Film Fest Highlight: Animating Indigenous Peacemaking and the Justice System
One of this year’s DHI Human Rights Film Festival entries is A Once and Future Peace, a moving documentary about a new restorative justice program in Washington. The documentary follows the story of “Andy,” a teenager facing felony charges, as he and his family participate in an intervention program based on Indigenous peacemaking circles. Blending live footage with animation, A Once and Future Peace travels from the Inland Tlingit First Nation in Canada, to Cambodia where a young boy named Saroeum flees the Pol Pot regime to end up in Boston, and finally to King County, Washington where Andy attempts to change his path.
The film focuses on a restorative justice program led by Saroeum which offers an intervention for youth facing felony charges as an alternative to prison or juvenile correction in King Country, Washington. Saroeum learned about peacemaking circles and their use as restorative justice from Harold (Inland Tlingit) who has been spearheading a program in partnership with a local judge in the Yukon. As a former gang leader, Saroeum then takes his own experience and attempts to institute similar programs in Boston and then in Washington, where we cross paths with Andy. Interviews with judges and other members of the justice system reveal the ways that an incarceration mindset was draining the population in King County and is juxtaposed with the animated sequences set to recordings of Andy’s peacemaking sessions.
Dr. Jessica Bissett Perea (Dena’ina) of the Native American Studies department led the Q&A with the film’s director, Eric Daniel Metzgar.Metzgar is an Emmy-winning documentary filmmaker. Dr. Perea noted the scope of the documentary, how it covered colonialism, dispossession, and war across Canada, Cambodia, and the U.S. and asked if the documentary had been planned as a more local story. Metzgar noted that the threads of the story were always going to be international, as the knowledge of peacemaking circles came from First Nations in Canada to a Cambodian refugee in Boston and now to a Mexican-American teenager in Seattle. Metzgar wanted to keep that trail of knowledge intact in the film and was only able to do it because these people are so good at telling their stories, because of their peacemaking circle experience. Dr. Perea emphasized that during the documentary, Harold specified that though the peacemaking circle was Indigenous in origin, its use wasn’t limited to Indigenous people and that the circle process was for everyone. Peacemaking circles were about radically listening and re-humanizing people and communities. Metzgar agreed that incarceration produced the view that people were disposable and that restorative justice is about restoring that sense of belonging and humanity.
The Q&A also brought to light some of the filmmaking process. Metzgar was asked about his choice to include animation and how that affected his process as well as questions about getting projects funded.
Not only are the DHI Human Rights Film Festival Q&A sessions opportunities to go “beyond” these documentaries and find out more about their subjects, but are also fruitful for young filmmakers. This year’s roster of films cover timely topics like life on the Palestinian side of the West Bank, recent movements like the Movement for Black Lives and March for Our Lives, and the Mexican-U.S. Border. All of the documentaries include a recording of the live Q&A session. The films will stream through Tues, November 23rd. Buy your passes here!