Aboriginality

At the 1956 gathering of the Káínaa of Alberta, the exciting spectacle of the Sun Dance was captured on film for the first time. The film examines Káínaa culture and spirituality, showing how the theme of the circle reflects their connection to wildlife, and addresses the predicament of the young generation--those who have relinquished their ties with their own culture but have not yet found a firm place in a changing world.

A Place Between - The Story of an Adoption is a dramatic story of the reconciliation between biological and adoptive families. But much more than that, it is the journey of a cross-cultural adoptee who struggles to find balance between his families' different ethnicities and traditions and to discover how and where he fits into each world. Following the tragic death of their younger brother in 1980, Curtis Kaltenbaugh, 7, and his brother Ashok, 4, were removed from their birth mother's care in Manitoba and adopted into a white, middle-class family in Pennsylvania. This film follows Curtis' struggle with his biological family's turbulent history and observes what happens when his biological and adoptive families finally meet.

In Canada, diversity often means "one ethnicity + hyphen + Canadian," but what if you don't fit into an easy category? What if your background is a hybrid of ancestries and you live somewhere between, where cultural identities overlap? Between interweaves the experiences of a group of Canadians with one parent from a European background and one from a visible minority. They're all struggling to find a satisfying frame of reference. Cultural identity, it seems, is more complex than what our multicultural utopia implies. Seven individuals share stories of being multi-ethnic in a world that wants to put each person into a single category. Among them are award-winning poet Fred Wah, who recalls being told by his elementary teacher that he was Chinese, even though his background also includes Irish, Scottish and Swedish ancestry. When visiting China, however, he finds that he is not accepted as Chinese because he is mixed. Shannon Waters, who is half-Coast Salish, is questioned for participating in the First Nations Family Practice program. Although she chooses to identify with her Indigenous ancestry, her connection with that background is challenged because of her appearance. The thought-provoking experiences of these Canadians come to life against an innovative visual landscape and soundscape. Filmmaker Anne Marie Nakagawa, drawing on her work as a multimedia artist, creates a stylistic documentary that plays with form. As globalization increasingly blurs borders, Between offers a provocative glimpse of what the future holds: a movement away from hyphens and "pure" bloodlines, towards a celebration of fluidity, hybridity and being mixed.