Quote:
"There is no respite from exploitation and male violence for Annie except in the figure of Ruth (Tantoo Cardinal), a caring Aboriginal woman who serves as the prison den mother. [...] Despite their victimization by a harsh settler society, neither Ruth nor Annie is represented as a passive victim. Interestingly, the Ruth character does not appear in the original [Alice] Munro story, and she is reminiscent of earlier Wheeler representations of Aboriginal women, such as Augusta [in Augusta] and Rosanne and her mother, Beatrice, in Loyalties."
-- Kathleen Cummins

Source:
Cummins, Kathleen. "On the Edge of Genre: Anne Wheeler's Interrogating Maternal Gaze." In The Gendered Screen: Canadian Women Filmmakers, edited by Brenda Austin-Smith and George Melnyk. Waterloo, Ont.: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2010. (pp. 85-86)