URBAN ELDER

(HiFi Stereo VHS Video - 23minutes)

Urban Elder is a compelling, photo-animated documentary set to original music. The Urban Elder of the title is Cree ceremonial leader Vern Harper, a Spiritual teacher serving the Toronto area native community. The video details the struggle of a spiritual traditionalist to maintain and foster his people's earth based faith against the shadows of the urban landscape.

 

 

Ballad of Asin(Vern Harper)

 

Here comes the story of an Indian

A half-breed Cree from the north

His Irish father he doesn't remember much

Since torn from his dead mom at four

When he was a young boy in a foster home

He taught himself from the radio

The Toronto streets were his classroom

His mother's last breath, his life

 

You can tear a man apart for the colour of his skin

But you can't tear the Indian from his heart

When all the dreams are gone, there is one thing left inside

The People of the Earth must survive

 

He tore himself from Christianity

Like he was torn from his blood

Living like a renegade

Getting what he could

From Marx and hippy drugs and stuff

Shooting in his veins

Taking all the pleasures

Of the dominant society's games

 

Then it came to a dead-end line where the streets revealed their name

 

Bound down to the res and time where the man hides all the pain

Little kids in cardboard shacks and mothers without a man

Warriors drunk in alley ditches while the medicine fought the band

Murder on the high prairies and torture in the cells

All the lies that the white man said and the goons trapped in their hells

Ceremonies in secrecy, with prophecies on the line

Took Stone by the truth of his heart to fight right what's blind

 

You can tear a man apart for the colour of his skin

But you can't tear the Indian from his heart

When all the dreams are gone, their is one thing left inside

The Indian with the Earth must survive

 

Took him through Wounded Knee, Kenora and the Caravan

Found himself in the vision red, deep within the land

Suffering in the Sweat Lodge with Elders and Warriors

Flying low with the beating drum, the pipe tight within his hands

Spent time with the medicine, sobriety on his wheel

Getting ready for the coming fall, the west is on our heel

Twisted truth, tortured by, the bluemen with their push

When you're with the old ones, it doesn't matter all that much

 

You can tear a man apart for the color of his skin

But you can't tear the Indian from his heart

When all the dreams are gone there is one thing left inside

The Indian with the Earth will survive

Some people now know Asin as an Elder

Some wish he was just some Indian in a suburb

He's been beat up, imprisoned, for crimes he hadn't done

You can see the scars on his chest, for dancing in the sun

He says it doesn't get any easier, but it gets better all the time

When you're walking with the medicine, it's always a thin line

There ain't nothing that you'll ever need, that you'll never get

For my ancestors and all my relations, meegwetch

 

You can tear a man apart for the colour of his skin

But you can't tear the Indian from his heart

When all the dreams are gone there is one thing left inside

The Indian with the Eagle, will fly

 

He's a red man

He's not a dead man

He's going to be a free man

He's going to be a free man

He's going to be a free man

He's going to be a free man

He is a free man

Music, lyrics and images by Patrick Wey