Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers sheds light on the opioid crisis in Kanai First Nation in new film
The NFB documentary Kímmapiiyipitssini: The Meaning of Empathy looks at efforts to practice harm reduction on the the country’s largest reserve
Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers wrote, directed, and co-produced Kímmapiiyipitssini: The Meaning of Empathy with the National Film Board of Canada.
NFB presents Kímmapiiyipitssini: The Meaning of Empathy, opening on November 5 at Vancity Theatre.
EVEN AS THE opioid crisis continues to grab headlines all across the country on a regular basis, the terrible effects of fentanyl are felt differently—more acutely—on the Blood Reserve, or Kainai First Nation. One of four nations within the Blackfoot Confederacy nestled in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains in present-day Alberta, Kainai is the largest reserve in the country. It also has one of the highest death rates associated with substance use in Canada.
Filmmaker Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers calls Kainai home. She wanted to turn the camera to the situation that affects every single resident there—only she set out to cover it in a way no one else has.
Kímmapiiyipitssini: The Meaning of Empathy is written and directed by Tailfeathers, who co-produced the documentary with Lori Lozinski (Seen Through Woman Productions) and the National Film Board of Canada. Tailfeathers shares stories of people who are connected to the opioid epidemic in Kanai, whether they use drugs, know someone who does, have lost someone to an overdose, or work to help people who need it.
“I started on working on this film 2016, and I thought it was so crucial to document all the community mobilization,” Tailfeathers says in a phone interview with Stir. “What I wasn’t seeing in the news media was coverage of all the community work that was happening. I was seeing a lot of tragedy and the trauma and the very sad stories, but I wasn’t seeing the other side of the coin, which is the community mobilization, the work, the people who are dedicating countless hours of time to fight to save lives. I felt it was really important to document that both for the community’s sake and for those who aren’t form Kanai to witness that.
“Secondly, I felt like I needed to honour the lives of people who’ve been lost to this crisis, to honour the grief and the love that the families feel for their loved ones,” she adds. “It’s one that has affected our family personally, and so I felt like I needed to honour these stories.”
Kainai is attempting to confront addiction in new ways for the community, using approaches rooted in harm reduction that have been proven successful in Vancouver; the film includes scenes shot in the Downtown Eastside.
Helping the Blood Reserve heal and get healthy is Esther Tailfeathers, a progressive and community-minded doctor who happens to the filmmaker’s mother. The matriarch explains in the film that the Blackfoot word Kímmapiiyipitssini means “giving kindness to each other”. Her practice is centred on compassion, and she says that this, more than anything, is what the people of her land need.
Tailfeathers notes that her mother was adamant that she would only participate in the film if she was not the main focus, considering herself just one of many people on the frontlines working for change. This helps explain why there are over 50 interview subjects on camera, from those who use substances to paramedics.
“I walked away with just a tremendous amount of respect and love for who she is and what she does,” Tailfeathers says of her mom. “What you see in the film is absolutely the way she is all the time in her work. She dedicates every part of herself to our community and to the betterment of our people and so it was just an honour to be able to watch her work.”
The film explores how, by starting from a place of empathy, treatment and recovery could be that much more achievable. But, as has been illustrated from coast to coast over many years, not everyone can accept harm reduction, no matter how much science backs it—most certainly not the Conservative government of Alberta.
“We have decades and decades and decades of shame and stigma around addiction, and it’s really hard to erase and demystify people’s attitudes towards addiction,” Tailfeathers says. “When we see films about addiction, it’s so often very heavy and sensationalized and exploitative. We see people using drugs…rather than really humanizing the people who choose to share their stories. I hope that the film instils hope and also a sense of dignity for the people who do use drugs and alcohol.”
Putting real faces to important stories is precisely what drew Tailfeathers to filmmaking in the first place. She spent a lot of time at the movies growing up; coming from a family that was not wealthy, she remembers going to matinees with her brother and trying to sneak into the film that was playing afterward.
“The movie theatre was really a place of refuge and inspiration,” says Tailfeathers, who has been inspired by Indigenous filmmakers before her inducing Tracey Deer and Lisa Jackson. “I was just so inspired by the capacity for change and the capacity to reach people on an emotional level through film. And I love the process of working so collaboratively. People who work in film are a wild bunch.
“I think this film offers the opportunity to humanize a story that can so often be diluted down to statics and numbers; you lose the human element, the empathy element, that way,” she says. “We’re getting into people’s real, everyday lives to give an opportunity for people outside the community to be able to witness the lived realities of human beings and of those fighting for change.”
For more information, see NFB.
Related Articles
