Sunday February 25, 2007
Location: Piikani Reservation, Alberta

I was just having a conversation about elephants. Elephants are going crazy around the world these days and people have begun studying the phenomenon. Post-traumatic stress disorder is what the experts are saying. Supposedly elephants experience post-traumatic stress, and when a trigger awakens that stress they go on rampages through circus tents.

An image that came up in the conversation was one from a documentary on the subject. Picture a circus. An elephant is dressed in sequins as a man gives orders to perform tricks. All of a sudden the elephant goes wild and in desperation, to save his colleague, another circus performer, in a tight blue sequined jump suit comes to his aid. The elephant knocks the man over, and then in a deliberate motion, bends forward onto its knees and literally crushes the man with his forehead.

What do I make of all this.

Sometimes, humanity is just plain stupid. If we dress up an animal, often weighing up to thirteen tons in sequins and try to make it dance around for a cheering audience, we may be in for some unexpected problems.

What strikes me most about this story is how it’s a really good metaphor for so much of human stupidity. We consistently mess around with natural forces, and feeling that we are in control we then act surprised when things go awry. We dump millions of tons of pollutants into our air only to be dumbfounded when our children wake up with asthma. We work 8-12hrs a day under artificial lighting and go home to frozen dinners and television sets only to find we’re somehow dissatisfied with life. We don’t spend enough time with our children and we don’t spend enough time with ourselves. We’ve created artificial and disconnected systems everywhere around us, and yet we find it strange that something is missing.

In my opinion, sometimes I think we’re happily dancing around in blue sequined jump suits, ignoring the elephant that is bearing down on us.
What really affects my hope is I feel very few people actually see the elephant, and then even fewer people understand why it’s so pissed off. This reality makes me wonder if humanity really stands a chance in the next hundred years or so. We are constantly being hammered by the facts of how the world we’ve built is unsustainable and heading towards havoc, yet at the same time we choose to ‘stay the course’.

I often feel that there’s no way we can turn this ship around in time, and that we’re basically headed straight towards distaster. Maybe only then will we finally pay attention to the elephant that is standing in the room.

Tuesday, February 20, 2007
Location: Piikani Reservation, Alberta

I’ve been spending a lot of time over the past week thinking about my project and where I’m headed.

I’m slowly coming to the realization, that the essence of what I set out to explore and understand, is something I could never share with a mass media audience. Instead, I have to find the middle ground, the in-between, or quite simply put, the common sense.

It all sounds so vague but I know what I’m saying. It’s a question of a feeling, of a spirit, and I guess on some level, transcendence. Transcendence rooted into the practical and the common sense.

Over the course of my journey I’ve been coming to the realization that we all grow, shift, and change, in our own time, according to our own natural rhythms. As the old saying goes, you can lead a horse to water…

If I lay themes out in a practical manner, i.e., our current civilization is unsustainable, I only get in touch with audience logic, leaving it to them to either agree or disagree, to think about the film afterwards, and to think about and then question their reality.

For me the question is how are any of us to think while surrounded by distraction, pulling our minds elsewhere. If we meditate on a daily basis, if we take the time to get in touch, if we have the time in the first place, maybe then, we’d find ourselves truly thinking about our reality. Otherwise, I feel, my film exists as just another blip in a barrage of mainstream media, here today gone tomorrow, another fleeting flicker in a world full of interrupted thoughts. It becomes something that maybe makes the mind twitch, but rarely penetrates deeper into our lives, our habitual patterns – or our paradigm.

I do want to evoke thought, but what is becoming more important to me, is to evoke a certain spirit and make an attempt to touch people at their core.

Finding the images to evoke this spirit is what the journey right now is all about.

peace,
d

Tuesday February 13, 2007
Location: Piikani REservation, Alberta

I’ve just had a breakthrough in terms of my film process. Breakthroughs like these are amazing in the fact that they come out of nowhere and simply blindside you.

