Feature Image Courtesy of Rezolution Pictures F3M
Much like how breaking a fever can signify healing, the title of Cree filmmaker Neil Diamond and Catherine Bainbridge’s latest documentary, Red Fever, hints at both challenge and transformation. Premiering at Toronto’s 2024 Hot Docs Festival, the film delves into the global romanticization of Indigenous peoples.
Following the success of Reel Injun, in this documentary, Diamond poses the question, “Why are so many people attached to these fantasies when most of them have never even met a Native person? There’s a deeper story about why the world is fascinated with us and how profoundly we’ve influenced them.”
This fascination, unfortunately, has led to fetishization, exploitation and pretendianism. From countless portrayals of Native Americans as sports mascots to the fashion industry’s appropriation of Indigenous designs, Diamond travels throughout Turtle Island and across the Atlantic, tracing our presence back to early recorded documents and oral histories shared by scholars, community leaders and Elders.
Red Fever is structured in four segments, focusing on the impact that Indigenous peoples have had in sports, fashion, agriculture and politics. In the segment on fashion, Diamond explores the line between appropriation and appreciation, traveling to Igloolik Island, Nunavut, to highlight the controversy behind UK fashion brand KTZ’s appropriation of Shaman Qingailsaq’s traditional parka that made headlines in 2015.
Incorporating animation to share the story of the shaman (angakuq), Diamond talks with relatives of Qingailsaq to help audiences better understand their family story and the significance behind the parka, which was intended only for ceremony. The fashion label took the design without consent and placed it on clothing that retailed for $925.
The film also explores the origins of football by focusing on the lives of Jim Thorpe and the Carlisle Indian School Football Team. At a time when Ivy League schools were playing rugby in stadiums, the Carlisle Indian School, the first residential school in North America, formed its own team of Native boys.
“They were barely fed, they were undernourished,” Bainbridge explains to CTV’s The Social. Prohibited from hitting back for fear of being perceived as “savages,” the boys started strategizing how they could win and not get killed. What resulted were trick plays and forward passes that are now present in modern-day football. “They went on to beat every single Ivy League.”
Further segments focus on the detrimental effects of commercial fish farming in British Columbia and the Haudenosaunee Confederacy’s influence on American democracy.
Red Fever is a call to research and learn more about the true history of Canada and the United States.
Many of the stories shared in the documentary are ones that I had heard for the first time, and I left the film screening with a deeper sense of pride.
Diamond and Bainbridge weave together a heart-warming and entertaining analysis of our influence and impact on modern Western society in Red Fever, giving recognition and credit where it is long overdue.
Much like how breaking a fever can signify healing, the title of Cree filmmaker Neil Diamond and Catherine Bainbridge’s latest documentary, Red Fever, hints at both challenge and transformation. Premiering at Toronto’s 2024 Hot Docs Festival, the film delves into the global romanticization of Indigenous peoples.
See Red Fever on the big screen at the following theatrical release dates: https://f3m.ca/en/projections/
