National Indigenous Peoples Day - Film Night

"A compact but magnificent preface to the universe of Northwest Coast traditional art...An absolute gem." Peter Nabokov, World Arts & Cultures, UCLA

With humour, kinetic innovation and expansion of traditional and contemporary forms, Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas directly confronts the tension between contemporary and so-called "Native Art," which he identifies as arising from a legacy of historic racism that persists within and beyond the Western Art World. Drawing from influences on both shores of the North Pacific and his place in today's world, Yahgulanaas's work addresses the seminal issues of our time.

MEDDLE captures Yahgulanaas`s artistic process and philosophy as he creates a re-purposed, car-hood art piece for the Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver, BC, expanding his "Coppers from the Hood" series. Individual pieces from this series are now in the permanent collections of the British Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Peabody Essex Museum, Glenbow, and the Denver Art Museum.

7 minutes

In this sequel to the feature-length documentary HAIDA MODERN, Robert Davidson, the articulate and engaging master carver, uses old photos showing how he once created a totem pole called 'We Were Once Silenced'; a work dedicated to the memory of the wrongs suffered by his people at the hands of the captains of colonization.

In his new, more hopeful work however, Robert celebrates the cultural and political reawakening of the Indigenous peoples of the world in general, and the Haida Nation particular, with a pole called 'Gyaangee: Beyond Being Silenced'.

The viewer is treated to the extraordinarily beautiful shapes and curves of the master's work. Most importantly we're given access to the mysterious world of the supernatural creatures who populate Haida mythology and their spiritual world view.

14 minutes

For many Canadians, their introduction to clearcut logging came from news reports about the Clayoquot Sound protests back in 1993, known as the War in the Woods, when some 12,000 people showed up on the remote west coast of Vancouver Island to join the blockades. While much of the area was spared, elsewhere in B.C., clearcutting remained the status quo, and old growth forests have continued to fall.

Today, precious little old growth remains, and First Nations and environmentalists are again taking a stand. This new War for the Woods has captured the attention of Canadians once again, including Stephanie Kwetásel'wet Wood, a journalist for The Narwhal who reports on Indigenous rights and the natural world.

She travels to Tla-o-qui-aht territory where the protests took place, meeting Tribal Park Guardians, community leaders and others. They are exploring new land use visions and models of Indigenous-led conservation, including phasing out old growth logging altogether, but as communities struggle to balance environmental stewardship with meeting their economic needs, the hurdles to protecting these ancient forests have grown ever more complicated. With an industry that prioritizes profits over the health of the forests, and precious time left to save these intact ecosystems, the stakes in today's War for the Woods could not be higher.

44 minutes

Remarkably beautiful, insightful, and powerful, Between Earth and Sky an engaging and personal story of a renowned scientist who seeks to understand nature in the world's treetops and found herself in the process."

- David Foster, Director Emeritus of Harvard Forest, Harvard University, Author, Wildlands in New England and Hemlock: A Forest Giant on the Edge

Nalini Nadkarni is a world-renowned forest ecologist and science communicator. She pioneered the study of rainforest canopies as well as the means of reaching them by adapting the techniques of mountain climbing. Her goal was to discover how there could be such an abundance and variety of plant life in the canopy despite the forest's nutrient poor soil. She also wanted to study "what grows back" after an ecological disturbance.

In 2015, her rope snapped on a research climb, and she fell fifty feet from a tree and nearly died. After making a miraculous recovery, Nalini begins to explore a new research subject - herself. In the process, she unearths the roots of other disturbances she faced throughout her life.

More than ever Nalini is deeply committed to public engagement with science. She creates innovative activities and programs to further her passion: raising awareness of the critical importance of trees to life on earth.

26 minutes

World-famous Haida artist Robert Davidson was born in Hydaburg, Alaska at a time when the traditional law-giving social ceremony of the North Coast Native culture, the potlatch, had been outlawed by governments anxious to prevent Indigenous inhabitants from asserting title to their ancestral lands. Years later, the ban was lifted, but irrevocable damage had been done to younger generations of Haida and their connection to their heritage. Then, in 1969, a young Davidson carved a totem pole for the village of Masset in Haida Gwaii, British Columbia, sparking a rebirth of coastal Indigenous culture.

Fifty years later, Davidson became aware that a number of the clans from his birth home in Alaska had lost their tribal crests: totems which are a fundamental part of a clan's identity. He decided to re-create these crests with other Indigenous artists in the form of giant wall hangings and gift them to his brother clans at a special potlatch celebration organized by Davidson and his family.

In Beyond Being Silenced: Gyaa Isdlaa, filmmaker Charles Wilkinson gives viewers an immersive look at that potlatch, a jubilant gathering that finds the members of many Haida clans celebrating the revitalization of their cultural traditions and affirming the clans' social cohesion and responsibilities as caretakers of the land.

23 minutes