This morning I was sitting at the ranch breakfast table playing spider solitaire waiting to start chores. In that moment, Morris came in and handed me a large book. Here, he said, read it. The book was, Sacred Legacy: Edward S. Curtis and the North American Indian. I know the story of Edward S. Curtis the photographer that documented North American First Nations throughout the course of his life. I also am aware that although there is great praise surrounding his work and some truth found in his photographs, he is also remembered for inaccurate setups where he gave individuals traditional items for his photographs, in some cases items obtained elsewhere and not even of their tradition. (Learn More & Great Vids: Click Here.) Regardless of whom I’ve captured on film, this inability for the camera to be truthful has been at the forefront of my mind since the beginning of my travels and documentation process.

I was happy to see this question of ‘truth’ acknowledged in the book's Forward.

"Photography, at its best, is authentic art, an expression of the creative imagination informed by an original perception of the world. It is said that the camera, by virtue of its very presence, alters reality. Too often a photograph is simply the static record of an image – an object, a figure, a place – in bare definition. A photograph commonly records a façade, the surface of a moment, a nick in geological time. And as such it is necessarily a distortion, a kind of visible plane beyond which we cannot see. But in the hands of an extraordinary artist the camera can penetrate to a deeper level. For Edward Sheriff Curtis the camera was truly a magic box, a precision instrument that enabled him to draw with light, to transcend the limits of ordinary vision, to see into the shadows of the soul. It is not by accident that he was called by his American Indian subjects “Shadow Catcher.”

I am deeply concerned by the fact that as soon as a still or motion picture image is captured, there remains things outside the frame. In this fact, the camera is incapable of ever capturing complete ‘truth’.

So why try?

In my time here with the Blackfoot I’ve found myself surrounded by storytellers and immersed in their stories. A story told sometimes just for the sake of a story, sometimes for sharing of knowledge, sometimes growth, wisdom and often for healing. A story, properly told, carries so much within it to change the lives of the audience.

As if for the first time, I’m learning something I’ve always known –

I’m a storyteller.

I’ve spoken with many on the road about what my film is… a collection of ‘truths’ or moments of reality, eventually transformed into a dreamlike journey. When I interview people I always describe how the film will appear, “Remember the dream you had last night, well that’s my film. One moment you were in one place talking with someone you’ve never met, then in the next moment you’re somewhere else, time and space fragmented, yet with a clear movement forwards.” I’ve said this so many times, but until tonight, I was still hung up on the word “documentary” a word that’s been a curse ever since I first uttered it to describe my project.

This film is not a documentary, but a document. This film is a story filled with truths, from a real journey, through an unreal world.

Once again I’m seeing my process with new eyes. A shift in perspective that will finally allow that part of me that has been trapped by truth to be set free. I have had so many ideas that I’ve let go of in favour of an impossible documentary reality. It’s now time, while using real elements, to also let go and start dreaming in Technicolor.

"Edward Curtis wrote of himself, “While primarily a photographer, I do not see or think photographically; hence the story of … life will not be told in microscopic detail, but rather will be presented as a broad and luminous picture.” We must be grateful for this insight and for this intention: the world of these photographs is one in which breadth and luminosity are indispensable dimensions of spirit and reality."

“It’s such a big dream, I can’t see it all." – Edward Sheriff Curtis

Excerpts taken from N. Scott Momaday’s Forward, Sacred Legacy: Edward S. Curtis and the North American Indian.

peace,
d

My favorite pic from the book, illustrating how small we are in respect to Mother Nature
Canyon De Chilly - Navaho - 1904

Sunday, February 11, 2007
Location: Piikani Reservation

Man time flies... seriously, it seems like I went out to feed some cattle and when I came back in, blamo, it's the 11th of February ;-)

I haven't done much writing lately. I have lots to express but have to figure out how best to put it into words. I've been through a lot in the past week or so and am really growing in ways I don't quite understand just yet. Learning about some different types of medicine and learning how to stay balanced in the wake of the slight ripples trying to knock me down.

As a good friend of mine always says, Onwards and Upwards.

