BLOOD QUANTUM Interviews: Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers and Michael Greyeyes Talk Zombies and Indigenous Representation in Film

INTERVIEW WITH ELLE-MÁIJÁ TAILFEATHERS

ScreenAnarchy: How was your first connection with the script and with director Jeff Barnaby?

Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers: I’ve watched and admired Jeff’s work for years. Some really powerful shorts films and then his first feature Rhymes for Young Ghouls was a really incredible moment for indigenous film and Canadian film.

When my agent reached out to me about auditioning for a role, I jumped at the chance to work with Jeff because I knew that his work is deep in politics and creativity and he has such a unique voice. So that’s how it happened.

Especially in the first part of the film, the background of your character Joss is presented, she’s struggling as a mother. How was your approach?

Well I think Jeff does a really fantastic job of speaking about the ways that colonialism has impacted our families and the way that our kinship has been fractured by colonialism. The story is a really beautiful portrait of a family trying to survive, a family that’s been damaged by colonialism, but also about how families move forward.

Joss to me represented so many indigenous women I know who are holding up our communities and managing to essentially work acts of magic on a daily basis in the ways that they hold up our communities. It was an honor to play her, there was so much nuance to that character and so much power to that character.

I think it’s also interesting the evolution of this character because she takes a more prominent role as the film goes on, especially in the climax when she gives that speech about empathy. What can you comment on the evolution of your character?

To me, again, she represents so many indigenous women I know within our community who are doing incredible work, they often are doing that work quietly behind the scenes. For me she was all about someone who offers her love and works not only for her family but for her community, and has hope despite all odds. She also represents indigenous women who become leaders not by choice but because they have to. So she’s in some ways an unconventional leader but in many ways just the type of leader that I see in so many women in our communities.

How important is for you to be representing the Canadian First Nations in cinema?

Here in Canada we have a rich diversity of representation of indigenous people coming from indigenous filmmakers. This particular film represents a really critical turning point for indigenous film because it’s reaching such a broad audience. Often films made by indigenous filmmakers don’t necessarily get out into the world in the way that this film has. So it’s a really unique moment for all of us in watching the way that broader audiences, audiences even around the world are responding to this film. I’m enjoying witnessing all of it and I’m very happy to be a part of the journey.

Horror is a very popular genre, especially zombie films. How important is genre cinema to tell stories with social relevance?

Well, if you look at the history of the way that indigenous people have experienced genoicide in all throughout North, Central and South America, the film itself doesn’t really feel all that strange and so far from reality, because it is what we have experienced and what we continue to experience and witness.

I think the choice to make a zombie film was a really brilliant decision because I feel like it’s a world in which broader audiences can understand and digest what happens. It’s also convincing in an entertaining way so it’s attracting this really broad audience who likes zombies films, likes horror films, who might not expect to witness a film that’s so political in many ways. I think it was a brilliant decision on Jeff’s part to tell the story through the lens of the zombie genre.

Of course there are many themes going on, especially the clash between indigenous and white people. What issues you expect people to be reflecting on after watching this movie?

That there’s a long way to go in terms of creating a relationship of equality with indigenous people and settlers in Canada, the U.S. and throughout the Americas. It’s important for audiences to reflect on what indigenous people have experienced and continue to experience, and that genocide actually happened and is continuing to happen in various forms. So I hope audiences are entertained but also walk away with a lot of important questions about how we’re all implicated in this story.

I know you have directed some films, particularly dramas [including THE BODY REMEMBERS WHEN THE WORLD BROKE OPEN], so in that sense what was for you the main difference of working now on a horror film?

Well it was like nothing I’ve ever done before, it was a lot of fun. Actually I wasn’t sure what to expect but it was so much fun to witness the special effects team at work, and just to witness all of the thought that went into creating this world that we all lived in for six weeks of shooting.

As a director, it was just a really brilliant experience to be able to watch Jeff work and to learn from him. And then also the rest of the cast was fantastic, it was so much fun working with the other actors, just so much laughter between takes.

What do you think you brought to this movie as a filmmaker and, viceversa, what was the greatest lesson you learned from Jeff as a director?

That’s a tough question. Having directed films for almost a decade now I’ve learned what’s required behind the camera and so coming at it as an actor, there’s a lot of things that I didn’t understand before I started directing.

