Pathways Through the Festival 4: Indigenous Women

Sierra Tasi Baker

Since ORIGINS was first established a decade ago, it's been really striking how many of the most important indigenous artists and thinkers we have featured have been women - and this year's Festival is no exception.  There has always been an energy and a power in indigenous women: and the challenges of the contemporary world are focussing that energy into creative and artistic responses, political activism, and a particular kind of feminist thought.

Prof. Marcia Langton

As with all indigenous ideas, indigenous feminism stands outside the mainstream, and offers balances and correctives to more "established" approaches.  This year's ORIGINS LECTURE is being given by Prof. Marcia Langton, the newly appointed Vice-Provost of Melbourne University, and probably the world's most distinguished indigenous academic.  A few years ago, Marcia famously took on the white Australian feminist icon Germaine Greer, in a widely publicised spat over Greer's essay Whitefella Jump Up.  So don't expect Greer-style feminism from her.  As well as her lecture, Marcia will be taking part in the TALKS programme over the first weekend, including a panel on INDIGENOUS WOMEN TODAY.

The 7 Stages of Grieving

Also from Australia comes the "Indigenous Everywoman" play THE SEVEN STAGES OF GRIEVING, in a powerhouse performance from Chenoa Deemal.  Here's an interview Chenoa did about the production, shortly before performing it at Sydney Opera House last month.  We're also delighted to be welcoming visual artist JULIE GOUGH, whose powerful re-readings of Australian colonial history have recently been acclaimed at the National Gallery of Australia's remarkable exhibition Defying Empire: the Legacy of 1967, which marks the 50th anniversary of the referendum making indigenous Australians citizens in their own country.

Tanya Tagaq

From the opposite side of the globe, but sharing many of the same colonial experiences, Inuk throat singer TANYA TAGAQ is our last-night star at ORIGINS.  Her music often deals with directly feminist themes, including all forms of rape — of women, of the land — while demanding justice for missing and murdered Indigenous women, as well as Indigenous peoples who’ve had their land and rights removed over centuries of abuse.  Her approach to feminism embraces the indigenous movement and its allies across the world.  "The act of feminism, it's not a female thing, it's a human thing," she says.  Tanya's feminism and activism are complemented by her friend Alethea Arnaquq-Baril, director of ANGRY INUK - an activist film par excellence, dealing with the seal hunt controversy, in which Tanya has been a very vocal participant.  When Alethea was nominated as Samara's Everyday Political Citizen, Juror Margaret Atwood said: "I nominate Alethea Arnaquq-Baril for bravely opening the door to a conversation that needs to happen."

White Lies

New Zealand and Pacific women aren't neglected either, with the UK premiere of WHITE LIES - a Māori film built around three very different women, and featuring a great performance from Whirimako Black.  The screening is followed by a Q&A with Dr. Ian Conrich, an expert in New Zealand film.

The New World

Behind it all lurks the elusive, semi-mythic figure of Pocahontas, who visited London a full 400 years ago.  ORIGINS marks the anniversary with a screening of Terrence Malick's visionary film about her life, THE NEW WORLD at Picturehouse Central.  The screening is followed by a Q&A with Stephanie Pratt, an art historian whose Dakota Sioux name approximates to Pocahontas, and whose life in some ways reflects her Powhatan predecessor's.  Stephanie will also be present at Syon House, the London home of the Dukes of Northumberland, where Pocahontas lived for a time, for our special commemoration REMEMBERING POCAHONTAS.  In the grounds where she once walked, three Native American women will commemorate and celebrate her.  Accompanying Stephanie will be Sierra Tasi Baker, of the Kwakwaka’wakw people, and our Indigenous Associate, Wampanoag scholar Gabe Hughes.

How wonderful to meet such an extraordinary group of modern indigenous women!

Pathways Through the Festival 3: Environment

Are We Stronger Than Winston?

"Where is the Environment?" asked Caroline Lucas yesterday.  She's quite right to challenge the major parties - neither of whom have said anything about this most crucial of issues during the current election campaign.  Across the Atlantic, it now seems that Donald Trump aims to withdraw from the Paris deal on climate change.  It's a scary moment, and no mistake.

This is the time when, more than ever, we need to be listening to the voices of indigenous people, who experience climate change at the front line on a daily basis.  Not only do they feel its effects particularly acutely - they also have long cultural traditions of living in close harmony with nature.  In indigenous cultures, you do not own the land but care for it - passing it on as a healthy inheritance to the future.  Now, more than ever, we need to be engaging with indigenous people as we try to find a way forward in our relationship with a damaged planet.

Reports from Standing Rock

ORIGINS 2017 has a range of inspiring and provocative events about indigenous ideas on the environment, beginning with REPORTS FROM STANDING ROCK on June 11 - a series of short films that show the realities of the protest and explore the depth of the Native American activists' passion to save their land and waters.  Trump's refusal to engage with indigenous protestors may yet prove to be his political undoing - his failure to engage with environmental issues is certainly very dangerous for us all.

Are We Stronger than Winston?

Just how dangerous is shown in ARE WE STRONGER THAN WINSTON? by VOU Dance Company from Fiji, performing at The Place on June 23 and 24.  Winston was the cyclone that hit Fiji in February 2016: the worst recorded tropical storm in the history of the South Pacific, killing 42 people and causing tens of thousands to flee their homes. In the words of the choreographer, Navitalai Waqavotuwale: "Soon the house that once sheltered us, now threatened our very lives as it collapsed in shreds around us. Soon the ocean that once fed us came pounding at our doors demanding our breath. Soon the wind that once rippled through our children's hair and carried their voices homeward, snatched them from our very arms and hauled them beyond the horizon where their voices were heard no more. And soon, mothers were burying their children, and children were burying their mothers."

