Uploaded September 2018 | Updated September 2026, 19 hours ago

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Produced, Directed, Photographed, and Edited by Conor McNally

Stream / Buy - nehiyawak.lnk.to/nipiy
Buy Marilyn Dumont's "The Pemmican Eaters" - ecwpress.com/products/pemmican-eaters
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This song refers to how many indigenous cultures globally have been systematically impacted by words written down on documents and questions if these are attempts at negating actual history. What have been the effects of creating such works as the Magna Carta, the Charter of the Forest, or the Royal Proclamation on pre-existing cultures and ideologies? The spark ignited by such pages on the rest of the world is still felt today in the lives and interactions of countless people. How was significance attached to pieces of sheep hide from the 13th century, while millennia of experiences were negated? Shortly after the birth of these documents, the planet was also introduced to the consequences brought on by this ideology including the conquest of land, early forms of biological warfare, and the invention of 'they.'

nêhiyawak hails from amiskwaciy in Treaty 6 Territory. The trio of Indigenous Canadian artists – Kris Harper (vocals, guitars), Marek Tyler (drums), and Matthew Cardinal (synths, bass) – transcends a new intersection of contemporary sound and traditional storytelling with its singular music. The band – whose name refers directly to their nêhiyaw ancestry – is a spirited expression of Indigeneity in the modern world.
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Marilyn Dumont's - Opitemisiwak

maybe Poundmaker
or even Big Bear
would have dreamt
those waking figures
Gatlin gun sorrows
bullets, crosses and misguided soldiers
in they were Riel
or Dumont
while Macdonald
swilling spirits
was in some crystal case of glory

and Louis dreamt
that supposedly
in broad daylight
the dawn
on it's unseen bone
was lifting
above the fire

I don't believe
he was merely mistaken
regardless of
how little daylight remained

this evening I retrieved a piece of birch bark
and something more
like a petrified limb
lay in the palm of a snowdrift
I thought of Louis
the way he kept envisioning the dimness

how he dreamt of it ascending
on its unseen limb
how he wanted it to reflect
like water

LYRICS

And then there was a page

They got into the way

There was nothing much more they could take

As we stood up to break out

And then was made the play

It hit us just like a wave

Come crashing upon the bay

The flame took off the breakout

It all seems like some mistake

The gains and what we take

And what it is we create

It all flows the breakout
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This song contains the poem Otipemisiwak: the Free People
from Marilyn Dumont's collectionThe Pemmican Eaters published by ECW Press

Produced, Directed, Photographed, and Edited by Conor McNally
Camera and Lighting Assistant - Dmitri Bandet
Visual Effects Co-Creator - Patrick Arès-Pilon

With support from the Edmonton Arts Council + FAVA

Film Processed at Niagara Custom Lab and Transferred by Frame Discreet. Colour by Kyle Armstrong