Tracey Deer’s ‘Beans’ Is a Coming of Age Story With a Difference
Carole Horst Tracey Deer’s Toronto Film Festival entry “Beans” tells the story of a 12-year-old Mohawk girl and her family thrust by incidents of racial injustice into the forefront of 1990’s Oka Crisis, in which the Quebec government clashed in a political standoff with two Mohawk communities, the Kanehsatà:ke and Kahnawá:ke. Beans is a happy, middle-class girl who has high hopes of being an artist, and is trying to spend a fun summer before she starts 7th grade in an exclusive “white” high school.