Stolen Identities-We Were Children Reflection

Stolen Identities-We Were Children Reflection

Imagine you are stripped of everything you hold dear and true, and forced into another way of life. I don’t know about you but I would be devastated, especially if I had to experience such terrible things as young as the age of five. That is what Lyna Hart experienced as a First Nations child, who went to residential school. Her story is displayed in the film “We Were Children”.

I was astonished to see that everything of Lyna’s was stripped from her upon arrival that the residential school. At the beginning of the film, on the first day of residential school, the filmmaker uses reenactments of a young Lyna getting her long beautiful hair cut off, while a current day Lyna is explaining her experience, as a voice over. This technique was very effective in displaying the hardship of this tragic experience. Lyna said she could feel the cold scissors cut through her hair as a part of her was taken way. In the First Nations culture, hair was barely ever cut. Lyna’s clothing, her language, her name, and her way of life were replaced with the ‘Canadian society’ and she was taught that her past way was the savage way.

-Marlee <3