By Meghan Power
“Our work together as tīná gúyáńí,” says Glenna, “is about lived experiences that are relevant, inspiring, beautiful, healing and trauma informed.” tīná gúyáńí’s work often weaves threads from many sources, deeply rooted in culture, language, oral history, family photographs, and museum and archival research.
In 2024, tīná gúyáńí received an Honouring the Children grant from Calgary Arts Development (CADA) to bring the film her name to three communities in Alberta. It was successfully presented to family, friends, grad students and community members at Blue Quills, St. Paul, and Tsuut’ina.
The screenings included a private viewing, a sharing circle and a feast. Glenna explains why incorporating ceremony into the screening was important. “It’s important to have the space to include ceremony in what we have created. Because we are multi-layered in our colonial experiences, wellness practices are usually overlooked.”
The film, her name, is 33-minutes in length and was shot on 8mm film. “I was inspired by the NFB film, Circle of the Sun, shot on film in the Kainai-Treaty 7 area,” explains seth. “The NFB never made a film about the Tsuut’ina—formerly Sarcee people. I imagine if the NFB had then it would have featured my family in the 1950s and ‘60s, and they would have been documented beautifully on film. I chose Super 8 film because I had a Super 8 camera I bought as a teenager and I wanted to use it to make home family videos and document my lived experiences. I also wanted to capture my family now on film to fill a gap of Tsuut’ina people lacking visibility in movies.”
Glenna shares how the initial filming for this project came out of her being accepted into the Indigenous Master of Social Work (IMSW) Program at University nuhelot’įne thaiyots’įnistameyimâkanak Blue Quills (BQ), Alberta. “We first began filming, in 2021-2023 to document our paternal and maternal family history for our family members and future generations. seth and I started researching our family in colonial archives—we haven’t had agency over our own stories.” Taking back agency is powerfully displayed throughout the film in particular through the act of “counting coup” on public spaces: museums, federal buildings, and the Residential School seth’s grandfather went to.
“The act of counting coup was done by Plains warriors in battle,” explains seth. “They would approach an enemy and touch them with a ‘coup’ stick and escape unharmed in order to show their bravery and gain respect as a warrior. I filmed myself doing this with sticks I found on the ground outside these places.”
Much of Glenna and seth’s work as tīná gúyáńí is about confronting this forced colonial identity as well as a way of telling the story of her family (both matrilineal and patrilineal) and the generations that have been impacted by displacement, loss, and colonial systems, including the literal paving over of significant portions of the Tsuut’ina Nation reserve land and the home of seven generations of maternal Tsuut’ina family. And where Glenna raised her two children, in order to expand the Southwest Calgary Ring Road. CADA’s Honouring the Children grant is valuable for First Nation artists because, “it supports multidisciplinary storytellers in a variety of arts,” explains Glenna. “This grant is important to tīná gúyáńí and the communities they are connected to as it supports the healing practice of art, wellness, family history, and is culturally based. This is a healing and wellness project that is building on the relationship of kinship and reciprocity.”
Looking forward, the tīná gúyáńí collective is in the process of bringing the film her name in Nehiyaw and Tsuut’ina written and spoken language.‘