“This is a story of a culture that was supposed to go extinct and be absorbed into the body Canada whole,” says Saints and Warriors director Patrick Shannon. “In spite of every single barrier and challenge, the Haida people were able to persevere through. Basketball was just one of these powerful tools that allowed us to do it.”
Saints and Warriors, which has its national premiere at Hot Docs this week, follows the players of the Skidegate Saints as they prepare for the annual All Native Basketball Tournament. It’s a pivotal year for the Haida team. Several of its top players, who are also community leaders, face the end of their basketball runs as age catches up with them. Shannon, speaking with POV via Zoom ahead of Saints and Warriors’ Hot Docs premiere, says it was fortuitous timing to capture the Saints’ 2023-2024 season.
“I was at the 2022-2023 championship and that was such a unique experience,” says Shannon, who is also Haida and from Skidegate. “They came back against all odds against Burnaby to win the 2023 championship, but it was still a struggle. So, realizing that this might be one of the last years we get to follow this core legendary team because they’re all, if not in their forties or getting close to it, this felt like The Last Dance, Chicago Bulls-style for this team.”
Shannon’s comparison to the Netflix doc about the Bulls’ swan song with Michael Jordan and company marks a fitting tribute to the Skidegate Saints. Top players facing their final championship include team leaders Desi Collinson, Duane Alsop, and Gaagwiis Jason Alsop. The latter player also happens to be the president of the Haida Nation. His story offers a thematic through line that Shannon dribbles effectively throughout the doc. Saints and Warriors explores the interconnectedness between basketball and leadership among the Haida, but also the relationship between the sport and the nation’s survival in the face of colonialism. The film explains how the Crown prohibited the Haida from gathering for reasons other than worship or sport, so basketball games and tournaments proved a shrewd way to keep the community together.
Saints and Warriors features a dual face-off in the courts as the All Native Basketball Tournament comes mere weeks before the landmark Rising Tide and Big Tide (Low Water) agreements in April 2024. The ruling by the B.C. government recognizes Haida Aboriginal title throughout Haida Gwaii. It’s a victory decades in the making, and one that unites players regardless of the outcome on the basketball court.
Shannon admits that while he expected the 2023-2024 to be a pivotal year, he didn’t know heading into production that the title case would be before the courts. “It just felt like it was the right time to do this story, and the fact that everything played out the way it did within a four month period proves that,” he says. Shannon notes that once Gaagwiis tipped him off to the court case, his team had to jump into action just as they did while capturing the tournament a month before.
However, Shannon says that the title case helped him hone the story while observing his community in action. “I always knew going into this film that it wasn’t just a story about basketball,” he notes. “For me, basketball has been a vehicle for our community for so many years to do other things beyond just playing basketball, which we love as well. I knew that part of the story was going to be sovereignty. It’s such an integral part of contemporary Haida existence, the work that’s been done generation after generation. When it came to navigating the court side—the legislation—that happened after the basketball tournament. This story is a focused version of the broader story of Haida-Indigenous basketball up in the north coast.”
While Saints and Warriors doesn’t keep the focus strictly on the games, the 2023-2024 tournament offers a propulsive narrative drive. Kinetic shots from the courts captures the players’ in action from all angles—as well as the announcers in the booth, the crowds cheering in the stands, and the aunties cooking fry bread in the kitchen—thanks in part to the collaboration with sports doc outfit Uninterrupted, which worked on films like Black Ice and The Grizzlie Truth, the latter of which was also produced by Saints and Warriors’ Michael Tanko Grand.
“When it came to juggling the court, the actual production of shooting on location at things like the All-Native Basketball Tournament was a gauntlet,” says Shannon. “We had a production team of 10 people up there. We had multiple camera operators shooting most games, so there was the intensity and logistics of getting our team to Prince Rupert and being available over the course of a full week while not burning out our crew, capturing everything that we needed and then also being able to be on location in the hotels where those personal interactions are happening.”
The jump balls that happen between players off the court offer even more drama. A key storyline in Saints and Warriors considers Skidegate son and former Saints player Jesse Barnes. Saints players share how Barnes moved to Burnaby and now plays for the Chiefs. But the Chiefs serve as something of an all-star feeder team for players who move from their nations to urban centres. There’s potent symbolism to Barnes’ decision and what it means for the Haida Nation and other communities when young people no longer play for the home team.
