Blood Quantum. 2019. Canada. Written and directed by Jeff Barnaby. With Michael Greyeyes, Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers, Forrest Goodluck, Kiowa Gordon, Brandon Oakes, Olivia Scriven, Kawennáhere Devery Jacobs and Gary Farmer. In English and Mi’kmaq. DCP. 96 min.
Indian blood laws, or “blood quantum,” were measures of Native American ancestry devised by white settlers in the colonial United States “to define racial population groups.” In Jeff Barnaby’s apocalyptic fantasy, set in 1981, the Indigenous community of the Red Crow Mi’gmaq reserve find themselves immune to a contagion that turns “white”-blooded people into zombies. As they struggle to fight off the relentless assault of these flesh eating “zeds,” they face a choice between providing leadership and refuge, or avenging generations of mistreatment by white society. The filmmaker’s lead character, Lysol, a profoundly disaffected Native youth, is the flashpoint for densely textured themes of alienation and self-loathing, intergenerational conflict, misogyny, barbarism, and the failure of authority. At the raw edge of white and Native cultures, Barnaby hits all the bloody tropes of the undead sub-genre with righteous outrage. Above all, however, the film’s message is that people of color and minorities are not the only ones at risk; those in power are “coming after everybody.”
File Under Miscellaneous. 2010. Canada. Written and directed by Jeff Barnaby. 7 min.
Inspired by Pablo Neruda’s poem “Walking Around,” this brief sci-fi noir offers a vision of racial alienation and its gruesome exploitation.