When I was a little girl, I used to sit at my grandmother’s feet and listen to her tell stories about the Haudenosaunee. A traditional Mohawk storyteller, she explained to me how the birds got their songs, how maple syrup was made, and who Sky Woman was. Story after story I was in awe of my grandmother and her ability to articulate every detail from memory. One day I asked her how she could recall these stories without a book. She smiled and said, “when stories are passed down they remain in the heart not the head and I always remember what’s in my heart.”

 

My work as a filmmaker has often been driven by stories that encourage introspection. I push myself behind the camera to represent my subjects honestly with the passion that my grandmother had for storytelling. Like Ku and many other Indigenous people, I’m also a descendant of an Indian residential school survivor. My great-grandmother was stolen from the St. Regis Mohawk reservation as a young girl and brought to a catholic boarding school where she suffered physical, sexual, and emotional abuse.

 

When the news broke of the 215 unmarked graves of Indigenous children in Canada, I felt an obligation as a storyteller, filmmaker, and descendant of a boarding school survivor to become a caretaker of her past and one to those who share a similar story; so much so that when I learned of Ku Stevens and I reached out to him and his family as a complete stranger. When we connected on the phone, we talked about what it was like to see the world reacting to the discoveries at the Kamloops Indian residential school and how the history of residential schools and the horrors of assimilation policy had been taught to both of us at a young age. Most importantly, we talked about the need for healing. For both of us, the goal of his run and my film is to bring awareness to what happened at Indian boarding schools and to shine a light on the resilience of Indigenous people as the country reckons with this dark and undertold history.