As part of Treaty Days, Wabaseemoong Independent Nations is honoured to be showing a screening of the documentary:
Ni-Naadamaadiz: Red Power Rising
Location: Community hall
Date: May 14, 2026
Show starts: 2:00 pm
Everyone Welcome
Synopsis
Ni-Naadamaadiz: Red Power Rising begins in Kenora, Ontario in the 1970s: a picturesque tourist town of 15,000 people near the Manitoba border. Between 1970 to 1973, this so-called sleepy town saw nearly 200 First Nations People die unexplained, “sudden deaths” without proper police investigations. Fed-up and frustrated, Indigenous Peoples used the only thing they had to get attention about their plight – their bodies. In 1974, the young, enigmatic Louis Cameron – a man who spoke like a combination of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. – formed the Ojibway Warriors Society (OWS) that took up arms and led the occupation of Anicinabe Park, along with leaders from the American Indian movement. Their demands were for housing, medical care, jobs and their lives. They defied the local police, a government that planted informants in their midst and the racist press. They fought for their land, and their right to exist. The occupation sparked a Caravan to Parliament Hill that culminated in a bloody protest and ultimately led to the creation of the Assembly of First Nations, which continues to fight for First Nations rights.
This film features Tyler Cameron, Louis Cameron’s son, who begins to intimately understand his dad after Tyler found Louis’ forgotten manuscript that details the racism, police abuse and what it was like being ‘Indian’ in Kenora, a place once described as the ‘Alabama of the north’. Tyler grapples with the fact that not much has changed in Kenora, but the spirit of the occupation of Anicinabe Park remains to this day – one of Indigenous power and resilience.
