading this. Quotes from from jeff. He says uh, it's interesting because you don't really see native villains with epic backstories, in the sense that he is representative of history rather than just his story. He's like the native everyman, he's an anti-hero. My wife and I had this back and forth and she's like you know, he's the hero of the movie, right, and I'm like really, how do you come to that? And she was like well, everything he says, even though it's coming from a place of anger, is true and comes true.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but it also comes true because he makes it come true. Yes, so he's the hero, but he's also the villain.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I cannot say enough how much this is worth watching. And then not just watching it, but then reading a lot of these articles we've shared in the show notes, doing your own reading on anything that might be new to you here, sharing with us some stuff that you know, that you noticed from this film, that we haven't noticed, like I want to hear it, because this is really important stuff to understand and then act differently because you know it.
Speaker 1:And I don't have an exact quote, but I remember from the article that he was saying how Lysol has all of this anger and he's he has every right to feel that anger, and he's not wrong for being angry, but then also that anger leads him to self-destruction and the destruction of his, of his uh, of his culture. Yeah, um, which I I think that, like that's something that you really, it's really, I think, hard to understand unless you understand all the context of what it's like to be Lysol. So the person that's like why is he so angry?
Speaker 2:Isn't going to understand also that, like there's this duality of how he is the hero but he's also the villain yeah, and I think in our culture of like because again there is a white culture of like, extreme individualism uh, it's really easy to say, well, like, lysol is just the bad guy, but it's much more complicated than that. He is who he is. I mean, yes, we have individual choice and agency, but but how much do we really? A lot of it is based on our circumstances in life, what we get to have or don't have and how we see the world. Um, like, for example, I would probably, I'd probably just like my grandma. Or to my grandma sorry, my grandma was great, ps. She was constantly saying to my grandpa tom, stop saying that so I love my grandma. Uh, shout out to grandma phyllis rest in peace, I miss you. I could have been just like my grandpa if I'd grown up in the same context as him.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm not immune to those kinds of thoughts and so like am I better than my grandpa as a white person? Because I don't think that way. I don't think so. I think I had opportunity and, frankly, the graciousness of many indigenous people to teach me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, like I really love this because it did teach me so much. Yeah, there's so few movies or TV shows that I feel have done a good job of actually educating me, the white person, as to what is actually going on with characters like Lysol, and I think this is important for white people to learn and, in a way, if you think about it, this movie is more informative than any textbook that we would learn from in a school.
Speaker 2:Or it would be a really great movie to watch to then draw connections back to the real world. I also think, know I want to again remind the listeners that we're white folks and I think that there's some dangerous danger of us centering our whiteness in this conversation, because I want to also say, like, not only is this, like obviously we're saying how helpful it is for us, but at the end of the day, I imagine it must be meaningful for folks who are native to have a film, um, that they've never seen before, about themselves in their own community and how they would grapple with something like the zombie apocalypse yeah, and they don't necessarily have to learn from the movie, but they can feel and and know, without having to dissect it like we have to like, what the plight of dysol's character is and like and like, identify with characters in that movie.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, and I. That's why I will just keep beating this drum. That is why we need better representation in the things that we watch and see and like. For Netflix executives to be like yeah, this is excellent, so we're going to make it. Not, this is excellent, but we can't make it with the implied undertone comment of that, which is because it's about native people. Can't make it with the implied undertone comment of that, which is because it's about Native people. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And on that note too, this was also in that interview where Jeff was talking about how a lot of times in these studios, when they are writing from the perspective of an Indigenous person, it's written by a white writer, yeah, and then they hire an Indigenous person to be the quote-unquote editor and just sign off on it and agree with it yeah, um, and that's really messed up yeah, and that's something that really needs to change, because you're not getting, you're not getting their experience out by doing that.
Speaker 1:You're just making a character who represents them, and you're trying, you're, you're just, you're just putting out a white version of what you think their experience is. Yeah, and in my writing that's something I'm trying not to do, like I don't. I want to include people in my book, but I don't want to tell them what their story is, and that's that's difficult for me, because I'm just a white boy, hillbilly townie yeah, I mean, infected with the zombie virus yeah, you're infected with the colonial zombie virus so am I?
Speaker 2:um, I always wonder if, like how many white people start listening to our podcast because they like zombies and they're like, oh god, they're this kind of white person, the pretentious white people.
Speaker 1:Well, you know what. Thanks for stopping by. Good luck in your journeys. Hope you find the podcast you're looking for.
Speaker 2:Yeah, or, you know, I do want this to be something where people who maybe don't know all of this are listening, and I hope that's at least some of you listening to this. But again, like, if you know things that we haven't brought into that we should have talked about, please reach out to us and we can incorporate it in a casual dead episode in the future. So this brings me to some other really fun facts.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, is it really fun.
Speaker 2:So fun and wonderful oh.
