First Peoples' Festival.

From June 10 to 21, the communities of Montreal and Kahnewake will play host to the 17th annual First Peoples' Festival, a rich celebration of Aboriginal culture featuring films, videos, literature, visual art exhibits and various special events.

Organized each year by Land InSights/Terre En Vues, the annual festival draws Aboriginal artists from across the Americas and beyond, who take in 11 days of film screenings, lectures, readings, exhibitions, ceremonies and entertainment.

One item on this year's festival agenda is Journeys to Identity, which will feature artists such as Huron-Wendat visual artist Christine Sioui Wawanoloath, whose work entitled Tsehaweh, la porteuse de lumiere features mythological animals. By looking deep into the roots of her names, she discovered who she is. Her identity is both an affirmation and a revelation.

Another artist whose work with be featured is Metis artist Jim Logan. With his National Pastimes series, Logan expresses the quest for Metis identity as seen through childhood, merging echoes of residential school, hockey and memories of his father within the work.

Metis visual artist Alexis Macdonald Seto will also be taking part in the Journey to Identity. Seto, who expresses herself through photography and collages created with images and found objects, created the art book Let's Find Out About Indians, using family pictures photos placed within the context of an outdated school book to create a history of a family with Aboriginal ancestry. According to Seto, identity is forged through the intimate universe of personal relationships.

Other artists scheduled to take part include Cree artist Jean-Paul Pelchat, who paints to reflect his journey into self-discovery, Mohawk artist Walter Kahero:ton Scott, whose work celebrates Mohawk youth and Ojibway artist Maria Hupfield, whose works Made in Kanata and Spirit Catchers contrasts the paradoxical aspects of a journey to self-identification.

The segment of this year's festival dedicated to film will put a spotlight on Indigenous voices from Bolivia, Brazil, Mexico, Columbia, Portugal, Argentina, Australia and the Philippines. Among the films scheduled for screening are Wabak, a film by first time film-makers Ken Papatie and Gilles Pensoway that mixes traditional and modern storytelling forms to tells the story of the first Algonquin person to be born and the choices he must make between good and evil as he travels his life path. Another Canadian film that will be featured is Two Spirits: Back In the Circle by film-maker Julien Boisvert.

From June 15 to the 17 there will be public entertainment at Emilie-Gamelin Park as part of the First Peoples' Festival and National Aboriginal Day will be celebrated at Mount Royal on June 21.

More information about the festival can be found online at www.nativelynx.qc.ca.

By Marie White

Windspeaker Writer

MONTREAL