September 30, National Day for Truth and Reconciliation

Bones of Crows takes a long, hard look at the life-long and generational trauma instilled by the racist institution of residential schools, and one woman’s life-long fight for justice and accountability. A stirring indictment of colonialization and testament to resilience and persistence, the film is made all the more powerful by Grace Dove’s richly layered central performance as Cree matriarch Aline Spears. The film opens in 1920s Manitoba and follows a young Spears whose idyllic childhood is cut short when she and her siblings are forcibly removed and sent to a residential school. Aline survives the hostility and horror and goes on to enrol in the military at the outbreak of World War II. Despite the system’s attempt to eradicate her mother tongue, her fluency in Cree makes Spears a valuable code talker in the Canadian Air Force – an irony not lost on the film or the viewer. As her life unfolds in front of us, we watch as she fights every day to survive and even, miraculously, to thrive.—That Shelf