TIFF 2024 'welima’q': shalan joudry's short film inspired by the beauty of sweetgrass picking
"Being part of nature for these moments of gathering, of harvesting, are really important as humans," joudry said
Multi-disciplinary L'nu (Mi'kmaw) storyteller shalan joudry has brought her work to the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) with the short film welima’q, part of the Programme 01, Short Cuts programming. For this story, which began with the poem "sweetgrasssing," joudry was inspired by her love of sweetgrass picking.
"I'm somebody who spends time on the land when i can and picking sweetgrass is one of the things that i love to do ... with my family, with my partner, with my kids, with my friends," joudry told Yahoo Canada. "Years ago i was picking sweetgrass and i was just thinking, 'Oh i want to capture this in a poem,' and so i wrote a poem about sweetgrass picking, and it was just this ode of pure love, of what it feels like to go and put my hands in that damp, rich soil and just be plucking."
"For some reason, just a few years ago i was thinking, 'Yeah but wouldn't it be great to be able to show people a little bit of what this looks like?' The moments that i really love are when you kind of bob your head up over the sweetgrass and you see somebody else who's picking, but all you can see is just the top of their head because they're crouched down and just totally immersed in it. And i thought this would make a really great short film."
Up until joudry had that thought, she hadn't really been using films or video more broadly in her storytelling.
"I had started down that journey over 20 years ago and it just felt like it was a very complex industry, and one that i wasn't sure how i wanted to express myself in it, so i'd kind of set it down," she said.
"Because i was imagining this short film I thought, ... how can i share these visuals, and share what it means to me, what this feels like to be a L'nu, a Mi'kmaw person, being part of landscape. And to [remind people] that even though there's a lot of ecological, environmental concerns today, and i worry for the earth, for us not to forget that there is still beautiful ecological systems intact. And being part of nature for these moments of gathering, of harvesting, are really important as humans, and particularly as Indigenous people, but i think for all people."
The land and the Mi'kmaw language
For joudry, the storytelling she does is always done in combination with her ecological work and language learning.
"I just work with how they weave together and how they support each other," joudry said. "Some of the stories that i love to tell as an oral storyteller has been either cultural Mi'kmaw stories that teach about that ecological connection, that ecological awareness, as well as the cultural teachings."
"So i would share these stories with various audiences, ... including when i was working as an ecologist, working on species at risk. When i could I would get my colleagues together ... and i would move around in a circle, and i would tell them these stories so that i was using the storytelling methodology, but to share Indigenous ecological knowledge."
The welima’q filmmaker strives to be part of a "wave" people working to reclaim their Indigenous language.
"In my little community of L’sətkuk, Bear River First Nation, there are no fluent speakers left. There are learners, there are people who grew up hearing the language, they speak some of the language, but not not fluent speakers," joudry said. "One of my life's missions is to learn as much as i can, to be part of the group of people reclaiming it within our community and within our family, within our nation."
"And because i work so much in the arts of being a storyteller, i would, wherever i could, take a word in the Mi'kmaw language, and i would put it into my story, so that i would be practicing."
For anyone who watches, welima’q, joudry hopes they are inspired knowing that, "we are the land and the land is us."
"There's a certain kind of medicine just being out on the land and i just really hope that for people, that ... they're inspired to go find nature themselves," she said.
The next TIFF screening for Short Cuts 2024 Programme 01 is Sept. 12
