Gord Downie's, The Secret Path Part 1 - American Reacts - See Below for Part 2

[Music] what's up my Canadian cousins welcome back to the channel so about six months ago I did a um reaction video to the song Bob Cajun from The Tragically Hip and um I was also learning a lot about the band and about where Downey's last life and his cancer diagnosis which was obviously very sad but I played um a good portion of in an interview in that last year as they were doing their last tour and ultimately their last show in Hamilton Ontario and um Peter Mansbridge was the interviewer and he asked Gord about the secret path project that Gord was actually involved with making at the time and uh I know what the secret path is I started watching it at the time and I stopped because I wanted to do a reaction video to it it's an hour long and I just not never did it because it's quite ambitious and this is definitely the most ambitious thing I ever did but I also think it's important and uh it was extraordinarily important to to gore to do that with the last year of his life um to you know bring the story of channy wenjack a uh young boy in the 1960s who ran away from a residential school and died trying to get hundreds of kilometers or miles back to his home and I you know although this is the single story of a single boy and it it is probably emblematic of so many stories of so many children that were in the residential schools both in Canada and in the United States and I know Canada has got has made efforts with the true Truth and Reconciliation to try to bring the stories to light um and you know at some point I would like to learn more about how that is progressing and and what's been done and how people feel about it um we could probably learn from some of that here I mean we have you know some individual Truth and Reconciliation when local governments and state governments with respect to indigenous peoples but you know we also have to reckon with and reconcile with the um institutional racism that happened towards African Americans and and slavery and so it's uh sometimes the plight of indigenous peoples get overlooked because of that and not to say that there's competition between the two but in some sense maybe there is for the national attention and I've been on several uh Nations reservations here in the United States and always learn something new and I always love and appreciate the culture and I'm always saddened by the history of what's happened in the way many of them live today and the problems that they still have so anyway I've spoken enough this is going to be long I'm going to break it up into Parts uh and I'm going to start now with part one of Gore Downey's the secret path I hope you stick with me on this journey um this rather ambitious Journey and let's see how we do all right my friends thank you [Music] [Music] this is the best thing I've ever done and my best I just mean it helps my heart a little bit this is what I want to do nothing else really matters to me [Music] I had wanted to tell my brother's story I wanted his life to mean something I had no idea how I was gonna do that but I trusted I knew that something would come about in time you know who would ever thought Tragically Hip there was an excerpt from that in the interview I saw all right good morning Gord was taller than you doing than I imagined pretty good yeah a friend of mine Kev Drew asked me one day to make a record with him he just wanted to make a record and I said I would but I don't think I have any songs but the weird thing is is that I'd been writing about Charlie so we made a record and it's an attempt to capture the feeling somehow of trying to get home [Music] oh there he is so the woman who created him at the plane was his sister and I suppose that the other people of his extended family [Music] between the early 1980s and 1996 [Music] oh my goodness I had no idea it lasted that long into the 1990s I wonder if that's the same here I don't think so I had always understood the practice ended earlier in the 1900s maybe some lasted into the 1950s and 60s I'm gonna look that up wow [Music] [Music] thank you [Music] I am a stranger you can't see me [Music] I brace myself for this one [Music] I never gave them up [Music] I jumped on a secret path [Music] the one that nobody knows [Music] and what I'm feeling [Music] what is in my head and what's in a chat I'm not gonna stop [Music] they're not gonna stop please just let me catch my breath I Am The Stranger I can't see me I Am The Stranger [Music] happier times freely fishing a nice warm day you see the color contrast in the uh artwork it says a lot that is not my dad sun on his face doesn't even dream [Music] on a secret path my dad is not a wild man doesn't even drink not the Savage that people think right the one that nobody knows [Music] I'm a stranger [Music] I am a stranger cutting his hair [Music] I'll tell you what reminded me to do this is I started watching the uh Yellowstone um prequel with Harrison Ford and uh oh goodness Helen Mirren and there are one of one of the characters in it and this takes place in the nineteen 20s is uh horribly abused in a residential school here in the US and escaped and uh that's where I'm up to so far with their hunting her down and cut her hair [Music] it's hardly abused by so-called people of the cloth [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] this is what he's escaping from the horror and the terror of that to get back to what else is in his mind in that bubble thought bubble he's got there his father fishing nice sunny day powerful stuff I mean this artwork is really powerful along with the song they go together very well to really give you the feel for it hmm [Music] we were alive [Music] [Applause] [Music] the kid [Music] I'm sorry I have to pause I don't know if this is going to see the light of day this video or if it's going to be blocked and I want to pause it too much I do have to to comment on it um I've been kind of taking a chance on this but that's okay wow um I wonder what research was done in order to uh tell this story I mean some of it is obviously artistic license it has to be no one really knows what Charlie went through on that lonely walk but you can well imagine any empathetic human being can imagine and um but you know these scenes here at the residential school must have I I'm sure is based on uh real research so and I know there was just so much indiscriminate punishment and you know trying to harshly as they would say beat the Indian or you know teach the Indian out of the out of the kid and using cruel tactics okay [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] actually not again [Music] gosh [Music] so is that how it how he escaped they use the opportunity of a distraction with another child being punished to while they were on a swing playing on a swing set to to run and that there was more than one or three of them it looked like [Music] what happened to the other two who were they recought [Music] hmm set matches [Music] foreign [Music] she put them into a small slim glass jar with a screw tablet [Music] I fingered the jar I put it in my pocket [Music] she said can't go into the woods without thou my smiled at her and love and I kept them so it looks like he ran into a family that gave him matches to light fires in the woods true I said assume that was based on a documented uh event that they know about [Music] [Music] looked to me too like that was a family of mixed marriage between indigenous indigenous [Music] white husband hard to tell on those drawings but that's what I think Jake was looking at [Music] her smile [Music] I kept them [Music] foreign [Music] as long as this is so well done telling yourself you'll be fine I just I had started with seven as long as there are six as long as there are five keeps using them I guess night after night running out they ultimately die from exposure to the elements [Music] foreign [Music] well my friends we are 16 minutes in and uh I think this is where I'm going to conclude part one because obviously my video is going to be longer because I have to stop the comment and I hope you tune in for part two I will really save most of my thoughts and final commentary for the end other than what I say as the video progresses all right friends hope to see you on this one soon thanks foreign [Music] I want the above the path jump into the right