Indigenous Cinema: SINGING BACK THE BUFFALO with Director Tasha Hubbard

Indigenous Cinema: SINGING BACK THE BUFFALO with Director Tasha Hubbard

Native Spirit Festival and Centre for Indigenous and Settler Colonial Studies invite you to join us for a special screening of Singing Back the Buffalo (98min, 2024) — an award winning documentary by Cree filmmaker Dr. Tasha Hubbard followed by Q&A.

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). 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.

Director Biography

Dr. Tasha Hubbard is a filmmaker and an associate professor in the Faculty of Native Studies/Department of English and Film at the University of Alberta. She is from Peepeekisis First Nation in Treaty Four Territory and has ties to several First Nations in Treaty Six Territory through her father. She is also the mother of a seventeen-year-old son. Her academic research supports Indigenous efforts to return the buffalo to the lands, as well as Indigenous narrative sovereignty in North America. She has been working to support the Buffalo Treaty since 2015 and is one of the founding directors of the International Buffalo Relations Institute.

Her first solo writing/directing project Two Worlds Colliding, about Saskatoon’s infamous Starlight Tours, premiered at ImagineNATIVE in 2004 and won the Canada Award at the Gemini Awards in 2005. In 2017, she directed an NFB-produced feature documentary called Birth of a Family about a 60s Scoop family coming together for the first time during a holiday in Banff. It premiered at Hot Docs International Film Festival and landed in the top ten audience choice list. It also won the Audience Favourite for Feature Documentary at the Edmonton International Film Festival and the Moon Jury prize at ImagineNATIVE. Her last film was nîpawistamâsowin: We Will Stand Up, an exploration of the impact of the death of Colten Boushie that premiered in the spring of 2019. It was the first Indigenous-directed film to open the Hot Docs International Film Festival and it won the top Canadian documentary prize. It also won the Colin Low Award for the top Canadian film at the DOXA International Film Festival and the Canadian Screen Award for Best Feature Documentary in 2020. Hubbard was awarded the DGC Discovery award in 2019.

Director Statement

Feel the vibrations from the millions of hooves, see the immense clouds of dust in the air on your skin, witness the Buffalo move through their territory. This is being dreamed about by Indigenous peoples across North America. Our relative, the buffalo, deserves an epic. Singing Back the Buffalo combines my academic work with my search to tell compelling Indigenous stories in a visual and connective way.

It follows key themes: Buffalo Kinship, Genocide, Confinement,Women and Buffalo, and finally, Return, or Rematriating, the Buffalo to the lands. These form the framework for what I wished to be a layered and interwoven film. I wanted to tell both the history of Buffalo and Indigenous people from our perspective, as well as the future vision we have for our collective return to living in balance with the land.

Venue and accessibility information: Bowland Theatre (Ground Floor, Room BS/005), Berrick Saul building, Campus West, University of York.

There is step free and wheelchair access from both nearby car parks on campus and nearest bus stop (route 144). Induction loop hearing system. Campus map here. Travel, Transport, Parking here

Entry: All welcome on a Pay As You Go basis. Requested donation £4-8 help us cover event costs. Students free with ID, Elders over 60 and unwaged with proof at door.

Director Dr Tasha Hubbard