| Flooding Job's Garden is a 59-minute documentary from the National Film Board of Canada. This is the third video in the As Long As the Rivers Flow Series about First Nations issues in Canada. This series documents the struggle of Aboriginal People in Canada for justice and self-determination. In Flooding Job's Garden, the viewer is taken on a journey to northern Quebec among the various Cree communities as they work to protect their traditional homeland from the devastation of the James Bay hydroelectric project. Writer, director and narrator Boyce Richardson returns to familiar locations and visits with Cree hunters and trappers he first met while directing the video 1970s film Job?s Garden. In Job's Garden, the viewer met Cree hunter Job Bearskin as he showed Boyce Richardson the wonders of the northern Quebec environment. The first phase of the James Bay project developed by the Quebec government has flooded the traditional lands of the Cree, and fifteen years later Boyce Richardson returns to discover the tremendous destruction that has taken place. The James Bay Cree had signed an Agreement with the Quebec government in 1975. This was considered one of the first modern treaties. The agreement allowed the government to flood the Cree lands in return for hunting and fishing rights, control over health, education and local government, and financial compensation. With phase 2 ready for implementation, the James Bay Cree under Matthew Coon Come's leadership have launched an international campaign against the Hydro Quebec plan. The environmental destruction of phase 1 of the project that dammed the La Grande River is explained in the juxtaposition of images from the 1970s and 1990. This documentary examines the various methods the Cree communities employ to counteract the destruction and environmental degradation. Relocation of villages, social problems, alcohol abuse, family violence, and self-government are just some of the issues facing the communities of Chisasibi, Mistassini, Waswanipi, and Eastmain. The personal and spiritual relationship to the land remains strong as the Cree struggle to take their fight to the international arena in an effort to halt phase 2 of the hydro project. |
