Blue Card

I got a blue card on our application to the Canada Council to make two movies with the Kwakwaka'wakw people of Fort Rupert. The grant was submitted under the auspices of the Constant Arts Society. The blue card is good sign. Now we'll have to wait to hear if we have the funding or not to do the project. I'm hoping we'll get to go up there for May and June.

Success!

Had a nice showing of the two most recent Haidawood movies here in Victoria at the Event Centre. The evening was organized by Megan Hetherington of Set Monkey Productions... I enjoyed the movies I got to watch, and got some nice compliments on the Haidawood movies and some good discussion too.

New Haidawood Movies on Isuma TV

I just posted the latest Haidawood movies on Isuma TV. You can watch Yaanii K'uuka here and The Golden Spruce here. Please go and leave a comment! Note that it helps to have Isuma in the high-bandwidth mode. Also, you can download the movies as a podcast for your iPod.

Workshop Results

Today I lead a workshop on using animation to help record and celebrate First Nation languages. I was up late making puppets, and we used them to good effect today. Here is the result of our labours: a short movie with one line of Giksan dialog. The movie is called "Honey I'm Home."

Heading to Vancouver tomorrow

Tomorrow I am headed to Vancouver to participate in a First Nations Language Conference sponsored by the First Peoples' Heritage Language and Cultural Council and the First Nations Education Steering Committee. Lucy Bell and I will be co-hosting a workshop entitled "Celebrating Your Language in the Modern World." I plan to focus on the different steps in creating an animated movie in a traditional language, and give participants a chance to actually animate something.

Yaanii K'uuka

This is the story of a little girl who won't eat her food, and who doesn't listen to he parents. Her mother warns her "Yaanii K'uuka will get you!" but she doesn't listen. Then, one day, a beautiful stranger arrives...

Based on the traditional Haida story. The movie was made in the summer of 2008 up in Masset.

Animation workshop at First Nations Language Conference

Lucy and I will be hosting an animation workshop at the upcoming First Nations Language Conference in Vancouver, July 5-6, put on by the First Nations Educational Steering Committee. The theme of the conference is "Bringing Language to Life" and of course animation is a perfect way to bring stories to life in traditional languages. The title of the workshop is "1A: Celebrating Your Language in the Modern World" and it's a two part session, with time for some hands-on animation by participants. This workshop is on Sunday July 5th.

Applied to the Knowledge Network

On Monday I sent off a proposal to make some movies with the Knowledge Network as part of their First Voices project. Mainly, I focused on making another two movies up in Haida Gwaii. I also suggested that we could make other movies with other First Nations groups, including the Kwagiulth, Gitxsan, Stolo, Squamish, Musquem, and Hesquiat First Nations. I am hoping that they will want to support us.

Haida Legends Website Launched!

The Haida Legends website has launched! You can watch both Yaanii K'uuka and The Golden Spruce there. Check it out!

Hoopla on Shaw TV in Quesnel

Big Thanks to Heather, who worked as one of the cinematographers on Hoopla!. She just told me that Hoopla! aired on Shaw TV over in Quesnel. I am glad that the movies are getting out there.

It sounds like work is progressing on the Haida Legends website. Yaanii K'uuka and the Golden Spruce are both scheduled to debut online on the Haida Legends Website. I will post a link here as soon as I have one!

Haidawood at HGFF this weekend!

Tonight is the opening of the Haida Gwaii Film Festival. Yaanii K'uukaa is scheduled to play on Sunday at 1:30 pm, and The Golden Spruce is going to play at the Gala Closing on Sunday night at 8:30 pm at the Haida Heritage Centre at Kaay Llnagaay. If you are on the islands, be sure and check it out! You can download the entire program here: HGFF 2009 Catalogue

Haidawood in Midforms Festival

I am excited to announce that Yaanii K'uukaa will play in the upcoming Midforms Festival here in Vancouver. The Midforms Festival 09 (MFF) is a 3-day Digital Culture Festival co-produced by the New Forms Media Society and presented as part of the Cultural Olympiad. MFF facilitates a curatorial design that encourages artists and participants alike to engage and discover the trans-disciplinary genres new media art has to offer. Yaanii K'uukaa will be on rotation for the duration of the festival.

Flight of the Hummingbird

I just watched this video by Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas. Really cool stuff. I'd like to work with him! Check it out!

Applying for funds from FPHLCC

Christine Germano, from the Constant Arts Society, and I are working on applying for funds form the First Peoples' Heritage Language and Culture Council. Christine was one of the photographers and community activists in this year's Talking Stick Festival. I was especially impressed by her pictures from the potlaches of Alert Bay. She has a lot of experience applying for grants to do a variety of community art projects, including carving a canoe from one of the trees that fell in Stanley Park. Our current plan is to apply for funds to make a trip up to Haida Gwaii in the Fall to make two new Haidawood animated movies: one in Masset and one in Skidegate.

Haidawood showings

The Golden Spruce will be showing at the Reel2Real International Film Festival for Youth on Thursday Feb. 26th at 12:30 pm in advance of the movie Passage here in Vancouver.

There are also plans to show both The Golden Spruce and Yaanii K'uuka in the upcoming Haida Gwaii Film Festival that runs from March 6th to 8th in Queen Charlotte City up on Haida Gwaii.

