Return of the Indian
1955 · 11m · Canada
Directed by Grant McLean
Genres: documentary, historical
Tones: contemplative
This 1955 documentary surveys conditions facing Indigenous peoples in Canada and the obstacles they encounter within wider society. Its account emphasizes signs of change and efforts toward a more positive future.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A 1955 doc about Indigenous conditions sounds like the most dutiful, consensus-approved pick imaginable — which is exactly why it's probably been filed away and forgotten, waiting for someone to notice it's weirder and more formally strange than the archival narrative it pretends to be.
McLean's archival survey sits in a crucial lineage of postwar Canadian documentary, where institutional optimism about 'positive change' collides with the material reality of marginalization — the tension between what the film claims and what it shows is where the formal rigor lives.
The real move here is likely in the editing: how McLean stitches together testimony, landscape, and institutional footage to either reinforce or fracture the 'progress' narrative the voice-over promises — that structural choice either makes this a document or an interrogation.