Justin Rain: Adam

Two Indians Talking

Adam

Nathan: So you think this all right then?
Adam: No, it's wrong. But unlike you, I don't believe in cut and dry answers. Black and white doesn't work for me. I have to have my grays.

Nathan: Culture has a source of strength too. The rez keeps our culture alive, otherwise we would've been assimilated long time ago. Assimilated means...
Adam: I know what assimilated means!
Nathan: You're just giving me that look.
Adam: Well, I was surprised. It's a big word with five syllables, you used it well!

Adam: You want your kids to think for themselves, you have to accept the risk they're not gonna think like you.

Nathan: When's the last time you took part in your culture?
Adam: This morning.
Nathan: What'd you do this morning?
Adam: Had some bacon and eggs.
Nathan: Bacon and eggs?
Adam: Yeah.
Nathan: What's traditional about bacon and eggs?
Adam: My mom made it. That's how they did it back in the day, the women folk cooked the meals.
Nathan: Screw you.

Nathan: That's why they created reservations, to do that, take your dreams away from you. It finds out what you want and then it does its best to keep it away from you.
Adam: You're anthropomorphising a lump of land? You're telling the rez is alive?
Nathan: Well, it might as well be, it sucks the life out of Indians every day. Put us here, tell us we can't do anything.
Adam: Which they don't do anymore.
Nathan: No but that way of thinking gets into you. You can't slap a people down for 500 years and not expect them to be stuck in that certain mindset.

Adam: Sometimes you gotta let angry people be angry. Let them get that out of their system first.

Tara: Sex makes you nervous?
Adam: No.
Tara: People having sex makes you nervous?
Adam: No.
Tara: The dangerous sex positions that they're going to try is making you nervous?
Adam: I'm not even thinking about those.
Tara: I am, because if he breaks his willy, I am not splinting it.
[about Nathan and Janine]

Adam: I'm not a coward but I'm also not warrior material. I'm not going to be on the front shouting. If you want my best, you have to go with my strengths.
Nathan: Cooking?
Adam: I'm a storyteller. A story teller, my job a very traditional job is to record the history and make sure everyone knows about it.
Nathan: While making a profit at it.
Adam: Why not? I've lived the first 20 years of my fucking life living off welfare, sleeping on a mattress on a floor with no bed sheet. Now I have a way out from that, why can't I take it?
Nathan: Why can't you take the rest of us?

Nathan: Do you believe in God?
Adam: Are you for real?
Nathan: Well... You just have to believe in something.
Adam: Waking up in the morning.
Nathan: Why did the spirits make me related to such an apple?
Adam: Because they thought you might be due for a dose of reality.
Nathan: White man's reality.
Adam: No, intelligent reality, that perhaps we all don't think like you. I don't believe in God either. Majority of white people find that offensive, which is standard for being white. I don't think the way they do so I must be less than them, which is exactly how you think!

Nathan: You think they'll take over?
Adam: It's been known to happen. Majority tends to rule and ignore the minority. It'd be the exact same scenario when the whites came over.
Nathan: Are you comparing the Cree to whites?
Adam: I'm comparing the whites to every other person on the planet.
Nathan: They're not the Cree.
Adam: What exempts the Cree?
Nathan: They're our friends.
Adam: So were the whites, when they first showed up.
Nathan: This is sacrilege.

Tara: If all you think about is suffering, poor Indians, land claims, that'd get depressing.
Adam: How can I not think about it? I'm surrounded by it, I live it every day. This is my life.
Tara: And we should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once.
Adam: Oh, dear God, you quoted Nietzsche at me?
Tara: Had to, last resort.

Nathan: I live my life like the way they would. I honor the spirits and I give face to their beliefs.
Adam: Their beliefs?
Nathan: Yeah.
Adam: You believe what they believe? You know they believed a big salmon tried to eat the moon?
Nathan: Can you prove that it didn't?

Nathan: You getting scared?
Adam: Maybe I am. You know, if it gets anything like Oka...
Nathan: You don't think what we're fighting for is worth it? We're going to be costing them billions. What have they cost us?
Adam: What?
Nathan: Our lives, man. And you want to talk about money? How much money do they owe us?
Adam: I don't know.
Nathan: Bullshit, your mother's all over that. The judges say they owe us for the land. The World Trade Organization says they owe us for the trees. How much?
Adam: 11 billion. A year for the last 50 years.
Nathan: Even their own laws say they're stealing from us.

Adam: They kill Indians, you know, they kill us because they can.
Nathan: Yeah, it scares me too.
Adam: Thank you.
Nathan: But what are you gonna do? Everybody dies. Might as well be doing something important.

Nathan: Pan-Indianism?
Adam: Is when all people think Indians are the same no matter where they come from.
Nathan: We're not.
Adam: We're getting to be. It's not a bad thing you just... It's because we're hanging out more. But you got to start questioning when the lines get too blurry.