Charley Squash Goes to Town
1969 · 4m · Canada
Directed by Duke Redbird
Genres: animation, comedy, satire
Tones: humorous, provocative, whimsical
Satirical animation mocks Indigenous stereotypes and pressure on Indigenous youth to assimilate.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A 1969 animated middle finger to the entire assimilation playbook—satirizing the pressure on Indigenous youth by literally watching Charley get flattened by the machinery of "civilization." Most scouts would've filed this under "important historical document"; Felix picks it because it's genuinely subversive, funny, and refuses to make you comfortable while it does it.
Redbird positions this squarely within the lineage of activist animation and satirical social commentary, deploying whimsy as a formal tool to disarm before the critique lands; the restraint of the 4-minute form becomes part of the argument about what gets erased.
The decision to keep the humor *light* while the stakes are devastatingly clear—that tonal calibration, paired with the economy of animation on a limited budget—makes the satire land where it could've curdled into preaching.