Educational Media Reviews Online

With a title vaguely reminiscent of Psalm 137 ("How can we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?"), this work evokes the awe and wonderment of the Pacific Northwest while recording the emotional dissonance of frontier life for women in the 19th century. Beautifully filmed images of mountains and trees and wildlife fill the screen, successfully convincing the viewer that, as with all frontier life, the price paid was remarkably high, yet the rewards in natural splendor more than compensated for it. While that might not represent the intent of the filmmakers Melissa Young and Mark Dworkin, their effort persuades one that the terrible luminance of Washington and British Columbia demanded any price.

In addition to the frontier view, Canadian poet Jeannette Armstrong provides poignant visions of Native American women, opining, "I celebrate creation." These few narratives of Native women point to the strong Indian culture long established before white incursions and forever enfeebled by the experience of white culture. Vignettes of a female berry-picking party and the Indian school experiences of Mourning Dove of the Colville Tribe (1888-1926) faintly illuminate the extremes of Native American women's experiences: the mundane and the colonial. While neither startlingly challenges, each in its own way offers a small "slice of life" view.

The bulk of the film is dedicated to the white female experience. Reenactments of crude schools, endless potato peeling ("potatoes and potato peelings and buckets of water," sighs one diarist) and flour sack dresses convey the homespun quality of frontier life. In another vein, a horrific avalanche gives a doomed mother precious moments to impart to her equally imperiled daughter all the frontier kitchen wisdom she can before perishing beneath the snow.

History gives way to poetry and the seemingly essential question--how did women help their families survive? --becomes a smaller point to the whole. Poetry by Jana Harris, evocative writing by Jeanette Armstrong and several diary accounts leave a more artistic than strongly historical sense. Breathtaking vistas, folk tunes and faunal images create a profoundly emotional response, with 19th century Pacific history serving as the medium through which to deliver the hard-won strength of pioneering women. That Young and Dworkin err on the side of expansive rather than strict documentary does not detract from the film. Such small criticisms simply make one wonder if indeed they are considering how these women sing in a strange land, of if the question is more along the lines of how can they NOT keep on singing, when surrounded by such divine and ethereal beauty?

Recommended, especially for Western and Pacific history collections, where some of the geographic and historical references might be more germane.