UNIVERSITY OF BELGRADE, FACULTY OF PHILOLOGY

UNIVERSITÉ DE BELGRADE, FACULTÉ DE PHILOLOGIE

SERBIAN ASSOCIATION FOR CANADIAN STUDIES

ASSOCIATION SERBE D’ÉTUDES CANADIENNES

Canada 150 Filmed

Le Canada 150 au Cinéma

Editors / Sous la direction de

Jelena Novaković and / et Vesna Lopičić

Ministarstvu za nauku i tehnološki razvoj

Republike Srbije

Ambasadi Kanade
U Beogradu

Beograd
2019
 Publishers / Éditeurs
UNIVERSITY OF BELGRADE, FACULTY OF PHILOLOGY
UNIVERSITÉ DE BELGRADE, FACULTÉ DE PHILOLOGIE

SERBIAN ASSOCIATION FOR CANADIAN STUDIES

ASSOCIATION SERBE D’ÉTUDES CANADIENNES

Acting Publishers / Responsables

Ljiljana Marković
Sergej Macura

Editorial Board / Comité de rédaction

Jelena Novaković, Vesna Lopičić, Aleksandra Jovanović,
Sergej Macura, Tanja Cvetković, Marija Panić, Michael Keefer,
Tatjana Bijelić

The text approved at the meeting of the Editorial Board held

on 24th January 2019 following the report by the reviewers:
Accepté pour l’impression à la réunion du Comité de rédaction
du 24 janvier 2019 à la base des rapports de :

Radojka Vukčević
Mirjana Drndarski
Milica Spremić Končar
Maja Ćuk
Sergej Macura

Cover illustration / Illustration de la couverture

Nanook of the North (1922) – Robert Flaherty

ISBN 978-86-6153-571-0
 Table of Contents
Table des matières

Introduction............................................................................................... 9
Introduction............................................................................................. 19

Fiction in Visual Arts

Janice Kulyk Keefer

A Tale of Two Adaptations: Sarah Polley and Pedro Almodóvar
Do Alice Munro....................................................................................... 31

Sanja Ignjatović
Almodóvar’s Julieta and Munro’s Juliet – Beyond Cultures.................... 53

Andrea F. Szabó
Nation and Adaptations: Alice Munro’s Fiction in Film......................... 65

Tanja Cvetković
Alice Munro’s The View from Castle Rock and Its Theatrical
Adaptation............................................................................................... 79

Milena Nikolić
Between Fiction and Film: Margaret Atwood’s
The Handmaid’s Tale............................................................................... 89

Snežana Moretić-Mićić
Personal Perspectives in Public Mirrors:
Margaret Atwood’s Short Stories in Drama Screenplays........................ 99

Indigenous and Related Issues on Film

Michael Keefer
A Filmmaker’s Odyssey: Peter Smoczynski’s
Documenting of Electoral Irregularities............................................... 113


Luka Jovičić, Balša Ćeranić, Mirjana Savić Obradović

Whoa, Canada?..................................................................................... 133

Pavlina Mijatović Popić

Canadian Multiculturalism Today as a Redress for Past Inequities
through the Prism of the Film Minoru: Memory of Exile..................... 147

Marija Krivokapić, Amela Lukač Zoranić

The Black Robe among the Buckskin in Pre-Colonized Canada........... 163

Vesna Lopičić
“There’s No Stranger in the World”: A Village of Widows
as Social Advocacy................................................................................ 177

Radojka Vukčević
Simone Stock’s and Misha Skoric’s Iris................................................. 191

L’art du film et du théâtre au Canada francophone

Marija Panić
L’image du canada français dans Maria Chapdelaine
de Louis Hémon et dans ses adaptations cinématographiques............. 199

Katarzyna Wójcik
Les adaptations de Maria Chapdelaine – le Canada au cinéma français
et québécois........................................................................................... 213

Jelena Novaković
Une représentation dramatique de la situation de l’écrivain migrant :
Le puits ou une histoire sans queue ni tête de Négovan Rajic............... 225

Katarina Z. Milić
L’herméneutique du monde absent : La Face cachée de la Lune
de Robert Lepage................................................................................... 235

Katarina Melić
L’Histoire revisitée dans Volkswagen Blues de Jacques Poulin........... 249

Canadian Film: Issues

Vladislava Gordić Petković

The Female Gaze in Atom Egoyan’s Chloe: Fatality and Fragility
in Toronto............................................................................................... 265
 

