Chris Eyre: Edge of America

"One of the things we held high was the question: who are we making the movie for? We decided that the movie we were making was for Haida people." Michael Wilson interviews Gwaai Edenshaw, co-director of Sgaawaay K’uuna (Edge of the Knife), the first feature film in Haida, about Indigenous language, the process of creating modern Indigenous works rooted in tradition, and the role of an entire community in bringing the film to reality.

Missy Whiteman has a complicated relationship to The Covered Wagon, a 1923 silent film considered one of the first westerns: it's deeply racist, yet it's a source of pride on the Wind River reservation, because many Arapaho people—including her relatives—appeared as extras. As curator of the INDIgenesis film festival, she selected the film for opening night, where it will be recontextualized through a contemporary score performed live by Michael Wilson (Anishinaabe), special guests, and a presentation of historic photos shared by her father, Ernest Whiteman. The photos offer a frame for her understanding of the legacy of her people, family history, and work as a filmmaker today. Here, she shares these images along with music, text, and audio from a recent conversation with her father about The Covered Wagon and its meaning then and now.

“A difference between learning and knowing is little more than asking questions without the entitlement of an answer, and honoring the vulnerability in saying and hearing, ‘I don’t know.’” In his Artist Op-Ed, experimental filmmaker Sky Hopinka ruminates on power, privilege, and identity—including his own—as he responds to the burden of representation and authority placed on groups of traditionally oppressed people.