This weekend we offer a double bill of weekend videos. A guided walk through Point Pleasant Park in Halifax by Tuma Young, who shows some of the traditional Mi’kmaq medicines there for the picking. Then we turn up the sweetness level all the way to 11 in a video produced by a very young Mya Denny, as she hangs out with her grandfather Joel Denny while he gathers medicine in the woods,
This weekend’s video is about the Alton Gas water protectors who need a bit of solidarity and support because strawbale houses don’t build themselves.
This weekend we feature In the shadow of the dam, APTN’s brand new and excellent documentary on the indigenous resistance to the Muskrat Falls project in Labrador. You can’t condemn environmental racism and violation of Indigenous rights in Nova Scotia, and remain silent on what’s happening in Labrador right now. It’s that simple.
With some footage of Mi’kmaw poet and elder Rita Joe herself, we are delighted to present this wonderful musical interpretation by students of the Allison Bernard Memorial High School in Eskasoni of what is probably Rita Joe’s best known poem, I lost my talk.
Meet Elaine Cain, a North Preston resident who owns land in her community but doesn’t have a deed. She was born on the land she claims, and her father wants nothing more than for her to have it, but a lengthy and expensive legal process and an uncaring bureaucracy are major stumbling blocks. “First of all, that’s where I was born, on that property,” says Cain. “Ever since, that property has been part of me. As long as I am alive, that’s going to be alive for me.”
A moving story obout a four-year old little girl at the Shubenacadie Residential School and her doll, as remembered by Elder Elder Magit Sylliboy, and filmed by students of the We’koqom’a Mi’kmaw School in Waycobah, Cape Breton. A must see!
Dancer and choreographer Rhodnie Désir, a resident of Montreal with Haïtian roots, has arrived in Nova Scotia on a mission to explore through her art the many connections between slavery, the rhytms long kept alive within African Nova Scotian, Acadian and Mi’kmaq communities and resistance. This weekend we feature a short documentary about her visits to Martinique, Brazil and Haiti. We also gave Rhodnie a call to find out more about the Nova Scotia leg of the project.
This weekend we feature a short 2014 talk by artist and scholar Ardath Whynacht, on the trauma that very early on puts so many on a trajectory to crime and prison, and why building ever more prisons and escalating punishment is not the answer.
This weekend we feature the wonderful Mi’kmaq multidisciplinary artist Ursula Johnson in no less than three short videos. Johnson was recently shortlisted as the Atlantic nominee for the Sobey Art Award, which is a pretty big deal. For us any excuse to feature these three short intriguing videos will do. Check it out!
I figured I pretty well knew all I needed to know about Viola Desmond after all the recent publicity around a new ferry name and the decision to feature her portrait on the new $10 bill. But there is always more to learn about Nova Scotia’s racist past.