Mladen Jakovljević, Mirjana Lončar-Vujnović

The Ontological Loop of John Mighton’s Possible Worlds................... 279

Kristijan Vekonj
Videodrome and eXistenZ: A New Reality............................................ 295

Sergej Macura
The Multiple Roles of James Cameron in Titanic:
Storyteller, Shipbuilder and Nostalgia Maker....................................... 307

Bojana Stamenković
Film and Psychotherapy........................................................................ 319

Valentina Rapajić
Visual Symbolism of the Red Poppy and the Crib:
Lt Col John McCrae’s “In Flanders Fields” (1915) and the Reverend
Allan Shatford’s Christmas Message (1917)......................................... 339
Marija Krivokapić
University of Montenegro, Montenegro

Amela Lukač Zoranić

International University of Novi Pazar, Serbia

The Black Robe among the Buckskin

in Pre-Colonized Canada

Abstract
Bruce Beresford’s 1991 film Black Robe is adapted from Brian Moore’s 1985 novel of the
same name. It received much praise when it was released, winning a Genie Award for Best
Canadian Film and a Golden Reel Award. It looks into the first half of the 17th century and
the Jesuits’ tribulations in their attempts to convert the natives. The story is focused through
the character of Father LaForgue, based on the canonized Jean de Brébeuf, who spent his
life among the Algonquin, Huron, and Iroquois of Ontario and Quebec. It draws largely
on Jesuit records collected in Relations des Jésuites de la Nouvelle-France from 1634 and
Francis Parkman’s Pioneers of France in the New World from 1865. In approaching the
film we will also rely on these historical sources, including the postcolonial reading by Ca-
role Blackburn (Harvest of Souls. The Jesuit Missions and Colonialism in North America,
1632–1650, 2000).

Keywords
Black Robe, contact film, Jesuit missions, natives, history.

Black Robe is a contact film. Its drama opens with early pictures and vague
maps of the “virgin” land, depicting the first encounters and battles between
European traders, missionaries, and soldiers with the natives of Canada. It shows
the terror of the first settlers in this vast land in which, as Frye says, “frontier
164 Marija Krivokapić, Amela Lukač Zoranić

was all around one, a part and a condition of one’s whole imaginative being”
(Frye, 1965). It portrays the settlers’ attempt to defend themselves against the
wilderness, and how, actually, the garrison mentality, as Frye identified it, was
born. “In the earliest maps of the country,” Frye says, “the only inhabited cen-
tres are forts, and that remains true of the cultural maps for a much later time”
(Frye 1965). The film also shows the decimation of the tribal population due
to the diseases brought by the settlers, the natives’ growing dependence on the
white products and trading, but also that this was not an ideal pastoral land but
wars inevitably waged between the tribes. Mostly it reflects French designs
to colonize Canada “not by the sword, but by the cross [...] not to overwhelm
and crush the nations she invaded, but to convert, civilize, and embrace them
among her children” (Parkman 1984: 328–329). However, unlike other avail-
able presentations of these first encounters, that mostly placed the natives in
the background as devoid of agency, Black Robe shows them as active agents,
capable of judging the settlers’ intention and deciding about their future.
For its historical references, we will look into the film relying equally on
historical sources: the nineteenth-century historian Francis Parkman’s tome
Pioneers of France in the New World from 1865, the postcolonial critic Carole
Blackburn and his Harvest of Souls. The Jesuit Missions and Colonialism in
North America, 1632–1650 (2000), and, most importantly, on The Jesuit Rela-
tions: Natives and Missionaries in Seventeenth-Century North America (2000)
edited by Allan Greer 2000. For the directness of their expression and because
they came from first-hand knowledge of the Canadian natives, as the Jesuits
quickly learned tribal languages, The Jesuit Relations stand out among the said
sources. However, it will be difficult to completely rely on them as primary
sources because of the manner of their publication. Namely, the Jesuits would
regularly record their missionary experience and send them to the Superior in
Quebec City, who would read and edit them and forward them to France once
a year. These already edited documents would be edited once more in France
prior to their publication. Sources say that for the richness of their insights and
accomplishments, The Jesuit Relations were more popular at the time than other
adventure stories (cf. Greer 2000: 3). Although they did not always present the
natives in a negative light, and some claim that they influenced the eighteenth
century’s conceptualisation of the noble savage (cf. Greer 2000: 15), up to today
we miss the perspective of these first nations’ onto the events that so abruptly
moved human history.
We enter the story through the settlement which is to become Quebec City.
Its inhabitants, a few traders, labourers, and warriors, are cutting wood and
building a fortress, discussing the savagery of the natives. Namely, the natives
which the French met when they first arrived in 1604 were mostly split in two
groups, Algonquin and Iroquois, whose cultures did not vary a lot, but whose
 The Black Robe among the Buckskin in Pre-Colonized Canada 165

