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Canada’s “Moccasin Flats” Returns for a Third Season

The third season of Canadian TV series Moccasin Flats debuts this month on the Aboriginal Peoples’ Television Network, and Showcase, and with it returns not one but three lesbian characters.

The show, for which the adjective ‘gritty’ is an understatement, depicts the lives of Aboriginal youth struggling to make their way in the inner city community of Moccasin Flats (located in Regina, Saskatchewan’s Native ghetto).

The young people who are the focus of the program include Candy Foster, a drug-addicted prostitute who manages to get clean and leave the streets behind only to learn she is HIV positive; Jonathan Bearclaw, a former pimp and drug dealer haunted by memories of child abuse who for the sake of his girlfriend and their son, tries to ply a more respectable trade; Red, the aspiring hip hop artist, recently released from jail who tries to focus on his music but gets distracted by the chance to make a quick buck in a crystal meth lab; and Mathew Merasty, an aspiring music producer whose respect for his elders and his culture has kept him on the straight and narrow.

Among the residents of Moccasin Flats is Constable Amanda Strongeagle, a police officer with a forward approach to helping the members of her community who find themselves in trouble with the law.

In the first season, we see her launching an “off-the-record” investigation of the suspicious death of “another drunk Indian” after his death is dismissed by her racist colleagues as a suicide, and in Season Two, she attempts with mixed results to introduce the concept of community policing to Moccasin Flats.

At first glance, Constable Strongeagle comes off as a one-dimensional stereotype of the do-gooder cop with a heart. But as we get to know her better, she becomes more three-dimensional. She struggles with the thankless task of maintaining the trust of her community while ensuring that justice is done, she is an out lesbian, and, in the words of one of her exes (the spunky medical intern, Deb Johnson, played by the show’s co-producer/creator Jennifer Podemski, another of Canada’s leading Native actors), she “sucks at relationships.”

Amanda’s poor performance in the relationship department is abundantly evident on the program. Midway through Season One, she enters a relationship with social worker Laura, a former addict and prostitute, only to screw up it up in Season Two when Laura’s work takes her out of town for an extended period and Amanda’s libido gets the best of her.

The sex scenes between Amanda and her conquests are brief-not unexpected given the half-hour length of each episode-but they’re explicit enough that the viewer is assured that Constable Strongeagle shares more than warm hugs and chaste kisses with her girlfriends and that the epithet flung at her by a spurned conquest, Constable Spreadeagle, is well-deserved.

Previews of the upcoming season describe Amanda as being “too wrapped up in her complicated love life” to show her normal concern for the well-being of her community.

The fact that Constable Strongeagle is a lesbian is no big deal for the residents of “the Flats.” Even though her sexual behavior has caused her no small amount of grief, none of the drama in Constable Strongeagle’s life is rooted in her sexual orientation per se. Racism appears to have been much more of an obstacle in her life than homophobia.

In fact, all three lesbians on the program–Amanda, the police officer, Laura, the social worker and Deb, the intern– could certainly be viewed as role models for the young people of Moccasin Flats.

The all-Native cast comprises a mixture of first-time actors (Candace Fox as Candy; Landon Mantour as Jonathan; Mathew Strongeagle as Matthew Merasty and rap artist, Ron Harris aka Os Twelve as Red) alongside established actors Tantoo Cardinal (‘Betty’), Gordon Tootoosis (‘Joe’) and Michelle Thrush (‘Laura’).

Andrea Menard, a multitalented performer of Métis heritage–a First Nations group comprised of the descendants of offspring from the union of Aboriginals and European settlers early in Canada ‘s history–plays the sexy, complicated Constable Amanda Strongeagle.

In addition to distinguishing herself as a film, TV and stage actress, Menard has earned a reputation as a jazz singer of note in Canada (in addition to recording two solo albums, she contributed the song ‘If I Were A Man” to the Season 4 Queer As Folk soundtrack) and as a playwright, having written and performed in the one-woman production, The Velvet Devil, which tells the story of a Métis singer in the 1940’s who makes her way home after running away to the big city as a young girl.

Moccasin Flats has been touted as a ground-breaking series in Canada for its depiction of the realities of life for inner city native youth as well as for its involvement of Aboriginal artists at all levels of the show’s production-acting, writing, directing and its incisive rap soundtrack. For all its gritty reality, there is a subtext of hope running through the program.

Young people in the direst of circumstances are shown picking up the shattered pieces of their lives and making a future for themselves, even if there are some failures along the way: Candy has left the street and drugs behind and become an outreach worker, but the greater profit to be made from crystal meth lures Jonathan away from his fledging nutritional supplement business and places himself and his family in great danger.

If the eight episodes of Moccasin Flats‘ third season maintain the grit and drama of previous seasons, the series will continue to be too raw for network TV. But at least cable will continue to provide Canadians with a vision of strong but human lesbian characters.

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