It’s interesting ‘cause they’re both very different skill sets. It’s very interesting marrying the two and trying to navigate headspaces of both of those roles.

What I learned from Jeff, I guess just the commitment to your vision. He created something very original, I don’t think a lot of filmmakers would be brave enough to tell a story like that, so I really respected his commitment to telling the story that he envisioned years and years ago.

This is your first horror film but as a cinephile do you consider other horror movies to be socially important?

That’s a tough question! I’m so bad at answering those questions! But one film that has really stuck with me over the last year and a half was Mati Diop’s Atlantique, which is kind of a bit of a horror film that speaks about undocumented migration and the upset people have to go to survive and the horrifying world of what undocumented migrants face. That’s a really, really powerful genre film and the message will stick with me for years.

A film like BLOOD QUANTUM certainly helps with the issue of representation. How do you feel about this subject since it seems there’s still a lot of work to be done?

Yeah, I agree, there’s a lot of work to be done. I think we’re in a really interesting moment, things are certainly changing in terms of the support that indigenous filmmakers are receiving. It’s very important that we are the ones driving the narrative and we are the ones telling stories about ourselves because outsiders will always get it wrong somehow.

INTERVIEW WITH MICHAEL GREYEYES

ScreenAnarchy: How was your initial connection with director Jeff Barnaby?

Michael Greyeyes: I hadn’t work with Jeff prior to working on Blood Quantum, I only heard about him through reputation and I was big fan of his work. I remember I screened File Under Miscellaneous at imagiNATIVE in Toronto years before and I was like who’s this guy? This guy is incredible. Then of course I was a big fan of his debut feature [Rhymes for Young Ghouls].

On the set I met him and we had a couple of phone conversations, he asked me to watch some films that were really important in terms of understanding his community’s history. From the beginning I think it was a really strong relationship. Jeff’s very direct on set, so it’s really nice, he’s a very technical director, meaning he’s really interested in image. I’m an experienced actor, I think I’m a pretty agile actor so if he asked for something I just tried to make it happen. We ended up building a really beautiful and three-dimensional character by the end of our process.

Going into BLOOD QUANTUM, how was your initial reaction to the script?

When I first got a hold of the script, they just sent one or two scenes that you audition for. It would really help me in any audition if I could get a full script, then they say “well, it’s not available right now.”

But eventually I got the full script and I read it and I was like, “OK, this is a fantastic piece of writing. This is really beautiful and really complicated. Like beautifully complicated characters, very flawed and very human. Beautiful.” So from the first time I read the script I was super impressed, just with his turn of phrase, with the structure of it, and mostly with just how so vivid and real the characters seemed to me.

Now that you mention this, your character Traylor is certainly very humane. He has a difficult present and background. In that sense how was your approach to this character?

Thank you.

As you know, the film can be look at as two films in one. There’s the first half of the film in which the community and the characters are introduced, and the idea of what happens during the outbreak. And then fast forward six months and we’re dealing with the aftermath, so really it’s two different films and, in a way, I got to create two different characters.

So there’s Traylor in the first part of the film where he’s sort of the put-upon guy, he’s sort of beleaguered, he can’t handle most of the shit that’s gone his way. His marriage is in a shambles, he’s divorced, his son is a delinquent; I think it speaks to him being a terrible father. And his job, he’s a sheriff but I don’t think he’s doing a great job. So really that’s the character we’re introduced to.

Ironically, or as is often the case, it takes a real serious event in one’s life for a person to grow up. For Traylor that was the end of the world, like [laughs] he needed the apocalypse in order to find out who he really was and what kind of hero he could be. I loved playing both sides of that coin.

BLOOD QUANTUM is a genre piece but of course the setting is an Indian reservation in Canada, which makes it unique. I don’t remember when was the last time I watched a film about the First Nations. How do you feel about the importance of representation in a powerful medium as cinema?

Thank you for that question.

I think it’s incredibly important to show our community on screen. The very fact that you haven’t seen depictions of modern day communities very much, is an indication that the medium has neglected to tell those stories. When I look at filmmakers like Jeff, I’m reminded that making this kind of work is crucially important to shifting the narrative.