languages and lifestyles were different. Algonquins, from the North East,
were split into smaller nomad bands and were mostly hunters and fishermen.
The Iroquois had developed agriculture, growing the so-called “three sisters”,
corn, squash and beans. Thus they lived in stable settlements around the farms
spreading from today’s New York to Southern Ontario. This almost civilized
manner of life recommended Iroquois to the French. The Iroquois, however,
consisted of two confederations, the Hurons and the Iroquois Five Nations,
who reacted differently to the approaching Europeans. While the Five Nations
saw an immediate danger in them, the Huron developed rich trading relations
between the Algonquins in the north and the French in the south.
The French, therefore, saw the Hurons as their immediate collaborators in the
development of New France. Thus, as the film opens, we encounter the father
of Quebec City, the French sailor, military, and geographer Samuel de Cham-
plain (acted by Jean Broussea), to be called “the Father of New France,” as he
wonders who would go to baptise Hurons, who would expose themselves to
travel 1500 miles north into the wilderness, in a canoe and trudging through
deep snow. “Death is almost certain,” he says, to which his friend replies, in
the Jesuit fashion that permeates the film, that “death is not always the greatest
evil” (Beresford, 03:25). Namely, the Jesuits believed that “[l]iberation and true
freedom came from submission to God” (Blackburn 2000: 125) and that their task
was to shepherd to the true faith non-Christians otherwise doomed to hell. At the
same time, the untamed Canadian landscape and its harsh winters were especially
advisable for the Jesuit practice of ascetism. However, as this film demonstrates,
all the while the Jesuits were “acting in concurrence with a mundane policy [...]
promoting the ends of commerce and national expansion” (Parkman 1984: 432).
Moreover, they “embraced its serene and smiling falsehoods with the sincerity
of martyrs and the self-devotion of saints” (Parkman 1984: 432).
As to problematize the borders between civilisation and savagery, the film is
constantly juxtaposing them. Thus, the scene in which two European gentlemen
discuss the practical possibilities of subjugating Canada is contrasted with the
image of two natives, who belong to the group of Algonquin traders who are
supposed to escort a pair of newly arrived Jesuit missionaries to the Huron. They
are crouching by the door and playing a game on the floor. Their painted faces
do not show awareness of what is just happening around and to them. Their
being depicted as looked down upon reflects the general, although superficial,
feeling of superiority of the settler. This is backed by the image of the natives
fascinated with the technological possessions of the whites, such as a clock. We
see a dozen natives gazing at the hands moving and ticking and when the clock
strikes an hour an adult man asks what the clock said, to which the Jesuit replies:
“He said it’s time to go” (Beresford, 05.21-06.21). In reality the clock was used
by Brébeuf to summon the Hurons for mass or meals. They called it St. Captain,
166 Marija Krivokapić, Amela Lukač Zoranić

Le Capitaine Du Jour, i.e. the Chief of the Day, because they translated the title
of tribal chief as captain. Brébeuf writes that the natives would spend a whole
hour waiting for the final stroke, conveniently ordered by a French, believing
that the clock was alive (cf. Parkman 1984: 444). The Jesuits hoped that this
little trick will help persuade the natives in the Jesuits beliefs.
However, the movie significantly deviates from the conventional placement of
the natives outside of history and its processes. Therefore, to follow is a paral-
lel depiction of Champlain and Algonquin leader Chomina (acted by Mohawk
actor August Schellenberg) dressing up for an evening feast, which is to end
their traditional annual meeting, which consisted of a few days of trading and
negotiations. While putting on their regalia, Champlain takes care of his ordains,
cloaks, and tricorn, while Chomina’s way of respect is by dying his body and
face. Besides, the music, singing, and dancing outside are not less elaborate
among the buckskinned sauvages, as the Jesuits called the natives, than among
the wollen-clad French (Beresford, 07.46-09.04).
To the Algonquins gathered at the feast, Champlain introduces the main white
protagonists, Father LaForgue (acted by Lothaire Bluteau), the fictionalized
character of Jean Brébeuf, and his follower a layman Daniel Davost (acted by
Aden Young), whose name combines the names of two Jesuits who travelled
with Brebeuf, Antoine Daniel and Amboise Davost. The fathers are presented as
“soldiers of heaven,” whose task is “to show [the natives] the way to paradise”
(Beresford, 10.11-10.23). In reality, introducing Brébeuf, Daniel, and Davost,
Champlain added:

We love them more than we love ourselves. The whole French nation honors
them. They do not go among you for your furs. They have left their friends and
their country to show you the way to heaven. If you love the French, as you say
you love them, then love and honor these our fathers. (Parkman 1984: 425)

These Jesuits built their mission in the Attignawantan village Ihonatiria in 1634
and named it Saint-Marie. The mission grew till 1648 into 18 priests and 46
laymen. However, by this time Hurons had suffered major calamities due to a
long drought, followed by an unidentified fever, and then a series of attacks by
allied Mohawks and Seneca, who were heavily armed by the Dutch. Eventu-
ally, remaining Hurons saught protection within the strong fort of the mission,
but in the Iroquois attack of 1649, the mission was completely destroyed and
the priests were either killed or captured and died by torture. Of the big Huron
nation, whose population was estimated between 18 and 40 thousand in the
early seventeenth century (Blackburn 2000: 36), only a small group escaped
and mingled with other natives, so that their language is now dead. The help
in men and arms that the French had promised failed, because at this moment
Huron trading were seen as a surplus, as the French had developed direct com-
 The Black Robe among the Buckskin in Pre-Colonized Canada 167

munication with other northern tribes. Therefore, in the film, the first meeting
between Chomina, who is to protect LaForgue on his journey, and LaForgue
reveals their frozen terror at the recognition of the actual meaning of the event
in the course of history – i.e. the destruction of nations and cultures (Beresford,
10:40-11.06).
In the morning, the group departs in their canoes down the long Saguenay river.
Moore calls the movie a “road movie set on the river” (Sullivan 102), because
its significant part develops on a river. Now, the film starts exploiting nature and
does it often in stark contrast with Jesuit symbolism. Its photographer says that
“the location act[ed] as the silent character that you set your actors against,” which
makes this a typical Canadian film, too. It is using three seasons, as it starts in late
summer and develops through the autumn into a harsh winter that, symbolically,
brings the final revelation to Father LaForgue. Although we are talking about
an idillyc landcape full of lakes and rivers, valleys and forests, the first settlers
saw it as barren and hostile, too large, thick, and dark. Brébeuf complained of
trying to make his way through the “obscurity and entanglement” of the woods,
another wrote of [their] “horrid depths,” one described how he entered “into the
land of Shades [...] where the Sun never looks upon the earth, except by stealth”
(Blackburn 2000: 44). The wilderness was both physical and spiritual, “manifest in
both the land and its human inhabitants. Physically, the land was barren because it
lacked traces of urbanism, while native souls were seen as “untended,” their ways
“as sensual and brutish, marked by the absence of shame and of the knowledge of
sin” (Blackburn 2000: 42). Apart from the demanding travel and the horrifying
wilderness, what LaForgue first notices while travelling with Algonquins is that
there is no space for privacy. At night they camp in tepees, in which one sleeps
surrounded by several families and their dogs, couples make love, while thick
smoke bites the eyes and makes one cough.
When LaForgue loses his way in the forest, his alarm is supported by the use of
flashbacks. The forest is contrasted with French urban places, thus the arches
of Rouen cathedral appear in the sky. In this cathedral he was addressed by a
Jesuit who had just arrived from New France and who points to his missing
ear that was cut in the native ritual of torturing. He explains that “the savages
[...] are uncivilized, just as the English and the Germans were before we took
our faith with them.” The priest establishes “a link between torture and pre-
Christian behaviour [and] between Christianity and civilization” (Blackburn
2000: 63), as well as underlines how much a Christian mission was needed.
In the forest, LaForgue stumbles over bushes, hears only ominous sounds of
nature and desperately addresses God: “I am afraid, Lord. I don’t welcome
death. [...] Let’s hope a person shows” (Beresford, 35:00-40.00). Referring also
to Brébeuf, Frye explains:

When all the intelligence, morality, reverence and simian cunning of man con-
fronts a sphinx-like riddle of the indefinite like the Canadian winter, the man
168 Marija Krivokapić, Amela Lukač Zoranić

seems as helpless as a trapped mink and as lonely as a loon. His thrifty little
heaps of civilized values look pitiful beside nature’s apparently meaningless
power to waste and destroy on a superhuman scale, and such a nature suggests
an equally ruthless and subconscious God, or else no God. (Frye 1965)