I just came into town to check my email and grab some groceries.. I'll do some proper blogging over the next few days and drop them mid-week.

peace,
d

An excerpt on the mystery of ceremonialism from Book of the Hopi. I feel it's relevant not only to Hopi ways of seeing, but also in relation to my own experiences here among the Blackfoot.
peace,
d
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Why these mysteries should seem strange to us now an onlooker cannot say. Their songs and dances form simple rhythmical patterns. The costumes and decorations are even more simple. A deer horn, an eagle feather, a turtle-shell rattle, a twig of spruce and an ear of corn, daubs of mineral paint – no more than these. Have we of this Synthetic Age grown so far away from our earth that we read no more meaning in the elements of its mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms? Yet these ceremonies hold a deeper truth than this. For the Hopi the cornstalk, the talking stones, the great breathing mountains – all are significant and alive, being mere symbols of spirits which give them form and life. These invisible spiritual forms are in turn but manifestations of the one supreme creative power which imbues them with meaning, which moves them in their earthly orbits and seasonal cycles in unison with the constellations of the midnight sky. And again, their unhurried, stately movements follow the inexorable laws of universal life itself – symbols for symbols, layer upon layer of ritual esotericism, through which man reaches at last the ultimate meaning of his brief existence on this one puny planet among countless myriads more.

- Book of the Hopi, Frank Waters/Oswald White Bear Fredericks

Saturday, February 3, 2007
Location: Piikani Reservation, Alberta

We had a full-moon sweat this past Thursday. I never really understood that the full moon lasts four days. Four days, in which to pray, four days, in which to connect, four seasons, four directions, four elements - four days. This morning as I awoke and went out to feed the cattle, the moon was setting. Tonight, as I prepared to return inside, the moon was rising; a deep orange disc on the horizon.

My dreams over the past four days have been lucid and powerful. While, between dreams, my nights have been filled with a restless sleeplessness.

We’re all affected by the full moon, our bodies mostly water; we all ebb and flow. And, when we take the time to connect to the natural world, we fall headlong into the reality that we’ve created a world devoid of the important reminders as to our makeup. In our world, built of concrete and steel, built of technology, media, and high frequency signals, where is there space to be human? Where do we return to ourselves? Where do we find the time and the space to connect to our innate natural rhythms?

Out here on the Piikani Reservation, remote from everyday experience is the hum of the cityscape. Feeding cattle, tracking coyotes, waiting on eagles, I’m connected to nature. Also, to be honest, I’m a little homesick for my family farm back in Quebec.

The Gainsford farm became dormant a decade or so before my grandfather died, his children opting for a life independent of the land. It seems this was the case with much of the baby-boomer generation. Leave the archaic, in favour of progress and a better life. I think this was the case for much of modernity, to leave nature behind. BUT, I think there’s something we forgot to consider… a fact we forgot to carry in our side pocket – nature - is us.

For my family, although the farm is dormant, fortunately the land is still there. With this I’ve had the privilege of growing up ‘walking the land’ with my father. I had the privilege of growing up connecting to nature. Now, out here on the road, there’s a really strong instinct telling me, it’s time to go back. Since, the recurring message of this journey thus far, has been, ‘go back to the land’.

For this project I’ve made a commitment to continue south, I’m certain there are other truths out there waiting. All these truth are not only helping me understand myself as a man, but also the journey of my life that lies ahead.

What do we value, what brings us happiness and contentment, and most importantly, what kind of future do we leave for those behind us.

peace,
d

Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Location: Piikani Reservation, Alberta

I was just out walking with the dogs. 9:15. I headed South across the field towards the highway in the distance; the lights of the transport trucks guiding my way.

Padding quietly through the snow, all four dogs travel alongside.

Moses stops first, staring into the moonlight. The two older dogs drift away, backwards towards the house lights. “Moses, what is it?” I ask, “What do you see?” I then realize he doesn’t see anything, he smells them.

I continue walking, changing my direction east. I myself am now more aware, walking quietly, listening.

The older dogs whimper, maintaining their position ten feet behind me. Moses comes to an abrupt halt, pointing. He sees them. I strain my eyes in the moonlight. Faintly, there they are.

One after another they drift south across the moonlit field, spirits.

One, two, three – four – five - six.

Coyotes.
_
It’s nice to be back home.

peace,
d