History Film / BonesOfCrows

Bones of Crows is a 2022 Canadian drama film, written, produced, and directed by Marie Clements. The film stars Grace Dove as Aline Spears, a Cree woman who survives the Indian residential school system to become a code talker for the Canadian Air Force during World War II.

* PoliticallyIncorrectVillain: Almost any significant non-Indigenous charater that Aline comes across qualifies, whether it's Sister Ruth, Father Jacobs, Father Miller, any of the other clergy, or the RCMP officers who force her parents to surrender her to the residential school, and the family whose father she nurses. Racial slurs, racist double standards, and discriminatory treatment plague her steps and the steps of everyone she loves. Even the white character who treats her the best, the military officer who recruits her into the code speaking program, lets on to viewing women as given to gossip who can't be trusted with a secret unless they're firmly told to keep their mouths shout as a military order.

** Zigzagged by Aline. She does sometimes look awful, bloody and bruised, during some of her brutal episodes. Especially after Sister Ruth subjected her an especially severe punishment that include [[{{Fingore}} stomping her hand]] out of [[GreenEyedMonster jealousy]]. But she usually recovers quickly, looking good as new. She ends up looking very dignified and regal in her old age even after everything she's been through, not necessarily in a way that's meant to provoke sexual desire, but in a way that commands reverence.

* DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything: Adam, along with numerous British and Canadian soldiers, uncovers a concentration camp in the Netherlands. He's hit with a massive HeroicBSoD as the horror of the conditions sinks in, and a small Jewish child tries to comfort him. Both Adam and the audience can easily note the very real similarities between the Holocaust and the residential schools. Both pursued genocidal objectives. While some Canadian authorities were not explicitly about outright murdering Indigenous peoples into extinction and were content to force Indigenous children to become white on the inside (i.e. cultural genocide), other Canadian authorities were frustrated that the "Indian problem" persisted in that Indigenous peoples were apparently refusing to die off in spite of the horrific conditions imposed on them. Both policies were motivated by a dominant society trying to rid itself of a "problem" on account of a perceived inferior race in their midst. And it's not an exaggeration to say that the conditions in both the concentration camps and the residential schools were similarly horrific. And indeed, it is pointed out in various points in the film that many Indigenous children died for numerous reasons (physically killed, starved, disease, exposure while running away) and were left in unmarked graves near the schools.

** Zigzagged by Aline. She does sometimes look awful, bloody and bruised, during some of her brutal episodes. Especially after Sister Ruth subjected her an especially severe punishment that including [[{{Fingore}} stomping her hand]] out of [[GreenEyedMonster jealousy]]. But she usually recovers quickly, looking good as new. She ends up looking very dignified and regal in her old age even after everything she's been through, not necessarily in a way that's meant to provoke sexual desire, but in a way that commands reverence.

** Averted in the case of Adam, who was a handsome young man, much more so in military uniform, before he headed off to fight in World War 2. The war itself has left him with [[FacialHorror severe facial scars]] and having lost AnArmAndALeg.

* ShameIfSomethingHappened: Father Jacobs outright threatens to kill Perseverance if she does not reveal where Aline and her other siblings are hiding, and promises that no one will care enough to investigate or find her if he carries out that threat.

* NotSoDifferentRemark: Sister Ruth tries to relate to Aline that the other nuns and herself are themselves abused and mistreated and unprivileged compared to the male clergy who work the residential schools. Aline [[DefiedTrope throws it back in her face]] with TheReasonYouSuckSpeech that Ruth still can't imagine how much worse the Indigenous children still have it even compared to the nuns, and [[FreudianExcuseIsNoExcuse that it's still now excuse for how Sister Ruth treated her and the other Indigenous children]].