Speaker 1:I can't wait.
Speaker 2:A level of sarcasm that I can't even say.
Speaker 1:I can't wait for this fun information. Dan, have you heard of missing and murdered indigenous women before I?
Speaker 2:can't wait for this fun information. Dan, have you heard of missing and murdered indigenous women before I have, and do you know what it's about?
Speaker 1:I'm going to guess it's about missing and murdered indigenous women.
Speaker 2:Yes, and two-spirit individuals. Two-spirit is a blanket term for folks who I think our best blanket term that's an equivalent is trans. There are all kinds of identities that are specific to the nation that they're a part of, but it's been recently expanded to be missing and murdered indigenous women and two-spirit people. Yeah, so missing and murdered indigenous women is also a thing that is called to specifically in this film, because lysol's mother also had was either murdered or disappeared, and he talks about feeling abandoned by the rest of his family in the reserve. And we don't know what his experience was with Trailer or Joss, but his lived experience, his feeling about it, is that nobody loved him after that.
Speaker 1:Well, trailer says that he wasn't there for him, he wasn't a good father and he wasn't around.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so this explains more of who Lysol is, so I really appreciate that they brought that in as a factor of his character In fact, trailer says that he was basically Lysol Interesting.
Speaker 1:Say more Well, he was drunk. He was the one that was shitting off of bridges. You know, he was that character where he was the one who was in and out of jail, constantly, always drunk, always causing trouble, and he was not responsible and he couldn't, he couldn't take care of his, of his newborn son because he was not responsible yeah, I wonder what was like the, because they don't share that with us again.
Speaker 2:Please give me a series. I want to know the moment where trailer started to shift, because I think we watch in this film. Joseph have that space where he can either go the path of Lysol or be like his dad and his dad's current, like more mature and self-aware space, and he chooses to be more like his dad, as his dad is today, as like a protector of his community, in a way that is not harmful to other people, white people specifically. So back to murdered and missing or sorry, missing and murdered indigenous women. Here's some statistics to make this very clear for you, why this is like a whole issue. Uh, for native folks and, frankly, for our society, because this is the first stat, you'll know why when I say it. Indigenous women, girls and two-spirited people are murdered 10 times higher than all other ethnicities, and the majority of those murders are committed by non-native people on native owned land. And that's according to a website called native women's wilderness, which is going to be linked in the show, not show notes I.
Speaker 1:I don't know how accurate this is, so, uh, just uh, I'd say citation needed. But I remember something about how, because of a reservation and the land outside of the reservation are, kind of like, considered like two different countries, if somebody from the reservation has disappeared outside of the reservation, then there's like this jurisdictional issue where neither side can investigate it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then there's the other piece of it where, frankly, like there was I forget how many women indigenous women were known to be murdered by this serial killer in Canada, and I'm sorry, I'm saying this from memory, so I don't have a lot of the details and I don't want to make them up. I'm going to find an article and link it in the show notes if folks are interested in learning more about this. But basically, they figured out that these indigenous women's bodies were in a landfill Wow, and the Canadian government decided it wasn't worth the resources to find them. Wow, yeah, we all know that that was not what would happen if it was me in a landfill.
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 2:Just let that sit. Not what would happen if it was me in a landfill? No, just let that sit. And I think this is actually a great point to bring in this quote from the movie the earth is an animal. White people don't understand this. They think it's God. This old, tired, angry animal turned these white people into something she can use Fertilizer. Referring to the white people zombies.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that. Why do you love it? I, I mean, this is what I love about the zombie apocalypse in general. Like you know, so many people have so many different takes on it, but the way I see it is like it's. It's kind of like something that george carlin said. He was talking about plastic and he's like maybe plastic isn't the problem, maybe we're here to make plastic. The the earth couldn't figure out how to make plastic. They made us these weird large-brained ape creatures. You know, like in a hundred thousand years those things are gonna make plastic. I need that plastic and now that the earth has plastic, it doesn't need us anymore. So we're probably just gonna choke on plastic and die. So, like to me the zombie apocalypse is is the planet just being like oh, disease didn't wipe you out, the tsunami didn't wipe you out. I got to figure out something different.
Speaker 2:Specifically white people. That's why I like this quote and this context, because what I hear a ton from white people. They'll say things like people are terrible, people suck. I'd be fine if people were wiped off the planet. And my response to that is not all people, specifically people who are who, whose ancestors adopted this idea of whiteness to uh, grab power, grab land, grab resources for themselves and harm everybody else around them, are primarily responsible for the world that we have today, and I understand.
Speaker 2:If you hear that and you're white and you're like, oh, that's hard to swallow or I don't agree. Um, I'm also gonna just say if this is something that's like you don't agree with what I'm saying right now about white people, I offer you to come into my dms on zombie book club podcast. Like I'm happy to talk with you about it. I'd even have a conversation with you about it, because I didn't come to this conclusion easily. It was hard for me to accept at some point too. But what I'm saying and I'm not saying that all white people are bad or that people who have white skin are bad what I'm saying is that the system that created this idea of whiteness to perpetuate colonialism and capitalism is what is killing our planet?
Speaker 1:yeah, and white people who continue to perpetuate that idea and like think that what we are doing as a society is the correct path, yeah, and that everybody else in the world should just be more like us and then everybody will get along.
Speaker 1:You know, if everybody just bought their patagonia vests, like they're supposed to, and they worked at the job factory for whatever wage they were they were given by their overlords yeah, then then everyone would be happy, right? I remember my aunt a long, long time ago I won't say her name because this is not a good look uh, she was. She was saying that there's too many people on this planet, which I agree with, and and she was saying that a lot of them just needed to die so that we can just go back to things being simpler. And I brought up the point to her. I'm like, yeah, but the, the people who are going to die in an event that wipes out like half of the population, aren't going to be the ones that deserve to be here. They're going to be the ones who didn't have the means to survive. The ones that are going to be left are going to be the, the bloated, disgusting capitalistsists who just bought all the food and have their billion dollar bunkers in Hawaii.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like the end of the world would probably be the best thing to ever happen to the one percenters, because they would buy up all the resources, they would finally have everything and all the people that own the stuff that they wanted would be dead and they could just have it. They could just have it.
Speaker 2:They could just have everything and bring all of their everything into their bunkers I mostly agree with you, except for one pivotal point, which is that and I this is a very important reminder to all of us, including myself billionaires need us. They don't if we all die. They don't have little worker bees to make the shit, to make them more money or to provide the resources that they want, uh, so they have to actually lift a finger to do anything.
Speaker 1:So I think some middle ground is probably what a billionaire would prefer like but they want the ones that are out there saying that you should just shut up and take the paycheck that you, that you earned, yeah, that you should not complain, that you should not try to make things different.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you should. The only thing you should do is believe in the American dream and the individual idealism of going to pull myself up by my bootstraps, and if I just work hard enough, I can be a billionaire too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and they will tell you that They'll be like you could be the next me. I'm just like the rest of you. You should all be like me.
Speaker 2:American exceptionalism right there. Yeah, I could go on a tangent. Just on that alone. It's really funny because I'm about to go have this relaxing time with my friend by our pool and I'm going to be so amped up for this conversation. I need to not be like. So, amy, how do you feel about capitalism today? I'm going to try and talk about something else.
Speaker 2:But I think I want to just like point out here that the colonialism I know that it's called post-colonialism or sometimes people call it neo-colonialism At the end of the day it's still an imperial project in North America. It's still happening and Native people are still suffering and have major issues that relate to many of the things pointed out in this movie. One 37 of native american respondents in a national survey said that the most important issue for them in the 2024 election is the high rate of missing and murdered indigenous women. The next most important issue is land rights for native american people, at 32 respondents, and then the third most important issue is land rights for native american people, at 32 respondents, and then the third most important issue at 28 is water rights and protecting the water, which is the entire backstory of this movie yeah, I mean, they don't really say why all the fish get sick, but we we can speculate that like something's in that water that's making everything into zombies that's probably from an industrial project or a mine it's probably pollution.
Speaker 2:I mean it's, you know, maybe the earth is an animal, but uh, you know that water ain't right yeah, and that's also again a real world thing like a lot of uranium mines or other, uh, very filthy and polluting industries are put right in the backyards of these reserves because white people don't want them. Yeah, not in my backyard, as they say.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they put their waste right near the place where they don't want the people who live there. Yeah, and as far as they're concerned, they can always move. Yeah, just sell your house. That's next to a uranium mine move.
Speaker 2:Yeah, just just sell your house. That's next to it, a uranium mine, oh, and it's. It's really horrible and I think there's a reason why barnaby chose it to be chose that the apocalypse, the zombies, stuff would happen in the water, because for the mi'kmaq people and for many native people's, water is incredibly sacred, as it literally is, and we should all perceive water as it is our life blood. Um, there's an article in the show notes about why it's specifically sacred to the Mi'kmaq people, if you're interested, but there's also this aspect of the film.
Speaker 2:What I thought was really cool is there these like occasional animated little images yeah, there's three sections of animation yeah, and one of them is an animated image of a pregnant woman on top of some stones, whose baby is being incubated in the water.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's really beautiful.
Speaker 1:Also kind of scary.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah, they're also disturbing, so this is so hard. Like we have so much more to talk about, I think we're going to try and wrap this up with a few more things. Um, I think we can do it.
Speaker 1:We can do it, okay, dan what do you think about the white and native people dynamics in this film? Oh, it's not good. From the white people perspective, they're like hey, I didn't do anything wrong. Why are all of you so mad? And from the native perspective, they're like you could be harboring disease and putting us in danger. And also, why should we even help you? And then the white people then respond with why are you speaking English?
Speaker 2:It's so absurd and so brilliantly pointed out. But I see why Jeff would be worried that not everybody would get it, because I don't think 18-year-old me would have seen 90% of that context. I probably would have just been like, yeah, why, why aren't they speaking english? It's horrifying, but it's true.
Speaker 1:it's probably what my reaction would have been at 18 but also they weren't speaking english because they were discussing with each other whether or not they should kill them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you know you keep that stuff secret, or really they should let them in too. Right like um, and I think it's such a great reversal, the power dynamics of language, where part of the colonial project and the genocidal project is to take away the language from the, from native people. Yeah, um. There's also this really poignant moment between joseph and charlie, his white pregnant teen girlfriend, where he asks if she's embarrassed of him.
Speaker 1:Yeah, in the first act, when they are at a hospital, joseph is there to get a tetanus shot because he just got bit by a hillbilly and needs a tetanus shot. She is there because she wants to get an abortion, yeah, and that doesn't happen because because, well, zombies, uh, but yeah, she's, she's sitting there and like he's, he's just gotten out of jail because he just shit on a car and was drunk and a teenager, uh, so they arrested him and she's upset about this because he needs to, like, raise their child with her. And she's uncertain about this because he needs to raise their child with her and she's uncertain about what that future looks like. And I think he's also be like, maybe she's trying to look for a way to get out of this, like, maybe she's ashamed of him and doesn't want anybody to know, doesn't want to be with him.
Speaker 2:Yeah, doesn't want everything that comes along with being a family unit together yeah, or the fact that her baby would be migma, right, or we assume, because of the blood quantum, I'm pretty sure that they would. Um, because both of his parents I don't know about his parents parents both of his parents are migma. Yeah, um, and so that's. I think that is a really real moment that shows sort of that internalized shame that can happen when you're told your whole life that part of your identity by the society is not considered a good one. Uh, the other thing that I think is an interesting reversal moment, uh, between white people and the migma people in this film is the blanket being thrown away that you mentioned earlier. Yeah, can you describe the backstory of why the blanket was being thrown away?
Speaker 1:so a uh, a white guy shows up, a hillbilly, a townie shows up with his daughter wrapped in a blanket. Um, he is concealing the fact that she's been bitten. He's just like she's sick and she needs help. They discover that she has a bite on her and they're like dude, she's been, we gotta kill her. And he, he went there thinking that they had a cure. He's like I heard that you have a cure and you can. You can reverse bites and they don't. And so you know they, uh, they take care of her and let him inside and he still has the blanket. The h3.
Speaker 2:What do you mean by take?
Speaker 1:care of her. Uh, they uh shot her in the face. Yeah, somebody did. I think it was trailer there. Yeah, no, I think he he chopped off her head or something.
Speaker 2:Yeah, um which shows that trailer, both understands the idea of like helping some people, but knowing what it means to protect his own people too the, the guy that was going to do it.
Speaker 1:Like the, the guy whose job is like the guard outside. He's like I've never killed a kid before.
Speaker 1:So trailer takes the weapon and and does it himself because that he feels that responsibility to do it yeah um, and can't ask somebody else to do this incredibly horrible thing, um, but yeah, he, he has this bloody blanket. He comes inside and the person that brings him in is telling him like go follow that person and they'll like give you water and stuff. And then she notices the blanket. She's like what the fuck? You can't have this in there? And she takes the blanket and throws it in the fire.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and what does that whole scene remind you of from real history?
Speaker 1:oh, I mean, that's 100, like the whole smallpox blankets sort of thing that was, that was a plague blanket. Like if somebody used, if if that blanket was still around people and they were using it and like just brushed up against it with like a cut on their hand or something they'd be infected yeah, like a white person could potentially be infected and then you've got an outbreak inside of your community but he didn't think about it because it was like the last thing left of his daughter that he had yeah, yeah, it was a sentimental thing for him.
Speaker 2:yeah, um, what I think is like brilliant about this moment is because it's like such a clear callback to the smallpox blankets which were intentionally given to native people because in this situation, white people were immune to smallpox, or like mostly immune to smallpox because of exposure, but it was a new virus here in turtle island, and so I just want to give some quotes from some um historical assholes who decide this was a great idea to do. Governor William Bradford said for it pleased God to visit these Indians with a great sickness and such a mortality, that of a thousand above 900 and a half of them died, and many of them did rot above ground for want of burial. It pleased God.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he loves that.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Then governor John Winthrop says for the natives they are near all dead of the smallpox. So the Lord hath cleared our title to what we possess, meaning the land.
Speaker 1:I mean that's one way to do it. I guess I bet both of these people have towns or cities named after them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we should look it up. I'm sure they've done other really awful things too, yeah, so there's this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we should look it up.
Speaker 2:I'm sure they've done other really awful things too, yeah, so I feel like there is so much more we could say about the themes, so I think I just want to finish off this episode by talking about the moral question of do you help the people who have harmed you and your community and your nation for hundreds of years when they are now in crisis? Do you help them? Do I, yeah, do you, no, no, no. Your team, lysol.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, that's what makes Lysol's character so interesting is that, like he, he does speak the truth. He just has, he just has that moment where he doesn't, he does something that just seems wrong. If it weren't, if it weren't for him acting on his hatred, you would think that he was 100 the good guy he was. Just, you know he's. He just saying things that is correct. He's thinking about the good of the people.
Speaker 2:He's kind of like shane from the walking dead yeah, and they just take it one, two step too far, like I think what I would do in this scenario is I would have, um, I would be like mostly team lysol, but not taking it as far as a lysol or a shane would. I'd probably be like, okay, white people can come here, but they need to build their own walled in area outside shipping containers outside don't take our shipping containers.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and bring your own I don't know what you.
Speaker 2:There's still risk, because even if they have their own thing, like when they leave those walls, they could still encounter folks who become zombified. So I don't know what kind of solution there might be. But that's the kind of thing where I'd be like, hey, facilitator leo would show up and facilitate a conversation between groups about how we maintain safety for everyone in this circumstance, understanding that like it's kind of ironic, because what I'm describing is sort of like a reserve where you're, like you, people over there, white folks who are potentially infected.
Speaker 1:So we create a reserve yes, white people a tiny part of the land, a small fraction of the land that they used to own yeah, well, not really, because this is on red crow reserve, so actually like you're giving up some land, but I like there'd be.
Speaker 2:I think there would be some kind of solution that you could come up with that would be a little bit more protective for the folks who are immune and still give white refugees a place, but they're not locked into. I want to be very clear I don't want them to be locked up, aka I don't. I don't want to be locked up.
Speaker 1:If this scenario were real, um, one thing that they did that was smart was they disarmed. All of the people that they took in took in the. The migma people were the only ones who were armed. They were the only ones who were immune. They were the only ones in charge of the security and everything about running the place, though the the people that they rescued, were just there. They, they didn't have weapons. They didn't have a say in what decisions they made. They didn't. They didn't go on supply runs. Um, they probably did stuff inside, like probably like cooked food and like did you know chores and worked and stuff, yeah. So, yeah, it's kind of it's kind of like prison yeah, there's gotta be.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't know exactly what the solution is, but I think there's some middle ground there. But I think they do a really. By they I mean Jeff. Jeff does a really good job of having characters with very different perspectives. Can you read what Lysol? A quote from Lysol here oh, this is yeah.
Speaker 1:He says that they're ticking time bombs and we should kill them all.
Speaker 2:We don't need to help them. It's us or them, yeah, and then jose's perspective who loves someone who's white says there is no us or them yeah.
Speaker 1:Then he says it's, it's only us, yeah, it's only us. Then lysol stabs them.
Speaker 2:Spoiler alert I feel like you need to insert a little like beep boop spoiler, but I'll pop um. And then trailer has sort of a balance perspective where he says we help the survivors to the best of our ability and I think that's actually a very measured way of thinking about it.
Speaker 1:It's yeah, I I agree with that. Um, I don't. I'm not against helping people, but if these are people that have actively done wrong to me and I can't trust, then I'm not going to help them. But you know, like the guy that showed up at the gates with his daughter, with his daughter, like he was, he was right in the sense that he didn't do anything wrong, but he also didn't do anything right and he also hid the fact that he was infected.
Speaker 2:It's true I I would hold that against. I think we need a quarantine area, for sure in this circumstance like he shouldn't have been allowed in right away. There should be like a week long waiting period or something.
Speaker 1:There's a quarantine period and you're in a caged in cell in the outside world. You don't have any cover from the rain. You have to stay there for a week.
Speaker 2:Okay, so now we're talking about basically what well? They're not, I think, in the in the rain, but all the kids that are imprisoned, that are undocumented it's like the united states yeah, we got a lot of work to do as a society yeah and then the last one I wanted you to read was joss to lysol.
Speaker 2:When lysol is, I'm not going to say what he's about to do, but he's about to do something really terrible because he's angry and he thinks why people deserve it, which we don't totally disagree with. So what is what does joss say?
Speaker 1:she well. She says I understand your anger, but they are real people so there are survival tips?
Speaker 1:oh, there are survival tips from there's a few yeah, there's probably more um, but I mean we could. We could probably pull survival tips out of this movie for for days. Yes, because Because I mean, all in all, it really presented itself as a really good zombie movie that had a lot of really good ideas in it. There's a character it's Trailer's dad, so Joseph, and Lysol's grandfather, I guess. At some point he found a katana and he says you don't have to reload a sword, or maybe he already had always had a katana, who knows.
