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Singing Back the Buffalo - Screening

Award-winning Cree filmmaker Tasha Hubbard and Knowledge Keeper Joely Bigeagle Kequahtooway will discuss Tasha’s new film, Singing Back the Buffalo. The screening will follow their presentation.

This is an in person program.  Please, do not attend if you are not feeling well.

Program Outline

· 7:00-7:30 Director Tasha Hubbard and Knowledge Keeper Joely Bigeagle Kequahtooway will discuss the film

· 7:30-9:00 screening

· 9:00 Start of Q&A

· Bannock & Tea provided

Film Synopsis

In a time of immense environmental degradation and global uncertainty, the buffalo can lead us to a better tomorrow. After a dark recent history, the buffalo herds of North America are awaiting their return, aided by dedicated Indigenous activists, leaders and communities, including award-winning Cree filmmaker Tasha Hubbard (nîpawistamâsowin: We Will Stand Up, Birth of a Family). Together with Blackfoot Elder Leroy Little Bear, Hubbard weaves an intimate story of humanity’s connections to buffalo and eloquently reveals how their return to the Great Plains can indeed usher in a new era of sustainability and balance.

On her journey, Hubbard explores the challenges faced by buffalo allies and shares the positive steps already taken towards the ultimate – but uncertain – goal of buffalo rematriation. Richly visualised and deeply uplifting, Singing Back the Buffalo is an epic reimagining of North America through the lens of buffalo consciousness and a potent dream of what is within our grasp.

Tasha Hubbard (Cree) is a filmmaker and an associate professor in the Faculty of Native Studies and the Department of English and Film at the University of Alberta. She is from Peepeekisis First Nation in Treaty Four Territory and has ties to Thunderchild First Nation in Treaty Six Territory. She is also the mother of a seventeen-year-old son. She researches and champions Indigenous efforts to restore the buffalo, has been a supporter of the Buffalo Treaty since 2015, and is a founding board member of the International Buffalo Relations Institute. Her films Two Worlds Colliding, Birth of a Family and nîpawistamâsowin: We Will Stand Up have screened around the world and won numerous awards, including the Canadian Screen Award for Best Feature Documentary in 2020. Her work has led to recognition from the Directors Guild of Canada, who awarded her with the Discovery Award in 2019. Her latest feature documentary is called Singing Back the Buffalo, premiering in 2024.

Joely BigEagle-Kequahtooway is an interdisciplinary artist whose main source of inspiration is Tatanga aka Buffalo. She is a fashion and textile designer, visual artist, beader, storyteller and co-founder of the Buffalo People Arts Institute. She comes from a long line of Buffalo hunters and is Nakota/Cree/Saulteaux from the White Bear First Nations - signatory to Treaty 4.

She has degrees in Civil Engineering from the University of Calgary and Mathematics from the First Nations University of Canada. She loves to incorporate mathematics and geometry in her artwork and is inspired by the perfect symmetry in nature.

Her mantra envelopes everything Buffalo as it connects her to ancestral memories, the land and is the manifestational glue that keeps her world together.

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