Melissa Veszi as Poluknalai

A lighter but equally important take on climate change in the Pacific is offered in  Sani Muliaumaseali'i’s new musical for family audiences, BABA THE BAD BABOON.  In this version of a Polynesian folk tale, Baba is an experienced leader who assures the goddess Poluknalai, the supreme protector of animals and nature, that all will be well under his watch - leading to a dire loss of animals and ecology.

Angry Inuk

It's in the Arctic that the effects of climate change are probably most glaringly obvious, as the ice melts at astonishing speed.  Alethea Arnaquq-Baril's remarkable film ANGRY INUK, which has been winning audience awards at film festivals across the planet, is powered by fury at the world's failure to engage with the people who actually live in the Arctic - the Inuit themselves.  Their environmentally sustainable approach to seal hunting - using every part of a non-endangered species for food and clothing, and to give them traction in the global marketplace - is set in sharp contrast with the insanely wasteful approach of western interests in the Artic region.

Tanya Tagaq

So it seems only fitting that the last voice you will hear at ORIGINS this year is an Inuk voice - TANYA TAGAQ.  More than a traditional throat singer, Tanya seems to embody and to vocalise the Arctic landscape itself.  Her extraordinary improvised soundtrack to the silent "documentary" NANOOK OF THE NORTH is a staggering evocation of the beautiful and bare lands that sustain the planet - and that we are all too close to destroying.

NATIVe at the Berlinale

Angry Inuk

Thanks to a grant from the lovely Film London, I've been at the Berlinale.  This huge, and very impressive film festival includes a strand called NATIVe, which showcases indigenous film every year.  With ORIGINS only a few months away (block out June 13-25 in your diary now!), the opportunity to see so many indigenous films in a few days, and to meet the people who made them, was too good to miss.

This year, the NATIVe programme focussed on the Arctic - which was another bonus for me.  In previous festivals, we've included lots of Australian, American and New Zealand films, plus a new strand of Latin American work in 2015 - but rather fewer from the cold North.  We did screen the Inuit films Uvanga in 2015 and Before Tomorrow in 2011, as well as the Sámi film Biekka Fabmu in 2013: but I've always wanted to apply a more sustained focus to the region, particularly in the light of climate change.  Canada's 150th birthday this year looks like providing us with the ideal opportunity to do this - even if the films themselves are subversive of that celebration.

Maligutit 

The "star" of the Berlinale's Arctic programme was undoubtedly Zacharias Kunuk's Maligutit (Searchers), which was packed to bursting on Saturday night in the biggest cinema I have ever seen.  The screen was so enormous that you had to sit many rows back just to take the whole thing in.  Provided the seat was suitable, this was a terrific way to watch the film, as the vastness of the Arctic location was central to the piece.  Kunuk is famous as the director of Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner - an Inuit epic which has been voted the best Canadian film of all time.  Maligutit is similarly set amongst the Inuit, in their own landscape, with no sign of other cultures, apart from (this being the 19th century) the presence of kettles and a gun.  It's not a post-colonial film as such: the conflicts between Inuit groups that it portrays are not affected by the outside world.  But, in a way, that is in itself a post-colonial statement.  Kunuk is a filmmaker who reclaims the narrative and the viewpoint for his own people.

Alethea Arnaquq-Baril

In Angry Inuk, documentary filmmaker Alethea Arnaquq-Baril also reclaims the narrative - and, in this case, the moral high ground.  Her film is an extraordinary, painstaking and powerful engagement from the Inuit perspective with the question of the seal hunt.  Alethea takes on Greenpeace, PETA, the Humane Society and the European Parliament.  Her argument is that seal-hunting is the means whereby her people acquire affordable food and (through the sale of sealskin products) make a living.  The seal is not an endangered species, and the numbers involved are small.  This is an entirely sustainable activity with a respectful approach to the animal, every part of which is used after the hunt.  The EU trade embargo may have had an exception for Inuit "subsistence" hunting, but that actually makes things less sustainable, as they cannot sell the fur.  The cultural effects are huge: not being able to live according to culture is one reason for the grotesquely high rate of suicide amongst young Inuit.  What is needed now is a direct engagement for the film and its maker with the anti-hunt lobbyists, so that a proper debate can be had.  And that is what we will try to achieve in our Festival.

Johogoi Aiyy

Both of these were films I already knew about and had been anxious to see.  Johogoi Aiyy (God Johogoi), on the other hand, was a complete discovery.  This astonishing film, from the Russian Republic of Yakutia, known to its indigenous inhabitants as Sakha, is set at the summer festival of Ysyakh.  A young horse herder called Johogoi goes there in the belief that he will meet the beautiful woman who appears in his dreams.  It sounds fanciful, of course - but what is incredible, and deeply indigenous, in this film is the way the spiritual narrative is totally embedded in the lived experience of the 21st century.  This even applies to the film's methodology: it was shot over two days at the real festival, with only two "actors" - everybody else in the film just happened to be at the festival, and interacted with the main character as if he were "real".  The result is one of the most moving cinematic experiences I have ever had.  If you're looking for one wild card at our festival in June: this will be it.