In this case shifting the narrative away from the historical treatments of our community, because I think for a lot of Americans certainly and audiences around the world, they see us as characters belonging to a different time and a different historical context. But the fact is that we’re here, we’re nurses, doctors, police officers, educators, teachers. We’re bad fathers, we’re delinquent sons, we’re trying to figure out how to keep our families together; that’s just me describing the characters in Blood Quantum.

I think it’s really important to show how our current-day communities exist on film. I think that’s a huge part of what Jeff does as a filmmaker and I think it’s important for the medium.

What are those themes related to the First Nations that you expect people to be more conscious about after watching the movie?

It’s fascinating, when you look at the title of the film Blood Quantum, blood quantum is a phrase that not a lot of people are super familiar with. Blood quantum is a term that comes out of a racist goverment policy in North America, in which the goverment starts to determine our identity through the “amount of indigenous blood we had.”

And of course, if you look at the history of the United States you look at blood quantum in terms of black people and white people. You got into racist terms like octoroon, like mulato, these are now melanin terms because of this idea of trying to identify people through blood.

That of course ignores indigenous people’s way of identifying. Communities determine its own membership and this was just a way for the government to deny that.

When I look at a film like Blood Quantum and I look at the complex relationships inside the film, I’m reminded that what Jeff’s doing is just sort of unpacking history for audiences. Whether is the history of intergenarational trauma, bad fathers creating bad sons, intergenerationally continuing trauma. I think what Jeff’s doing is educating audiences. So I think it’s incredibly important to have this kind of stories present in our cinema.

Genre cinema and particularly zombie films have been historically important to explore social subjects, from George A. Romero onwards. You were also in FEAR THE WALKING DEAD, so how do you feel about the zombie subgenre as a vehicle to comment on important social subjects?

Yeah, I’m a fan of horror films and sci-fi. I’m especially drawn to zombie films. I have two teenage daughters and I remember that when I first got cast in Fear the Walking Dead they were younger, they were like, “daddy! Your dream comes true, you get to be in a zombie project!”; I was like “I know!”, I was so excited.

Because for me, first of all, I love it, I love the action of it, this idea of I’m dead or infected, creating this like implacable enemy against which the living are hurled and find themselves running in terror from. I’ve always just being excited about that idea.

As you said, the social context behind zombie films has always been present, from Romero and Dawn of the Dead and his sort of critique of consumerism to this film, which is a clear unpacking of colonial history.

Some nearly six hundred years later we’re still dealing with: what do our communities do? What kind of questions must our communities answer or wrestle with when outsiders, settlers, in this case hordes of white zombies are hurled against the walls of our communities? Do we take in refugees? These refugees ultimately can get sick and become infected and then destabilize us. What do we do? How do we show our humanity in the face of this external violence? So yeah, I think the zombie genre is a perfect place for us to examine history and examine really important questions.

BLOOD QUANTUM was made before the pandemic but right now it feels even more relevant and contemporary. How do you feel about this?

Even though it was made many years before COVID and this current pandemic, I think that having it released at the height of our quarantine and shutdowns and lockdowns, was particularly potent and really relevant, because we were all experiencing this collective fear and isolation and terror. Like we were afraid of becoming infected, we were afraid of those who were infected, we didn’t understand the disease and we still don’t. So there’s this sort of general unease, you could call it actually terror about the unknown, that permeates Blood Quantum. I think it was really relevant to see it unfold before us.

Unfortunately we’re going through this as a planet but, weirdly, Jeff’s film seems prophetic in terms of its content.

Going back to the theme of representation. We are living in more “progressive” times. Being part of a First Nation, how do you feel about what’s really happening regarding representation in the media?

As a person of color, I recognize my lived experiences haven’t always been reflected on the television screen, on the movie screen, in the news or in history books. I grew up with the fact that we exist in settler state, right? Setter state in which our existance as indigenous people and other people of color, we were a constant reminder that settler agression and settler violence wasn’t completely effective, like we were still here.

I’ve always been really cognitive of this historic and systemic racism. I’m actually quite proud of my political activism, through Twitter. I hope my voice as an artist and as an educator and director can amplify voices that we don’t hear.

I love acting, I love performing and for me to be onscreen, to have a brown body onscreen, occupying space in people’s minds and memories, is a crucial narrative because it’s counter to the narrative of racism, which is what we experienced as indigenous people in the United States and Canada for a long, long time. I love my role as a voice and as a body onscreen. I think my presence is political.