Awas kaskitê-kinêpik – No Black Snake

Screened at the ImagineNATIVE 2019 film festival

Created in response to the theft of Indigenous land and ongoing violence against Indigenous peoples for resource extraction, namely MMIWG2S, Moe Clark’s music anchors this conceptual film which layers and manipulates images of both natural and corporal landscapes.

I Will Return

The Plains Cree are storytellers. It is our way of life. Our worldview is that everything comes from the Land and is related: wahkohtowin — kinship.

In this colonized world, how do we continue to tell our stories, especially when some are lost?

They live in our people and in our blood. They live between us. We must continue to tell our stories to our children so they too can live miyo pimâtisiwin — the good life. As a Metis/Cree mother, it is my responsibility to give my daughter the ways to return home: to her songs, stories, and ceremonies.

Woman & More-than-woman

2018, video short
Dirt from Mi’kmaq territory on watercolor paper
Potawatomi Benojigemwenen sung by Wapshkankwet Sarah Perrote
Artwork by Mel Lefebvre

 

ᐊᐧᐦᑯᐦᑐᐃᐧᐣ ~ Wahkohtowin ~ Kinship

credits:
Dayna Danger, Métis/Saulteaux/Polish Visual Artist, song Calling of the Ancestors
Sources:
Heather Davis, The Queer Futurity of Plastic
Zoe Todd. Fish, Kin and Hope: Tending to Water Violations in AmiskwaciwâSkahikan and Treaty Six Territory
Moanaroa Te Whata, Ambassador of Aotearoa, 2017
Connor Pion, Dish with One Spoon Treaty Territory, 2017
Nicole Neidhardt, Remembering Futures from the Past, 2017
Heather Campbell, 7th Generation Inuit Community, 2015
Art by Mel Lefebvre

 

Ancestry, 2016

This short animation is a reflection on ancestry and its empowering quality. Researched and uncovered, our lineage can inspire courage, confidence, and fearlessness as we are no longer one, but many. Certainly when we talk about Indigenous 2SLGBTQIA+ and women’s experience, we are able to see in our society that too often our voices are devalued, diminished, or silenced altogether. Gather strength from those that are yours.