Métis/Dene filmmaker Marie Clements brings her new three-part musical documentary series “Reclaim My Skin” to the Vancouver International Film Festival on Oct. 10, exploring how colonization has stripped Indigenous women and Two-Spirit people of their power and how they are reclaiming their voices through activism, politics and the arts.
The screening will come three days after Clements won a top prize at VIFF for feature “Where We Stand.”
The series grew out of conversations Clements had with musician and composer Pura Fé, whose performance is featured in the doc series. Not only did Fé have the idea of looking into how indigenous women had lost power, but also how they’ve been rising up to create change.
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“I just kind of felt that the cellular level of the power of women is extraordinary,” Clements told Variety. “And you definitely feel it when you’re in rooms with them, but also just the idea that it’s not just one voice. It’s going to take hundreds of voices to create a seismic change.”
Throughout the series, Clements weaves in what she refers to as “story songs” to help tell the story both cinematically and through music. She had learned from her previous music doc, “The Road Forward,” that it was a way to “touch people and kind of blow open the world a little bit and look at story in a way that can be embraced…Because I think no matter who we are, there’s this kind of universal language of music that we lean into.”
One of the most notable conversations in the series is Clements’ interview with Gloria Steinem, conducted in New York alongside Indigenous activists Louise Wakerahkats:te Herne and Michelle Schenandoah. Clements says the encounter highlighted a lesser-known connection between Indigenous women’s political structures and the history of feminism.
What people often miss, she says, is that before the settlers arrived, indigenous women were actually in positions of power within their communities and families. “They were leaders that held equal status or elevated status in the world order,” she said.
“When we think of settler women coming, we always think that settler women had more authority, more power over their lives and what was happening in the world. And actually, that’s exactly opposite. Indigenous women had more power before people came to Turtle Island. And that was not just kind of superficial power or political power. It was social power and female power and spiritual power.”
This shifted with colonization.
“I love that the feminist movement was influenced by Indigenous women when they first met, and these white suffragettes began to understand that, oh, these Indigenous women have way more freedoms than we do, and how can that be?”
Research for the documentary led Clements to accounts of Indigenous women crossing paths with early white feminists, particularly in the eastern U.S. where there were more points of intersection.
”These early conversations, I think, were instrumental in the feminist movement. And that Gloria Steinem recognized this, and that these other matriarchs understood that relationship and understood how that changed the trajectory of feminism, I think is really kind of cool, because not a lot of people would put those things together.”
While the series looks backward, Clements stresses that its concerns are not confined to the past. Indigenous families continue to carry the effects of not-so-distant historical trauma, but they are also experiencing many of the same issues today – like the separation of children from their families, or people being taken off the streets.
“Even though our past is the past, it’s also happening in the present,” she says. “If we don’t continue to stand up, if we don’t continue to fight for human rights on all levels, then it can slide very easily…It’s not good enough just to stand up once. You have to keep standing.”
The connection between past and present is also why Clements uses the word “witness” when describing the role of an audience. Her thinking was influenced in part by James Baldwin, whose novels she read as a child.
“I think there’s something about that as an artist: We’re here to witness what’s happening in the world, while we’re here, while we’re experiencing it,” she said.
Clements believes audiences can similarly become witnesses to the perspectives artists are documenting.
“They are also witnesses to a time and to what artists are saying about this time,” she said, “And so it’s a very active and very present dialogue.”
The series arrives during what Clements describes as a “Renaissance time for Indigenous filmmakers,” with Indigenous artists increasingly working both in front of and behind the camera. “There’s so much talent now,” she says.
But Clements says continued support is essential to sustaining that momentum and for giving audiences access to stories told from perspectives they may not otherwise encounter.
“I think we’re hungry for true experiences and true perspectives, and not just being generic storytelling,” she says. “We actually want to understand different points of view.”
Ultimately, that curiosity is what Clements hopes “Reclaim My Skin” can encourage.
“It’s really about the story and it’s really about perspective,” she said. “And the possibility of understanding something different is kind of always intriguing, right? It pulls you in.”
