Short doc to investigate tale of 2 Mohawk boys who faked their deaths to avoid residential school

There's a story passed down in a Kahnawake Mohawk family that one summer in the 1930s, two teenage boys faked their deaths by jumping off the railway bridge that connects the community to LaSalle, Que. 

As the story goes, two years later the boys returned to Kahnawake and regaled the community with the tale that they had hopped a train to the United States and joined the circus. 

"It's a story I grew up hearing," said Kaniehtiio Horn. 

"I heard that when my grandfather was 14 years old, he and his nephew faked their death or fell off the train bridge in Kahnawake."

The story is now the focus of a short documentary that Horn is working on with Roxann Whitebean, a writer, director and producer from Kahnawake. 

Horn grew up in Kahnawake and Ottawa as the youngest of seven sisters. She graduated from Dawson College with a theatre arts degree in 2005 and has been working as an actor since. She has most recently appeared in the National Geographic series Barkskins and in the comedy series Letterkenny. She also hosts a podcast called Coffee with my Ma. 

Horn never knew her grandfather because he died before she was born. She first heard the story as a teen and as she got older, she wondered why he ran away. 

Whitebean was familiar with the story, having heard it from Horn's mother. At the imagineNATIVE film and media arts festival in Toronto last fall Horn and Whitebean began to chat about the story and turning it into a screenplay. 

"If your grandfather runs away and joins the circus in the 1930s, I want to see that movie," said Horn. 

"I want to go to the theatre and watch that; I want to see our representation out there." 

Not having had the chance to spend time with her grandfather, she wanted to learn more about him and their family to learn more about herself and what her history is. 

Whitebean agreed to start looking into scriptwriting grants.

"Then we were talking about how maybe we should document our process in uncovering some of the information that we're going to share in our screenplay, because a lot of the people who are sharing this information are elderly and it's really good to hear these stories firsthand," said Whitebean. 

So they decided to start with a short documentary.

Family gathering

Before starting their work, Horn and Whitebean wanted to make sure they were going to be telling the story in an appropriate way and had the support of the families. 

"We want to tell it right. We have no intention of like airing dirty laundry, triggering traumas or anything like that," said Horn. 

They brought together family members from both of the boys' families for dinner and to spend time telling stories and getting to know each other. 

"We don't do that anymore; we don't gather with each other and share these stories anymore," said Horn. 

"We need to continue to share these stories."

As Horn describes it, without giving too many details away, the two boys faked their death to avoid being taken away to residential school. Her grandfather was 14 at the time and his nephew was a year older. They hopped a train to the United States and joined a circus for two years until they were too old to be forced to attend school. 

There are, of course, questions surrounding the validity of the story. 

"For a split second, we were like, 'Did they even run away and it just evolved into this insane story?'" said Horn. 

The short documentary is expected to be finished in the spring and the screenplay to follow.