Honey Moccasin

Directed by Shelley Niro

Canada, 1998 (experimental / fiction, 47 minutes, colour)

Image: © Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre

Film Description:
"The first of its kind in Canada made by an Aboriginal filmmaker, Honey Moccasin is set on the fictional Grand Pine Indian Reservation (aka 'Reservation X') and employs a hybrid pastiche of styles that depicts the rivalry between two bars, the Smoking Moccasin and the Inukshuk Cafe, the tale of closeted drag queen/powwow clothing thief Zachary John (Illy Merasty), and the travails of the crusading investigator/storyteller Honey Moccasin (Tantoo Cardinal). An irreverent parody of familiar narrative strategies, Honey Moccasin forges an oppositional aesthetic via its reappropriation of the conventions of melodrama, performance art, cable access, and a 'whodunit' style to investigate notions of authenticity, cultural identity, gender roles, and the articulation of contemporary native North American experiences."
-- Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre (source)

(sources)

Quote by the Director

"The target audience for Honey Moccasin is First Nations, Natives, and Indians. I want them to relate to the situations in this film without trying to find a way in. They're in as soon as the film starts."
-- Shelley Niro (source)

Quotes about Honey Moccasin

"In contrast to [Alanis] Obomsawin and [Duke] Redbird, Shelley Niro's film Honey Mocassin (1998) constitutes oppositional looking or counter-cinema to white cinematic representations of the Aboriginal Other by, for the most part, refusing to look back, by refusing to acknowledge the white colonial gaze."
-- Christopher E. Gittings (source)

"Honey Moccasin imagines a contemporary reserve where someone has stolen every dance outfit, feather, shawl, and piece of decorative beadwork in the entire community. [...] Who would do this, and why? And how would people respond to such a theft? In [Shelley] Niro's world, they are challenged to find new ways to define what it means to be Indian, and they respond with daring and imagination and creativity."
-- Paul Chaat Smith (source)

Bibliography for Honey Moccasin

Book Chapters

Smith, Paul Chaat. "Shelley Niro: Honey Moccasin: Home Alone." In Reservation X: The Power of Place in Aboriginal Contemporary Art, edited by Gerald R. McMaster, 107-119. Fredericton, N.B.: Goose Lane, 1998.

Brief Sections of Books

Gittings, Christopher E. Canadian National Cinema: Ideology, Difference and Representation. London: Routledge, 2002. (pp. 226-230)