Haidawood Premiere

The two latest Haidawood movies, The Golden Spruce and Yaani K'uuka, had their Vancouver premiere tonight at the Talking Stick Festival, at the InGenYous Aboriginal Youth Night tonight. There was a pretty good crowd at the Roundhouse, and people seemed to appreciate the movie. There was a lot of laughter during the poo scene in the Golden Spruce story, which was fun. And I got some nice compliments on the movies.

The movies will show again on Saturday at Have you heard this story?", which will also include a reading by Nicola Campbell and a play by Rob Hunter with Patricia Kostek & Sam Bob and directed by Floyd Favel. That's at the Aboriginal Friendship Center at 12 pm on Saturday. We'll also show both movies at the Aboriginal-Cabaret on Saturday night at 8 pm at the WISE Hall. My thanks to Margo Kane, the Artistic Director of Full Circle, for letting us show the movies at the Talking Stick Festival.

Talking Stick Festival Feb. 9-15

I've been working at Full Circle now for a few months. I've been helping them organize the annual Talking Stick Festival that is coming up in February. We launch the Visual Arts Exhibit on February 1st, followed by a benefit concert with Ferron on February 7th, and then the festival proper, which runs from February 9-15. It's been a good opportunity to connect with the urban First Nations community here in Vancouver, including the Constant Arts Society, and the Vancouver Aboriginal Friendship Centre, among other groups. It has also been interesting meeting a variety of people in the Arts community here.

We have plans to show some of the Haidawood movies, including "Yaanii K'uuka" and "The Golden Spruce" at the Talking Stick Festival, most probably on the Youth Night, Thursday February 12th, at the Roundhouse, and also possibly at the Ab-Cab on Saturday February 14th. Stay tuned!

In other news, there was a short blurb about the Haidawood movies in the "In Brief" section of November 2008 issue of Haida Laas - the Newsletter of the Haida Nation.

WAFF

I'm here in "Winterpeg" for the Winnipeg Aboriginal Film Festival. I've already met some French speakers and some Michif Speakers. I've been handing out some DVDs of the 4 Haidawood movies made to date. There is a showing of "Hoopla!" scheduled for noon on Sunday at the Fairmount Hotel, and waffles will be served.

I've been doing some research on the whole issue of language revitalization, which is a prime focus of the Haidawood Media Project. I came across this on Wikipedia:

Steps in reversing language shift

Joshua Fishman's model for reviving threatened (or dead) languages, or for making them sustainable, consists of an eight-stage process. Efforts should be concentrated on the earlier stages of restoration until they have been consolidated before proceeding to the later stages. The eight stages are as follows:

1. Acquisition of the language by adults, who in effect act as language apprentices (recommended where most of the remaining speakers of the language are elderly and socially isolated from other speakers of the language).
2. Create a socially integrated population of active speakers (or users) of the language (at this stage it is usually best to concentrate mainly on the spoken language rather than the written language).
3. In localities where there are a reasonable number of people habitually using the language, encourage the informal use of the language among people of all age groups and within families and bolster its daily use through the establishment of local neighbourhood institutions in which the language is encouraged, protected and (in certain contexts at least) used exclusively.
4. In areas where oral competence in the language has been achieved in all age groups encourage literacy in the language but in a way that does not depend upon assistance from (or goodwill of) the state education system.
5. Where the state permits it, and where numbers warrant, encourage the use of the language in compulsory state education.
6. Where the above stages have been achieved and consolidated, encourage the use of the language in the workplace (lower worksphere).
7. Where the above stages have been achieved and consolidated encourage the use of the language in local government services and mass media.
8. Where the above stages have been achieved and consolidated encourage use of the language in higher education, government etc.

This model of language revival is intended to direct efforts to where they are most effective and to avoid wasting energy trying to achieve the later stages of recovery when the earlier stages have not been achieved. For instance it is probably wasteful of effort to campaign for the use of the language on television or in government services if hardly any families are in the habit of using the language.

At this point, it looks like the best place to put our efforts is on creating content for adults to learn Haida.

Nuu-chah-nulth Phrase Book & Dictionary

Apparently there is a Nuu-chah-nulth Phrase Book & Dictionary. It would be nice to develop a similar resource for the Haida language. I'm not sure if this already exists or not. I did find this online Alaskan Haida phrasebook. Here are some of the phrases:

Gyáa'aang uu íijang. It is a totem pole.

Tlúugyaa uu íijang. This is a canoe.

Xakwgyáa uu íijang. This is a halibut.

They have sound files associated with each phrase. Even I can hear some similarities and some differences with the Haida I've heard in Masset.

Update

Well, a lot has happened since we finished work on "Yaani K'uuka" and "The Golden Spruce". I'm now working at Full Circle, a First Nations performance company that puts on original works of theater, trains aboriginal youth in theater, and puts on the Talking Stick Festival (Feb. 9-15 2009 in Vancouver).

I'm scheduled to show "Hoopla!" at the Winnipeg Aboriginal Film Festival on Saturday Nov. 22nd. I'm hoping I'll get to meet some people from APTN, the NFB, the Canada Council, and others who would be interested in funding Haidawood for a few years to help make the project sustainable.

There are also plans to show all the movies at a big Haida Feast at the Vancouver Aboriginal Friendship Center on Friday November 29th here in town.

Tonight I've got plans to go to the Bill Reid Gallery to hear a talk about some of the old Haida villages by George MacDonald.