The media and its messages have devastating effect on me in other ways as well. On Saturday movies nights at the Mission, a cartoon or short film would be shown before the main movie. In Black Arrow (1944), the Indian was always the hero, with Black Arrow, son of a Navajo chief, getting justice, retribution, and revenge by the end of each of fifteen short episodes. It seems strange that the priests and nuns would allow even one of those segments to be shown to us, because the storyline ran contrary to all their other teachings about Aboriginal people. We were never the heroes.
	Another one of the short films that ran before the movie was more in keeping with the general philosophy at the Mission. In Beautiful British Columbia (1940), all of the people on camera were White, and they were inviting other people to British Columbia to witness the beauty of it. I couldn’t have been more than eight years old, and I couldn’t form the right questions then, but, basically, I found myself thinking, “Where do we fit in this society?” I couldn’t understand why there was no mention of Indian people, and I put as much thought into it as an eight-year-old could. The words “invisible” and “undesirable” in this context hadn’t yet made it into my vocabulary.
	Most of the movies we watched on Saturday nights at the Mission reinforced the myth that being Indian was something to be ashamed of. One movie, it could have been The Silent Enemy (1930), showed an elderly Indian woman who had been thrown out of her teepee because she was too old to help with the family. The rest of the tribe did not want her around anymore. One scene showed her fighting with the dogs for scraps of food that were tossed her way. At the time, I couldn’t differentiate between fact and fiction. Even though I knew that did not happen in my community, I believed somewhere in my “Indian” world we were that cruel and I felt such shame.
One Saturday, we were all excited because we were told that we were going to be shown an Elvis Presley movie. A lot of the girls were crazy about Elvis. The show was a western, but I don’t remember the name of it; may it was King Creole (1958), or Flaming Star (1960). We were all enjoying the movie until I heard Elvis say something like “I’d rather kiss a dog than an Indian.” It was like he reached out of the screen and slapped me. I can’t remember the context of his remark, but that one line has stuck with me all these years. As an adult, I mentioned this to Violet Stump and she said, “I remember that.” We were absolutely feeling ashamed about ourselves as “Indians” and this celebrity, who a lot of people were absolutely crazy about confirmed to the world that Indians were not even as good as doges. What a terrible thing for vulnerable, young Aboriginal children to hear. Years later I heard that Elivs was part “Indian”. Whether it is true or not is irrelevant not but, if we had heard at the mission that Elvis was part Indian, the message would have instilled in us such pride. Instead, we heard him shame us.
	There were plenty of derogatory remarks made about Indians in Western movies, and we saw many westerns. Of course, at the time, I could not see it for what it really was: stupidity on behalf of racist fools right down the line from the producers who created the films to the administrators who chose them for our “entertainment”. Instead, I cringed and the shame I felt at being Indian went deeper and deeper each time I heard a derogatory comment about Indians. The flip side to that, of course, was the “perfect” White families shown on TV. They were perfectly manicured, their homes were immaculate. Everything about them seemed perfect and, because I did not know any White families, I assumed this to be the truth for all White people.
Living near a redneck town where people made no bones about how they felt about Indians did not help matters. People in the area called in to a radio program called Open Mic to talk about things they felt were important. Many times I would cringe when they started openly talking about “the Indians” and the “Indian Problem.” People would be so cruel in their comments about Indians. Those comments always made me physically and emotionally ill. It was at those times that the shell I used to protect myself cam up and I retreated deeper inside myself. 
	Messages I was getting from everyone around me at the Mission told me that I was inferior to White people. Messages I got from my family were telling me the same thing. My grandmother had gone to the school for nine years where she was brainwashed into believing she was inferior to White people, and she relayed that message to me in different ways. Some of my uncles and brothers who had gone to the school relayed that message to me. White society relayed that message to me in their words on the radio, in the actions in their everyday lives, and in their TV shows and movies. The schools and other agencies that were created to look after the Indians also relayed that message. Everything in society told me that I was not good enough because I was an Indian.
  Answer the questions below, in the passage.
what is interesting about their work?