S2E7: Sequoia Hauck (White Earth Anishinaabe, Hupa)

2023 Cultural Capital Fellow Sequoia Hauck (Anishinaabe), a queer, Native, two-spirit filmmaker with a deep love for Indigenous storytelling, strives to create stories by and for Native people. Sequoia shares details of their current film project, Never Turn Your Back to the Wave - the Travis Jordan Story - a poignant series touching on the tragic loss of loved ones due to police brutality in the Native community where Sequoia touches upon the tragedy of Travis Jordan's story while also primarily honoring and celebrating the departed. 

Chapters

• 0:02 Native Filmmaking and Community Stories
• 7:21 Celebrating Indigenous Artists and Culture Bearers

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

When I make films, I'm really passionate about sharing it to the community. First, Creating stories by Native folks for Native folks, and understanding that filmmaking is like a ceremony and it should be treated as such.

Speaker 2: 0:27

The Collectiv Spirit Podcast presents the Collective Spirit Podcast. The Collective Spirit moves each of us to stand up and make a difference, to pass on ancestral knowledge and simply extend a hand of generosity. The Collective Spirit Podcast features Native artists and culture bearers who discuss the power of Indigenous art and culture.

Speaker 1: 1:07

I'm a two-spirit queer filmmaker, performance artist, interdisciplinary artist. My family is from White Earth, nishinabe. As well as Hupa, I am currently residing in Manijaksa, minnesota, makoche what is now St Paul, Minnesota. I greeted you all as relatives and I'm very glad to be here today chatting. I got involved in filmmaking and the art ever since I was little. Theater is what pulled me into storytelling when I was very little and I feel like storytelling was always around me. My mother always shared stories about the stars and about plants and it wasn't until theater that I formally realized that there was other ways to do storytelling and what storytelling and art was. But it wasn't until a couple years ago that I got an opportunity to learn more about what filmmaking can be and what it is. There's an organization in St Paul called St Paul Neighborhood Network and they do training on cameras and documentary work and I started to formally learn about what filmmaking and storytelling like that can be.

Speaker 1: 2:32

I got an undergrad degree at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, minna Native Studies degree and I think that really helped formulate a lot of my work in community and a lot of my lens in my filmmaking. When I make films, I'm really passionate about sharing it to the community. First, creating stories by Native folks for Native folks, and understanding that filmmaking is like a ceremony and it should be treated as such, and I think a lot of those teachings from my teachers as well as elders during my school time really helped formulate how I wanted to interact with community, how I wanted to share stories and being able to also weave in other aspects of storytelling, such as music and theater, and I'm always really inclined to tell stories about water as well. As such an ancestor, being able to have teachings from water and from the plants as well as elders around us really has informed a lot of my work and also what I'm interested in telling stories about. The inspiration behind my work is about telling stories for community. I'm really passionate about going to community and asking what they want, what they're interested in and sharing. Especially with documentary filmmaking, I feel like it's really important to capture the stories that haven't been captured or the stories that people feel like they're not able to share.

Speaker 1: 4:07

Right now I'm working on a film called they Didn't Deserve to Die, which is a six-episode series about loved ones lost to police brutality in Native community. It felt like the right time to share that story and it felt like community was ready to share as well. A couple people in community here reached out to me and I traveled around Turtle Island capturing people's stories and found out that my own cousin was killed by the police. That was really when it became personal and realized that I was meant to tell this story, and so I got several fundings to go around and document people's stories, and the film is turning out to be more about the life that these people have lived in, honoring of life, celebrating of who they are, their likes, their dislikes, the things that the family can share about them, and less about the day they died.

Speaker 1: 5:06

I think there is so many challenges as an artist. I think of the fact that, being a queer, native, two-spirit filmmaker, there's not a lot of us around and so that lack of representation and finding place in space has always been tricky. I think financially, art is not as funded as it should be. I think the stories are there, the community is ready to share, but it's about finding the right way to do it as well finding a way that family and relatives and community feels like it should be, the right protocols, the right ways that stories should be shared, as well as finding the people to be involved, the right people, I feel like the biggest challenges are also finding avenue and spaces for these stories. The community wants to hear them.

Speaker 1: 6:10

With the help of First Peoples Fund, I've been able to bring this film to the families again first, before anyone else sees it. So far, I've been able to travel to Denver to visit Lynn Eaglefeather, paul Castaway's mother share his episode with her first, as well as to Hoopa Valley, where my family is from, and to Richie Estrada's episode with his mother and his sister, his twin sister, my cousin, as well as soon-to-be Travis Jordan's story here in Minneapolis. And then I'll soon go to Standing Rock for Ryan Gipp's story and for Billings Montana for Brave and Glent and Cole Stumpman's story, and so, with the help of First Peoples Fund, I was able to travel back and show it to these families first, who I thought was really important. I wanted the families to see what I've created, what they've helped make over the last almost three years of making this film, and so, then, the hope is that we'll have a more public screening so everyone is able to see it.

Speaker 1: 7:16

I feel so honored to have this fellowship with First People's Fund. I feel like the opportunity to uplift artists of all disciplines and all sort of art forms. Traditional art forms as well as contemporary art forms are all valued in the same way, and I think that's really something special that First People's Fund does is being able to highlight us as people, as Native people, as Indigenous people, doing the storytelling, doing the art that we have always done and will continue to do, but in ways that needs to be highlighted and shown and represented. It has been really lovely to be able to meet other artists of other disciplines across Turtle Island and be able to share knowledge, share friendship, share community with each other and learn from each other and be able to be in a space where we're celebrated.

Speaker 2: 8:22

The Collective Spirit podcast is produced by First People's Fund, whose mission is to honor and support Indigenous artists and culture bearers through grant-making initiatives, culturally rooted programming, and training and mentorship. Learn more at FirstPeople'sFundorg.