Barnes, good sport that he is, appears in interviews and shakes hands with the Saints, some of which are offered more reluctantly than others. But Shannon says that he doesn’t see Barnes as a villain in the story. He’s merely one aspect through which the documentary uses the dynamics of the game to reflect the community.
“He’s just doing what almost all young Haidas do, which is go and travel. You leave. You go see the world. And you try to figure out who you are in this modern context,” says Shannon. “I had a lot of empathy for what he was going through, and I understand how much people care about basketball and take pride in where we come from because we’ve gone through so much. We almost lost all of our people due to disease. We’ve almost lost all of our culture due to Canadian laws and oppressive policies. So I understand where the community’s coming from, of wanting to make sure that you come back and be part of this bigger thing. But I also understand being a young person wanting to find your drive in the world. Desi did it. I did it. Gaagwiis did it. I felt it was a bit harsh on him at times, but that just shows how passionate everyone is about this game.”
Shannon admits that he wasn’t much of a basketball player while growing up in Skidegate, as he was “one of those little artist kids that would sometimes get picked on by the basketball players,” but returning to the community and bringing that artistic lens helped put the wider story in perspective. “Some of my core memories of going to the basketball games with my grandmother and just those feelings of gathering—I think that’s what really did it for me,” he says.
The director notes that coming home, relearning his community, and representing them marks the biggest challenge of the film. “It’s not just a fly in/fly out thing and I’ll never see them again,” reflects Shannon. “Whenever I was at a point in the edit where I was unsure if something should go in the film, I always asked myself, ‘Does this pass the auntie test?’ If one of my aunties saw this and if she would slap me upside the head, then I know I got to take it out. I know it’s going to be received well by our people, that it’s authentic and true. A big part of being an Indigenous filmmaker is making sure you don’t compromise those values, especially truth, in storytelling like this.” Shannon notes that the process was deeply collaborative with his community, especially Gaagwiis. Audiences can easily see in the range of perspectives included through the interviews, courtside seats, and archival testimonies.
The diversity of perspectives lets Saints and Warriors weave past and present with archival images of communities on Haida Gwaii like Skidegate and Old Massett. Photographs illustrate the erasure of culture as totem poles disappear over time, while stories of the 1862 smallpox epidemic speak to the rapid hardship that devastated the island.
Shannon says that finding the right moments from history wasn’t an easy task, but basketball hoops inevitably shaped the lens through which to view the past. One sequence chronicles the standoff between members of the Haida Nation and loggers on Lyell Island in 1985. The story marks a galvanizing moment in history for the Haida in the fight for sovereignty.
“The reason why we go back to Athlii Gwaii Lyell Island is because that is considered one of the real birthplaces of the Haida Nation, even though we’re formed in 1974, it was this big event in the late eighties that fully brought us together as a nation. It was a pivotal point that influenced and informs everything that happens throughout the film,” says Shannon. “As soon as I realized there was a connection between the stands and the protests against logging and the creation of a Haida Nation basketball team as a direct result of not being able to train throughout the year, I thought that was amazing. That is what established the Haida in particular as a dominant force in basketball. We went from maybe winning one championship in 30 years to winning almost every championship for the next 50 years.”
Audiences may recognize some images in Saints and Warriors from The Stand, Christopher Auchter’s all-archival portrait of the events on Lyell Island, which premiered at VIFF last fall. While The Stand generally focuses on the blockades and ends with the resolution to the logging, Saints and Warriors picks up where the story goes from there. Shannon says he didn’t realise that Auchter was working on this story at the same time, but finds it significant to be one of few Haida filmmakers making features right now, telling complementary stories.
“We have a five-minute segment in our film that tells an important point, but to see it expanded upon into a full feature was really cool,” says Shannon. “And us being able to tell the basketball side of that story, I think, was really important. I think it’s pretty magical and also a testament to timing.”
Shannon admits it was a delicate balance to thread the historical beats throughout the story, keeping in mind that he couldn’t control the outcomes of the games. Although he says he had no doubts about the Saints making the finals. “It looked like Skidegate was going to just walk all over Burnaby, but it ended up being a tougher battle. I was thinking about what’s going to happen at the end, how does Skidegate winning or losing change the story?” asks Shannon.
The tournament ultimately reminds the players and audience that, no matter who wins or loses, everyone will return next year as a community. “I felt that this story needed to be about the future and moving forward and the amazing ways that we have not only survived but thrived through this process,” says Shannon.
Saints and Warriors premieres at Hot Docs and DOXA.
It opens in theatres later this year before streaming on Crave.