As a contrast, Algonquin hunters appear and ask: “How could anyone get lost
in here? The woods are for men. Did you forget to look at the trees, Black
Robe?” (Beresford, 39.52).
What to Algonquins is the world potent with life, with which they communi-
cate, to LaForgue is a wilderness infused with evil. With the background of a
thick forest, he tells Daniel: “I’m afraid of this country. The Devil rules here.
It traps the hearts and minds of these poor people.” To this, Daniel – who has
fallen in love with Chomina’s daughter Annuka (acted by Sandrine Holt, an
English-Canadian model of French and Chinese origin) and is picking up na-
tive beliefs, serving thus as an intermediary between the two culture – replies:
“But they are true Christians. They live for each other. They forgive things we
would never forgive.” When LaForgue insists that “Devil makes them resist
the truth of our teachings,” Daniel innocently asks: “Why should they believe
them? They have an afterworld of their own.” This angers LaForgue who as-
serts that there is not a concept of a native afterworld. But Daniel continues:
“They believe that in the forest at night the dead can be seen. Souls of men
hunt souls of animals.” LaForgue is now ironical: “Is that what she told you?”
To LaForgue this way of thinking is not only devilish, but also, paradoxically,
“childish.” However, Daniel does not see anything improbable in Algonquin
assumptions and provokes: “Is this harder to believe then the paradise where
we all sit on clouds and look at God?” (Beresford, 41.40-42.18)
The natives were indeed fascinated with some of the white people’s skills, such
as writing, which they understood as sending thoughts by air and which the
Jesuit also used to attract native symapthies for their cause. Brébeuf wrote that
Hurons were delighted with the Jesuit ability to repeat verbatim the thoughts of
another man uttered in another part of the village by only using a piece of paper
(cf. Blackburn 2000: 109). At one moment, Chomina aproaches LaForgue, who
is writing, perhaps one of his reports for Father Superior.

“Blackrobe, what you do?”

“Hm. Making words.”
“Words? You don’t speak [...] Mahtausiae! [meaning very creative, i. e. as a
magician]
(Beresford, 18.18-19.45)

However, French were generally considered ugly and stupid. Apart from black
robes, they were also called crows, charcoals, and, even, hairy people. In their
heavy woolen robes that were seldom washed they often smelt bad. For their
 The Black Robe among the Buckskin in Pre-Colonized Canada 169

clumsiness in Canadian nature, including the manner they walked holding their
rosaries, looking strictly in front of themselves and talking into their beards,
many natives did not consider them wise enough. At the beginning, when they
could not speak language well, their explanations of Christian truths sounded
funny and often ridiculous. Some of their manners were also insulting, such
as refusing to smoke with men. Annuka tells Daniel how her father “says that
nothing you French do makes sense” (Beresford, 17.41). LaForgue is also a
frequent subject of teasing. Children make fun of him, by picking his beard
and playing with his huge black hat. These are the scenes that reverse the
perspectives and show LaForgue, in his black robe, as the only stranger to the
place. Therefore, unlike the historical records, in which the native ways are
significantly distorted, the film shows that “the Aboriginal people [...] were not
the passive recipients of the priests’ assumptions or assertions. In many cases
they actively resisted them, and in all cases they subjected the behaviour of the
Jesuits [...] to [...] their own views of appropriate human conduct” (Blackburn
2000: 15). Thus they ask:

“Black Robe, will we have tobacco in your heaven?”

“You will not need tobacco there – you will need nothing.”
“No women?” (Beresford, 24.44-25.00)

Daniel points to LaForgue that the men are disappointed with his answer, to
which LaForgue responds with his paradoxical orthodoxy: „They should be hap-
py, I told them the truth“ (Beresford, 25.00). Parkman writes that the Jesuit

pictures of infernal fires and torturing devils were readily comprehended [...]
but with respect to the advantages of the French Paradise, [the native] was slow
of conviction. “I wish to go where my relations and ancestors have gone,” was
a common reply. “Heaven is a good place for Frenchmen,” said another; “but I
wish to be among Indians, for the French will give me nothing to eat.” [...] “Do
they hunt in Heaven, or make war, or go to feasts?” asked an anxious inquirer.
“Oh, no!” replied the Father. “Then,” returned the querist, “I will not go. It is
not good to be lazy.” (Parkman 1984: 461–462)