Speaker 2:yeah, because lysol said that there's that there's more white people inside their um, inside their camp, than they have bullets right, yeah, I gotta say that he's like you don't have to reload a sword yeah, that man is epic, and we're not even going to get into that in this oh yeah but it's worth watching.
Speaker 1:Just to watch this guy also, his buddy with the chainsaw is really fun, you know what if I, if I was going to point out something that's not a good survival tip chainsaws, um, not a good weapon. Um, there's a youtube channel that I used to watch, called zombie go boom, and they tested out a whole bunch of like zombie killing techniques using, uh, ballistics, gel, zombie dummies, and one of those things was a chainsaw, and what happens is when you go to cut through a zombie, if it's wearing any clothes, the fabric winds up into the chainsaw blade and stalls out the chainsaw. Wow, so it's actually not a very good zombie killing weapon. Well, that's unfortunate, but you know, I bet if you just if you avoid all the fabric, it'll probably be fine.
Speaker 2:Just, aim for the head.
Speaker 2:If they're undead, shoot them in the head. And saw him in the head. There we go. I've got another survival tip. Yeah, reconnect to the earth, the animal that is earth, and change our ways for anybody who is living. That is earth and change our ways for anybody who is living. And it's very hard and we gotta try to do the system level with, like the politics politicians we elect the way we build community locally, but we've got to figure out a way to not live the way that we're living because we are killing ourselves.
Speaker 1:I think the earth animal will make us fertilizer yeah, well, that's why I like the zombies is because the zombies take care of all that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they they override politics. Yeah, we gotta change our ways before the earth decides we should be fertilizer and I. I recognize that's a very difficult project, so do what you can I try to. I'm sure everybody listening to this does this, which is you, just do what you can, yeah um, I've got a really good survival tip for you, leah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what is it? Be immune, whoa, just be immune. Um, if you aren't immune to zombies before the zombies come, then, uh, really, you're just shooting yourself in the foot, yeah you can still die, yeah, but you can have a higher likelihood of surviving.
Speaker 2:You're not not going to get infected. Those are some good ones. So I want to end this episode with an article that I found really helpful when I started my work with First Nations and Indigenous folks in Canada, and it's called Use these Culturally Offensive Phrases and Questions at your Own Risk by Indigenous Corporate Training Inc. They are based out of British Columbia, and this was one of those ones where I was like, wow, I've said a lot of really offensive things. Yeah, do you have any examples? Yeah, I'm going to just list them. I'm not going to say why they're offensive. You can go to the article in the show notes to learn why this is written by indigenous people from their own perspective, and there's also a little audio clip that you can listen to that's only eight minutes long if you don't want to read it of all the offensive phrases and why they're offensive. Okay, so christopher columbus discovered the new world? That's not accurate. Learn why. Go to the website, because there are people already here?
Speaker 2:the next one is hey chief and that's about trivializing hereditary chiefs, which is a political organization system of many First Nations, not all.
Speaker 1:What if they are a chief warrant officer in the army? Because that is their title.
Speaker 2:Yeah, if it's part of their title, that's fine, just like you should refer to a chief of a First Nation or tribal community as chief, but probably shouldn't say hey chief no, especially to a native person.
Speaker 2:Yeah, unless they're the chief. Yeah, but even hey chief doesn't sound very respectful, so I recommend that you don't just go hey chief unless you have a close relationship and that is acceptable between you. Yeah, um, this is a big one. Too many chiefs and not enough indians. Just say there's too many cooks in the kitchen, okay, yeah that's offensive on so many levels don't have to explain, there's multiple paragraphs about it?
Speaker 2:Circle the wagons. Oh Also, this is a term you hear in corporate America a lot. No, Because it translates to quote the savages are coming and we are about to be attacked. Yeah, there's more there. Hold down the fort. This is one that I am still working on, not saying because it's been pretty ingrained in me, but it comes back to, uh, the history of colonialism. Read more about it in the article.
Speaker 1:They're on the war path we should get together and have a pow wow about that. Yeah, that one sounds kind of obvious, yeah or like let's pow, wow about that.
Speaker 2:These are all things that I've said at some point in my life and then, thanks to this article, I know better than to say them rain dance, unless you are actually doing a ceremonial dance from your own culture yeah you are not doing a rain dance.
Speaker 2:This is a big one that I have um talked a lot with colleagues about, because it comes like people will just say it and really, really, truly don't know that it's bad and not correct. Which is low man on the totem pole or climbing the totem pole? Um, first of all, it's factually inaccurate. Google why. And it's also offensive indian time is offensive I've heard that one before well, indian time a lot of the time this is.
Speaker 2:I'll just go on a slight tangent here. There are two ways of functioning around time with cultures there's polychronic people and there's monochronic people. Western civilization is a monochronic culture where, like it's 1201, where is the person they were supposed to be at this meeting? They're late. Um, where, like, things happen sequentially and there's a very specific orientation around time. As this precise unit of measurement, polychronic, is like people who have a looser conception of time and understand that it's not like about being there at a very specific moment, it's about being there within a general space of time. When you're done the thing that you were doing, come do the next thing.
Speaker 1:That sounds amazing.
Speaker 2:So in Namibia, for example, I learned very quickly that when I say to the taxi driver, can you come now, meant any time between literally now and three hours from now. But if I said now, now, I could reasonably assume they'd be there within an hour. Um, and that's that there's. People will say african time, jamaican time, whatever. All of that is offensive, whichever people you're talking about, because it's not white people time.
Speaker 1:It's just a different way of operating and, frankly, it's quite lovely what if you have a friend who is chronically late for things and you're like uh, that person's operating on nick time?
Speaker 2:that is, moving on, too offensive, because it comes from the same premise that you have to be somewhere at a specific time, otherwise you're a bad person. The way that I talk about it, like um, with people I work with and I've learned different work cultures have different ways of accepting this is like when I have a new person that's working with me. I like to ask them, like how do they? What do they think of as late? Or like, when do they typically show up for a meeting?
Speaker 2:And in the culture of the organization I work in now, if you're there in the first five minutes, nobody thinks you're late Because it's we have back to back meetings. You know there's not like walking time between meetings anymore. You're just jumping from one zoom call to the next. So there's some looseness around that, whereas, uh, my old, uh, step mother-in-law uh was like you're late if you don't. If you aren't there, like at 12 59, they don't want you there at 12 58, they don't want you there at one or 102. You better be there like right on time. Basically, so people have different conceptions and I think accommodating for that is what, like it should be a discussion between people instead of like an assumption that they are always going to be at the time that you think is the correct time.
Speaker 1:You know, uh, the army also has this problem. Um, because you know, when you uh, when you go into a formation, um, you know, like, the brigade commander is going to show up at eight, right, but your battalion commander is going to be there 15 minutes early for that. So they want you to be to the battalion formation 15 minutes before the brigade commander is ready to start talking. But the problem with that is that your unit needs to be 15 minutes early for the battalion. Oh my god.
Speaker 1:And your company needs to be there 15 minutes before the unit that's an hour early. And then your squad needs to be there 15 minutes early. For the company An hour and 15 minutes early. And then your squad needs to be 15 minutes early. For your platoon An hour and 15 minutes early. And then your squad needs to be 15 minutes early for your platoon An hour and a half early and then your squad leaders are going to want you to be there 15 minutes early. For him, an hour and 45 minutes early.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this is what I mean. Like time is. The idea of time is cultural and so you got to talk about it and negotiate it. This idea of like certain people are always late is often racist. So, yeah, nick, time, I would say, is not very nice. Even though Nick is a white person, it still alludes to the same kind of thing that there's like a superiority to extreme time management, of like every minute counts.
Speaker 1:I'm also not into that. I don't like it yeah.
Speaker 2:I don't either. Yeah, like I bet you, my friend is not gonna. I mean, maybe they will. Maybe they'll show up at 159. I hope they don't. I frankly hope that they show up between 1 and 115 somewhere in there. If they show up at 130, I'd be like oh you're really late, I'm not 130, 230, whatever. Okay, let's keep going. Indian giver yeah this actually, um, without getting into all of the history of it, it is a really terrible white interpretation of a beautiful practice around gift economies, so it's just inaccurate.
Speaker 1:I always thought it was because of the relationships that Native American tribes had with the US government, where the US government would promise them something and then take it away at the last second.
Speaker 2:Well then it wouldn't be an Indian giverver good point, but that's, I feel, more accurate. We need a derogatory term for white people about stealing land. I'm sure they're already one, they're probably ones that exist. Um off the reservation, also not okay. And again the in canada. The term is reserve um canada doesn't have any culture, or white people don't have any culture, or insert all that thing that I was talking about?
Speaker 2:yes, because you do have a culture, but it's so dominant that it's well. Yes, I agree that a lot of it sucks, but also it's so dominant that it is seen as neutral, and that's why it's like you have white people and then you have everybody else, and most of the time we don't even talk about whiteness, because it's invisible to us, because it's what's considered normal and everything is like in comparison to that thing.
Speaker 1:That's quote unquote normal yeah, and that's probably the root of all of this yeah, here's another one.
Speaker 2:Why can't you insert people?
Speaker 1:just get over it that one sounds fun, yep how indian? Are you also mad? He should just get over it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, how indian are you?
Speaker 2:I've never heard that one before yeah, this is again like comes back to that connection of blood quantum um or like discrimination in general. There's a whole other article about this, one to From the link that's going to be in the show notes, and I think this is a great introductory article to some things you should not say. I'm going to add one more which is Hold on, I got to think of it Big kahuna. Kahuna actually is a political term for, I believe, hawaiian people and some other Pacific Islander people. I believe Hawaiian people and some other Pacific Islander people, and it is definitely derogatory and disrespectful of that tradition of somebody who might actually be a kahuna to be just randomly calling people the big kahuna. So there's lots of others.
Speaker 1:I think there's a good lesson of like. We just need to pay attention and keep learning from each other. And then the franchising of the big kahuna in the Quentin Tarantino universe with the restaurant chain the Big Kahuna Burger.
Speaker 2:Wow, yeah, I mean, that's what is it? I think that a lot of derogatory terms towards Native people, a lot of white people just don't know. So that's why I wanted to add this onto the end of this episode.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Well, you know what? This has been a really informative episode. Even though I was here for it and using my words to say all of the things, I'm like wow, I feel like I learned like an entire textbook of knowledge.
Speaker 2:Oh well, I'm glad that it felt that way. I really enjoy thinking about these things because I'm like making the space to think about them in the context of the zombie genre, because this is what life is really actually about, which, I agree, we are all just people and that is like, if you don't like anything else we said today. I think that's like the one thing that I hope we all remember when we're in conflict is we're all just people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, that was my takeaway when I got back from my first deployment. When I was in the army, people would ask me what people were like over there. You know like, what are they like over there? And I would just say, everywhere you go, people are people.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know, because sure, they were different from what I was used to, but in the end they had families, they had jobs, they wore clothes, they ate food, they breathed air, just like me.
Speaker 2:They had shelters.
Speaker 1:They had shelters.
Speaker 2:Hopefully.
Speaker 1:Yeah, sometimes they didn't, but in the end they were the same as me, as everybody around me. We were all in the same place at the same time and, if anything, me being there was the weird thing yeah, yeah, truly.
Speaker 2:Uh. This actually brings back zombie nerd and the half-term harrowing, because I feel like that's a big part of what jack callahan is trying to say in that book. Well, my brain, my brain is tired and I'm going to go have a seltzer in our floppy little blow up pool now with my friend. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So what are we going to spend the next two hours editing?
Speaker 2:And not this podcast. Another podcast is coming out tomorrow.
Speaker 1:Last episode.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Before we finish, just want to say again we said something that you think is factually incorrect. Let me know on Instagram or email us at zombiebookclub at gmailcom. You can also call us at 614-699-0006 yeah, you could call us there, it's it's a voicemail.
Speaker 1:It's a voicemail it could be three minutes long.
Speaker 2:You could rant for three whole minutes oh, I hope, like a troll, gives us a three minute rant about how offended? They are by this episode let us know if you're offended yeah, um, but also like if we've actually said something offensive too, I think that's key to know. Um, if you have more, you think it's important to add anything that you really loved about this film that you want us to talk about on a casual, dead upcoming episode. We, we'd love that.
Speaker 1:Did we convince you to watch this movie?
Speaker 2:I hope so.
Speaker 1:Did we do a good job of not spoiling things.
Speaker 2:Yeah, also, how pretentious and condescending was I today.
Speaker 1:Yeah, did we call any of you dirtbags today? Sure, you have some zombie homework and you only have one episode left to complete it. We're reading um the remaining by dj mole and we're gonna talk about it. We're gonna talk about it, and we're gonna talk about it. Yeah, and you know what? Some of you adhders out there I know that you're waiting for this episode to start start reading it. So here you go. You have one week.
Speaker 2:You have one week as of this episode.
Speaker 1:You can put it off for another six days and then binge it all in one afternoon on a Saturday? Yeah, so that you're ready for Sunday.
Speaker 2:And I'm 98% sure because life can happen. So I'm going to say I'm 98% sure we're going to have a super special guest, because we want this to be more like a book club and I'm not going to say who it is, in case, for whatever reason, it doesn't happen.
Speaker 1:Yeah, let's see how that goes.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I'm sure that after everything has happened, I'm listening to this as I'm editing it next week and I am laughing and trying to figure out how to edit this part out. I'm really excited to record it yeah. But there you go, everybody. Thanks for listening. Uh, don't forget to subscribe, rate and review.
Speaker 2:It helps us, help us help you get bit yeah and then bite somebody else, bite somebody in their ears by people who aren't immune, yeah, by people who you think might like it yeah, but also by the immune people, because you know they deserve it yeah, and my friends coming in 15 minutes, so I'm gonna go.
Speaker 1:Yeah, follow us on Instagram and threads and there's a link tree down in the description.
Speaker 2:It has all the links so many links from this episode yeah, probably need to update it, but it's there, yeah, thanks.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening everybody.
Speaker 2:Bye, the end is nigh bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye.
