By: Valerie Milano
Los Angeles, CA (The Hollywood Times) 11/29/2024 – It would be difficult to imagine a life that depended on one’s skills at hunting and fishing to provide food and shelter if one had no experience at either pursuit. But for the Inuit people, this is precisely what happened during their forced relocation from their native tribal lands in the north of Canada to the cities in the south in the 1930s.
Writer/director Lindsay McIntyre shines a light on a dark time in Inuit history with “NIGIQTUQ ᓂᒋᖅᑐᖅ (The South Wind),” a deeply moving short film that explores themes of identity, culture, and resilience through the lens of forced relocation and assimilation. Rooted in the true story of Marguerite, as shared by McIntyre’s Inuit grandmother, the film provides a personal yet universal glimpse into the profound challenges faced by Inuit families uprooted from their ancestral lands in the 1930s.
McIntyre’s project seems like both a heartfelt tribute to her heritage and an important act of cultural storytelling, shedding light on the historical trauma of Inuit displacement while emphasizing resilience and the enduring ties to one’s identity and homeland. It’s a poignant reminder of the importance of preserving and sharing Indigenous stories.
“The story is one that’s really important to me,” McIntyre said during a recent chat with The Hollywood Times. She said this film is part of a larger project that has been in the works for 15 years.
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“It’s my grandmother’s story,” McIntyre said. “It’s the story of how my family came from living in Inuit Mungai, which is the Inuit homeland in the north of Canada, to Edmonton, which is where I grew up. So, it’s a true story and it’s a story that I think really matters in our collective history.”
The film delicately weaves Marguerite’s individual experiences with the broader consequences of systemic oppression, capturing the emotional and cultural dissonance caused by relocation and the pressures to conform to Southern ways of life. The arrival of the letter from Nunavut appears to serve as a pivotal moment, reconnecting Marguerite to her roots and challenging the expectations placed on her.
“I really wanted to explore those challenges and those difficulties, those ways of thinking, about when you can speak and when you can’t. It embodies struggles of adapting from these two very, very different, adapting these two very, very different ways of living and thinking about being.”
Young Naomi-Ken Ullikata Natseck plays Marguerite and turns into a noteworthy performance. McIntyre had high praise for the youngster, though she said they realized the process of making the film with her could have done more than just portray the effects of the southern migration.
“We kind of realized we could enact the same harm to this little girl,” McIntyre said, explaining that Naomi speaks very little English. “She came down to the south to participate in this, and in a way that is a bit overwhelming. She never had a film crew and a bunch of cameras and people around her before.
“So, we had to be really careful about how we did those things. But I have to say it was a really wonderful and beautiful experience from start to finish.
Brenda Amaklak Putulik also starts in the film as Marguerite’s mother, Kumaa’naaq, and Lindsay Robinson turns in a suitably imposing performance as Ray, the Mountie police officer with whom the mother and daughter live. Katrina Beatty co-produced the film with McIntyre.