Similarly, Annuka cannot understand why anyone would make such a promise
to God as to withhold from physical love. She asks Daniel: “Is Black Robe a
demon? He must be. Black robes never have sex with women” (Beresford,
28.40).
When in his dream, Chomina connects LaForgue, presented as a raven, with
Che-Manitou, death, his people suggest that they should leave Black Robe and
go hunting instead. They cannot kill him, because he is not dead in the dream
and they respect the dream because it is real, that is as real as a battle or death
(Beresford, 31.37). Looking for a shaman for the right decision, they approach a
tribe of Montagnais (which was the French joint name for some smaller northern
170 Marija Krivokapić, Amela Lukač Zoranić

tribes). The Montagnais ask: “They have hairy faces, like dogs. Where are they
from?” (Beresford, 33.16) LaForgue replies that they are sent by god. The Mon-
tagnais’ representative sniggers noticing that LaForgue cannot speak correctly
and asks: “Are they intelligent?” Chomina’s group denies and, to everyone’s
amusement, retells how they have a chief in Quebec who tells them what to do
and when by saying “dong dong dong” (Beresford, 33.22-33.47).
The northern shamans would usually mask their bodies so that they appear
with a deformity. Parkman writes about a „hump-backed sorcerer“ who was
the worst obstacle to Jesuit aims, visiting many villages and persuading against
baptism. This one introduced himself as „not a man, but an oki, a spirit. [...]
and had dwelt with other okies under the earth, when the whim seized him to
become a man. Therefore he ascended to the upper world“ (Parkman 1984:
464). In the film, a humped shaman, a dwarf with a yellow face, occasionally
dressed up and decorated, looks at LaForgue disapprovingly and begins his
ceremony, which consists of dancing, shaking his rattle, and yelling as to drive
away the evil spirits, because it is believed that they fear noise. LaForgue asks
the shaman who he is and, since this is forbidden to ask, the shaman concludes
that LaForgue is a demon – “Mitchemindo.” The shaman introduces himself
as “Mistegoit,” i.e. a spirit. He asks what LaForgue holds in his hands, and
since it is a book, the Bible, for which there is no word in native languages, the
shaman replies: “I curse you, Demon.” As LaForgue leaves, the shaman yells
after him: “Leave us, Demon!” (Beresford, 35.01-36.30) Mistegoit advises that
Black Robe should be killed to please the angry spirits. When a baby is about
to die and the mother, who is travelling, is forced to leave it in a tree, LaForgue
runs after her to secretly baptise the baby, which he does by using drops of rain
from the leaves. The shaman then warns: “He is going to cast a spell. [...] See
that sign, that’s how they steal our spirits” (Beresford, 45.18-45.43). Algonquins
are now obliged to leave LaForgue.
Despite all their efforts, in these early years the Jesuits baptized only a few dy-
ing adults. “They found especial pleasure,” Parkman writes, “in the baptism of
dying infants, rescuing them from the flames of perdition, and changing them,
to borrow Le Jeune’s phrase, ‘from little Indians into little angels’” (445). When
the European diseases started spreading around the native villages, the Jesuits
interrpreted them as either divine punishment or tests intended to strengthen
the faith of new converts. However, most of the natives accused the priests
of causing the diseases, and all the natural calamities too, through witchcraft
(Blackburn 2000: 20). In his epic poem “Brébeuf and His Brethren,” T. E. Pratt
narrates:

When the priests arrived,

They found that their black cassocks had become
The symbols of the scourge. Children exclaimed –
 The Black Robe among the Buckskin in Pre-Colonized Canada 171

“Disease and famine are outside.” The women

Called to their young and fled to forest shelters,
Or hid them in the shadows of the cabins.
The men broke through a never-broken custom,
Denying the strangers right to food and rest.
Observing the two priests at prayer, the chief
Called out in council voice – “What are these demons
Who take such unknown postures, what are they
But spells to make us die – to finish those
Disease had failed to kill inside our cabins?

When, the tribe abandons LaForgue – “You’re going on your mission alone,
Black Robe. Ask your Jesus to help you” (Beresford, 46.39)—the forest,
although previously associated with a barren place, becomes “the site of spir-
itual realization and communion with God” (Blackburn 2000: 45). LaForgue
promises God that he will suffer even greater deprivations, for the cross and
honour he is given, and “to the salvation of these poor barbarians. I thank Thee”
(Beresford, 52.41).
However, Chomina, who insists on keeping his promise, comes back for
LaForgue, when the Iroquois attack his group. Most of the group is killed,
including Chomina’s wife (acted by Tantoo Cardinal of Métis descent), while
LaForgue, Daniel, Chomina, Annuka and Chomina’s young son are captured
and taken to an Iroquois village, where they are exposed to brutal tortures, called
caressing (Beresford, 1.02-1.04). In Relations we find detailed descriptions of
this torture. Caressing was a ritualised way of torturing, which purpose was ot
capture the enemy’s soul so as to weaken the whole enemy’s tribe. It was to
progress slow, gradually, starting from minor to major injuries, and in phases.
After each phase of torturing, the victims would be refreshed, their wounds
treated, and they would be even fed, so that they remain alive as long as pos-
sible and eventually pray for mercy, when the winner would capture their souls.
The whole village would participate in torturing, including children, who would
beat, stone, break bones, burn their victims’ skin, and tear apart their bodies,
which would be cooked and served at the feast. Parkman writes that when the
victim showed especially brave, his heart was taken out, fried, and offered to
young warriors to encourage their own bravery. This, as The Relations report,
happened to Brébeuf (Greer 2000: 159–71). This was the only reported form
of cannibalism recorded among the natives of Canada. In the film, LaForgue’s
finger is cut with a clam-shell, Chomina’s son is beheaded in front of the father,
while the father is forced to sing his, so-called, death song. LaForgue and Daniel
sign “Ave Maria,” which entertains the torturers.
However, the survivors manage to escape thanks to Annuka’s sexual deception
of the guard. Their progress is slowed by Chomina, whose wounded body is
172 Marija Krivokapić, Amela Lukač Zoranić

quickly weakening. Eventually, Chomina spots the island from his death dream
and decides to abide with the dream and die there. LaForgue would baptise
him, but Chomina refuses: “Why would I go to your paradise? Are my people
there? My woman, my boy? There’s only blackrobes” (Beresford, 1.04). With
Chomina away, nothing keeps Annuka to stay with LaForgue and she reminds
him that in her father’s dream Black Robe is destined to loneliness. Daniel is
torn between his wish to stay with Annuka and his obligation towards LaForgue,
but the other reminds that Annuka lost her whole family because of them, which
announces a dramatic change of his perspective.
In the next scene, we see LaForgue approaching the Huron village. Ihonatiria
is depicted as very monochromatic. The photographer says that she “wanted
things [...] to have a Goya-like quality” (Moritsugu 1992: 26). Thus, the pali-
sades are made of pale woods, people are dressed in white or grey furs, the
sick look pale and others, as a sign of mourning, are covered in clay. “The only
thing that is black really is the priest in his black robe” (Moritsugu 1992: 26).
LaForgue enters the mission and finds a priest killed by a Huron who blamed
the priest for the death of his child. We hear the wind blowing through the holes
of the mission house as LaForgue calls out for Father Jerome, who asks from
his death bed: “Who are you? [...] How many are with you?” LaForgue replies:
“I’m alone” (Beresford 1.23.32-1.24).
During their dinner of a corn mash called sagamite, Jerome confesses that he
does not know the natives better now than he knew twenty years ago when he
first arrived in Ihonatiria. He has not managed to make any converts and implies:
“Our only hope is [...] some believe that baptism will cure their fever” (Beres-
ford, 1.24:53). Namely, as Blackburn writes, “French also became ill during
the initial epidemic, [but] they recovered and remained relatively unaffected as
the outbreaks of disease recurred [which] suggested to many [Hurons] that the
French had some effective means of prevention and cure” (106). The Jesuits
used this as an opportunity to insist that all Huron pray and believe in God, as
“the true and only means of turning away this scourge of heaven” (Blackburn
2000: 159).
LaForgue asks if baptism means anything if the natives really don’t understand
his faith, especially having in mind the language barrier. It is said that the Jesu-
its could not even find an adequate translation for the concept of god. Brébeuf
wrote that Huron nouns of relations were always followed by a possessive
pronoun, so that the trinitarian formula had to be translated as “In the name of
our Father, and his Son, and their Holy Spirit” (Greer 2000: 39). Brébeuf also
reports that it was rude to mention “Our Father, who art in Heaven” or “honour
your father and mother” to people whose parents were deceased and that for
this reason many refused baptism (cf. Greer 2000: 40). However, to LaForgue’s
fear Jerome ironically replies that it does not matter if Hurons don’t understand:
 The Black Robe among the Buckskin in Pre-Colonized Canada 173

“[T]hey are in danger of death. And we are offering them a place in Paradise”
(Beresford, 1.25:20). That night Jerome dies and the Conradian development,
as Sullivan defines the plot, closes. In a lonely cold chapel LaForgue implores:
“God, why is Jerome with you in Heaven, while Chomina lies forever in utter
darkness? Help me” (Beresford, 1.28).
In the morning, the church bell is heard and Hurons approach LaForgue: “Echon
[demon], why are you here? [...] Many want to kill you, Black Robe. [...] Are you
a man? [...] You must help us.” And then they ask a question that overwhelms
LaForgue: “Do you love us?” to which he replies with a deep exhalation: “Yes.”
“Then baptize us,” (Beresford, 1.29.18-1.31.04) they invite and gather in the
mission, carrying their sick. Thinking how the Hurons have not been properly
instructed in the faith, LaForgue wonders if he should follow the dictates of his
conscience and “refuse them baptism until they truly accept and worship Our
Lord” (Sullivan 101). But, looking at their faces upturned in abeyance towards
him, as he is to commence a mass ceremony, LaForgue “sets aside his own doubts
concerning the theological correctness of his actions (‘Was this true baptism or
a mockery?’), and is sustained by the firm belief in true Christian compassion
and love: ‘Spare them. Spare them, O Lord’” (Sullivan 1996: 102).
Still the unconvinced few remain outside the mission. The film closes with an
image of a cross silhouetted against the setting sun, and the superimposed text
reading that Hurons are soon to be destroyed.
Although Black Robe has been praised for its unbiased presentation of history
and for avoiding romanticised version of an “Other” who the colonists dreaded,
native scholars largely disagreed. Ward Chruchill sees the film as “a device in
an establishmentarian drive to sanitize and rehabilitate the European heritage
in America,” (Churchill 1996: 427) as an apology for the genocide, which is
presented as a big tragedy that no one could control (Churchill 1996: 428). He
argues that the film did not go further away from “keep[ing] Indians ‘in their
place’ in the popular imagination” (Churchill 1996: 427) from Kevin Costner’s
Dances With Wolves, emphasising, moreover, their “bestial impulses” (Churchill
1996: 432). The final irony, Chruchill says, is that LaForgue meets his destiny
in the Huron village in which everybody is dying of an illness introduced by his
predecessor, so that “in [Huron’s] ‘salvation’ lay their extinction” (433), very
much comparable with nazi antisemitic cinema. The Mohawk were presented
as an embodiment of evil, but stupid enough to be overpowered by “a sexual
deception” (Churchill 1996: 430). Churchill questions the anthropological
accuracy of the film advising that Mohawks were lead by elder women, who,
instead of beheading a child, would adopt it (430). What is more, as James Axtell
notices, it was highly tabooed for an Iroquois guard to have sex with someone
who was to be adopted within the tribe (80). It is also improbable that canoe-
ing, trading, and warring will be taking place in the winter in this area (Axtell
174 Marija Krivokapić, Amela Lukač Zoranić

1995: 81). Finaly, if the Huron language is dead, it is logical that the book and
the film would use a neighbouring native language, such as Cree. Yet, having
in mind that the largest part of the film is devoted to LaForgue’s relation with
the Algonquins, whose language is fluently spoken, the use of Cree is highly
questionable.
However, there is a lot to praise in the film. In the first place, it is a very vivid
– although not historically precise – depiction of the historical and cultural proc-
esses that made Canada and were enacted by two groups equally strange to and
frightened of one another: the Jesuits, with their passionate belief that they were
doing the right thing, and the natives, with their developed religious system in
which there was no need for Christianity. Therefore, despite its engaging story
and a scenic photography, Black Robe is not easy to watch. As the late Roger
Ebert says, “when it was over, I sat there in a state of depressed suspension,
wondering if that could possibly be all there was [...] as if the entire story [...]
was a prelude to nothing” (1991). It is here that we see the film’s greatest merit,
as it calls us to put aside all the possible harsh criticism of colonisation, and
think how we can better accommodate differences in a multicultural world we
share today.

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cording to the Movies. New York: Holt, 1995, 78–81.
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Sue Milliken. Screenplay: Brian Moore; Studio: Samuel Goldwin; Video:
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