Yanira D. Kivi 
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Details
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Through Tamara Ikenberg
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Simply existing as an Indigenous male in Canada can be hazardous to health and in some cases fatal.
In 2008, Aboriginal patient Brian Sinclair, 45, died in plain sight at a Winnipeg medical facility while waiting in his wheelchair for treatment for an infection.
“When I heard the story of Brian Sinclair. It’s just this feeling of being amazed, like, how the hell is this happening? This man is going to the hospital. And he waits thirty-four hours and dies in the hospital,” said Blackfoot filmmaker Ahnahktsipiitaa, also known as Colin Van Loon.
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Using state-of-the-art virtual reality technology, Van Loon, editor Jessica Dymond and Cree artistic director James Monkman channel the shock and anger surrounding the systemic racism that facilitated Sinclair’s suffering, and allow audiences to simulate the waiting with him, in the revolutionary virtual reality experience This is not a ceremony.
“If we hear Brian’s story it’s an experience, but if we actually sit with him it creates a new level of knowledge and understanding,” Van Loon said.
Produced by Dana Dansereau at the National Film Board of Canada’s Digital Studio in Vancouver, British Columbia, the immersive call to bear witness to injustice head-on without being able to close your eyes, premiered last week at the Sundance Film Festival, as part of the New Frontier program, which champions experimental and forward-looking works at the intersection of film, art and technology.
“It’s always been a filmmaker’s dream to go to Sundance, and New Frontier is a very cool platform,” Van Loon said. “When I first started getting into VR, I always looked at New Frontier’s work because they have such a sharp curatorial team.”
Viewers must have access to an Oculus VR headset to properly experience This is Not a Ceremony, and that means only a limited, forward-thinking audience will have the ability to fully immerse themselves. But Van Loon doesn’t let that deter him.
“While I still want everyone to see it, there’s no other way I could have told these stories. I wouldn’t have done it any other way. Because he was so important to the piece that people could relate to storytellers,” said Van Loon, founder of Blackfoot Nation Films.
“There is something so beautiful about the medium of VR. If we can bring viewers closer to these people, and they can get to know them better through that sense of presence and closeness that VR gives you , it will allow them to connect more deeply with the storytellers and engage more deeply with the story.
The grim realities of Sinclair and sexual abuse survivor Adam North Peigan are at the center of the 20-minute vision which also takes full advantage of virtual reality’s ability to create surreal and otherworldly layers of symbols, sounds and images. images that add emotion and spirituality. dimension.
Rounding out the universe of Ceremony are powerful buffalo spirits streaking across the stage with fire in their eyes and sparks flying from them, a pair of rogue poets watching and reacting with an acid and shrewd wit to all-too-familiar situations. , and swirling, star-dusted clouds containing storytelling survivors, family members, and a subdued but strong matriarch played by late Mowachaht/Muchalaht First Nation activist Lillian Rose Howard, who offers healing words and urges viewers to remember what they witnessed.
What they witness is impossible to erase from sensory memory.
In Sinclair’s segment, viewers are placed face to face with the doomed, motionless man, his head tilted helplessly to the side. During the excruciating wait, hazy layers of activity and audio, including doctors and nurses hanging around, and the terminal sound of a ticking clock, close in on how Sinclair was able to handle the situation. .
“In Blackfoot culture, we believe that before someone passes, their mind goes back and forth many times, and we worked on that idea a bit,” Van Loon said. “There may have been times during this period when he was waiting when Brian was crossing and coming back. In the background we see the Sandhills, which is the Blackfoot representation of where we are going after we pass.
While Sinclair’s story is heightened with surreal effects, fragments of the story of Adam North Peigan, who as a young orphan was taken from an abusive home to be rehomed minutes away with original family members, are expressed in an unwavering, raw and real style.
In a haunting re-enactment, viewers witness a terrified and defiant young Peigan who desperately refuses to leave the car and face his new placement, until his frustrated and unempathetic social worker forces him to submit to his new hell.
“When Adam was telling me his story, again, I felt stunned. It’s hard to face. But it’s important to commit,” Van Loon said. “We still have to live our lives. lives in those places. Brian Sinclair’s family still have to go to the same hospital where their relationship died. They have no choice.”
Van Loon admits that a kind of weariness can be felt by Indigenous people who still hear about and routinely experience systemic racism. He believes it is crucial to resist this fatigue by bringing reality to light both to recognize the courage of those who face the struggle and to reveal the harsh realities to the world.
“The truth must come before reconciliation can take place, and in Canada we are still in the moment of truth,” he said. “I thought it was important to put people inside these stories. Hopefully that’s a wake-up call.
This Is Not a Ceremony can be viewed online through Sunday, January 30. newfrontier.sundance.org for more information. Future exhibitions of the work will be announced on https://www.nfb.ca/interactive/ceremony/.
This story has been updated to add the role of the National Film Board of Canada.
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