The National Film Board of Canada marks Indigenous History Month by asking audiences to reflect upon notions of masculinity, Indigeneity, and community. In Siksikakowan: The Blackfoot Man, director Sinakson Trevor Solway observes the lives of several men of the Siksika Nation with a visually striking, free-flowing approach. The film presents the daily experiences of these men as they navigate their responsibilities to their community, their families, and to themselves while grappling with the measure of a man in contemporary culture. The award winning film is now streaming for free at NFB.ca.
Siksikakowan follows several men, from radio DJs to rodeo riders, often trailing behind them to convey the experience of seeing the world from their point of view. Some participants find that embodying the role of the “cowboy” best expresses their sense of masculinity—and all the complexity that entails with settler/colonial connotations of western iconography—while others show how the fancy dance offers the best fit. Other moments, like going blow for blow on the ice during a hockey game or speeding cautiously to avoid getting a ticket on an unkempt road, let the men vent in their own personal ways while inviting past traumas to subtly enter the frame.
The slice of life cinéma vérité approach captures the men’s stories authentically without editorializing. From the stables back home to the arenas of the Calgary Stampede, the film immerses audiences in the daily labours and rituals entailed in this community.
“There’s an immediacy and intimacy in what the director is able to show, peering behind what’s commonly hidden or simply ignored in favour of broader, more simplistic visions of what life on the ‘rez’ is truly like,” wrote Jason Gorber in his review of Siksikakowan: The Blackfoot Man at Hot Docs. “It’s an inward look within the community, asking questions of its own members and their own relationships to a poisonous past, and finding out what it means, looking forward over the plains, to be a modern Blackfoot man and all that that represents.”
Watch Siksikakowan: The Blackfoot Man below from the NFB.
Siksikakowan: The Blackfoot man, Trevor Solway, provided by the National Film Board of Canada
