Indigenous Media Research: Interview with Director Sage Daniels & My Necktie Photography Series

In 2018, Sage’s short-documentary My Boy entered into my life at the ImagineNative Film Festival and has had a profound impact on me from the moment I watched it. His main intention as an artist was to tell his Aunt Lydia’s story of her son Colten’s disappearance the way she wanted it to be told and he delivered a moving final product. His main concerns were maintaining professionalism when dealing with the extremely personal, emotional content in his film, editing the film so it could portray Colten in an accurate, respectful manner, and staying true to authentic Indigenous storytelling methods within his work.

My Boy has positively impacted the Long Plains First Nation community, because the film came together after the efforts of people raising money to fund the production costs. Code Breaker Films made an effort to bring their works home, participating in a local Indigenous Filmmakers’ Showcase. This was relevant to me as a creator, and made me think about how I can incorporate community engagement into my artistic endeavours. Multiple of my burning questions from the course regarding representation, Native Cinema, and two-spirit aesthetics were addressed in my interviews with Sage (Linked below) and related to Sage’s work.

Link to slideshow presentation and Neck Tie Photography Series I developed: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1etEdSy3vkEzkjYyPgVXxCVvHS93P82XHmfYFhsJrGBI/edit?usp=sharing

Link to the full written report:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1iLP0k-f8Oq2mIFRDjBlGcgQLsW-_AnTQ/view?usp=sharing

November 6th, 2018 marked the four year anniversary of Colten Pratt’s disappearance (Caruk). My Boy, co-written and directed by Sage, and produced by Sonya Ballantyne, Luther Alexander, and Sage’s production company Code Breaker Films, is a twenty-five minute short documentary. It depicts Colten’s life and disappearance, as well as educates audiences on the epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous men and boys (“Film Catalogue: My Boy.”). The film is narrated by Colten’s mother, Lydia Daniels, who takes audience on an emotional journey to convey “a loving portrait of a courageous man whose puzzling and heartbreaking disappearance remains unresolved” (“2018: My Boy.”).

The short documentary is an intimate combination of home videos from Colten’s youth, authentic social media content from Colten’s Snapchat, and a personal narrative from his mother Lydia, whose raw plead to bring her son home leaves the audience filled with empathy and sorrow. My Boy incorporates a call to action through Lydia’s necktie campaign to spread awareness about the alarming rate of Indigenous men disappearing (My Boy). Sage explained that “for Lydia anyway, she intended it to be a symbolic message of the ties that bind us” (Sage). Every year since the disappearance, the family, including film director Sage, have tied ties around Winnipeg on November 6th (Sage).

The Necktie Photography Series:

As a gift back to Sage for agreeing to work with me for this project, I wanted to create a photography series to raise awareness for Lydia's necktie campaign. I took black and white images of a bright red tie hung around different locations throughout the Greater Toronto Area where I live. The red tie drew inspiration from the Red Dress project that collected red dresses and displayed them across Canada as an aesthetic response and reminder to the missing and murdered Indigenous women in Canada. I chose to make this series 13 photos as a representation of the Ojibwe 13 Moon Lunar Cycle.

To see the full photo series and more on my interview with Sage, please find the Google Slides link at the top of this post.

Here are some samples of my pictures: