Animation Artists Darcy Tara McDiarmid and Chantal Rousseau on Indigenous Ancestry, Nature in the Yukon, and Captivating the Essence of Dreams Through Artwork
Artwork by Darcy Tara McDiarmid
A S THE LIGHTS subdue, the large widescreen casts a luminous glow throughout the cinema. Speckles of glowing green orbs engulf the screen. Five salmon flex their bodies in a side-to-side rhythmic motion, swimming across the night sky of the Yukon. Intense hues of pink, red, and yellow radiate from their non-human forms as they transition to the spirit world. A natural soundscape floods throughout the audience, intensifying the synergy of animation and storytelling.
This was my first time attending the imagineNATIVE film festival, and I must say, the atmosphere was much different than any other theatre. Held at the TIFF Bell Lightbox—this film and cultural centre in the heart of downtown Toronto is the world’s largest presenter of Indigenous screen content. There is truly something special about animations that have been made to tell a story, ones that offer cultural exchange and knowledge for the audience.
I have roots in Algonquin ancestry, where I’ll admit my familiarity with the culture is limited. Knowing that my grandfather holds records to my family pedigree chart, I knew that I needed to learn more about my lineage prior to its complete disappearance. I had to start educating myself on the sacred knowledge of diverse Indigenous cultures. So, I brought it upon myself to take a course on Indigenous Media where I was instructed to attend the 2023 imagineNATIVE film festival.
Out of the many films presented at this festival, I am extremely moved by the short program, For the Grandbabies, which introduces various stories that offer insight into standing up for the earth and reconnecting with the past and present. A short animation that tells the sacred stories of Indigenous ancestral wisdom, Starlight Sojourn uses watercolour paintings to exhibit animals migrating under starlight. This animation is just shy of four minutes long, yet it has a lot to say. So, I contacted the artists of this short film to unravel the messages it conveys.
Darcy Tara McDiarmid is just one of the creators behind this animation. She is a Han and Northern Tutchone artist from the Crow clan. Drawing inspiration from nature, McDiarmid aspires to capture the beauty of our natural world. To honour her ancestors, she devotes her art to heritage, culture, and the reclamation of traditional practices. McDiarmid is a painter, carver, willow basket weaver, and storyteller.
Chantal Rousseau is the collaborative partner for Starlight Sojourn. She is a painter, animator, and sound installation artist. Rousseau is a queer settler artist from French Canadian and Ukrainian ancestry who is curious about the connection between humans and non-humans, species diversity, conservation initiatives, and exploring her relationship with nature.
The two met in the fall of 2022 in Dawson City at the Macaulay House where they were both attending an artist residency run by the Klondike Institute of Art and Culture. Their instant connection inspired them to work together to share their love of conserving the natural world. A partnership of talents, knowledge, and skills have allowed them to bring projects like Starlight Sojourn to life. This collaboration happened in an organic and spontaneous fashion where Rousseau’s experience with animating images of nature inspired McDiarmid to see her own work come to life.
McDiarmid speaks on behalf of the inspiration for the project: “I was listening to traditional knowledge on how animals migrate under starlight, and this inspired a series of paintings on starlight and moonlight travel. I shared a dream I had about wolves floating down one of our landmarks in the form of mist—Creator travels in the form of mist…I believe that dreams are a way of bringing forward ancestral wisdom," she says.
“The Yukon’s nighttime landscape ties in with some of our long-ago creation stories,” continues McDiarmid, “these stories are sacred and are our wealth. The stories are a way of our ancestors sending forth mysterious spiritual knowledge.”
“As Darcy mentioned, one of the other themes of the animation was based on night-time migration of birds, fish and animals,” adds Rousseau.
Diligent brushstrokes of blues, purples, and greys blend to evoke the presence of the wolf; natural shades of browns and oranges harmonize to form the majestic figure of a fox. Both creators comment on the artistic mediums used in the film:
Rousseau says that “the animation is in part created by using elements of Darcy’s fluid acrylic paintings on birch. I isolate elements from these paintings to work with and combine them with additional imagery to make new backgrounds and contexts for the animation. I also used some imagery that I had painted in watercolour—specifically the fox and owl that meet in the forest. These paintings are part of what inspires the storytelling.”
“I also think that using fluid acrylic on birch provides a dreamlike quality to the paintings, because of the way the paint flows over the wood grain. It creates some specialized effects that look mystical and ethereal,” McDiarmid adds.
T HE BOOK PUBLISHED in 2022 titled Braided Learning: Illuminating Indigenous Presence Through Art and Story by Susan Dion expresses the importance of learning from contemporary Indigenous artists. She explains how interacting with cultural work opens up the possibility for thoughtful and emotion-based learning. Dion reflects on Indigenous art as a strong component in the social-political realities and lived experiences of Indigenous peoples.
“It is about looking back,” Dion writes. “Not returning to the past but rather recreating and living our interpretations of the teachings in support of a new emergence.” She also mentions that this ancestral knowledge is not easily recovered—it’s built over family relationships, through community Elders, from oral and written documentation, and is learned through participation in traditional practices.
Starlight Sojourn features local fish, birds, and animals to tell a story that offers tribute to the creators’ ancestral heritage. McDiarmid comments on the significance of these specific animals in the short film. “Salmon are a very sacred animal for our Han people, and they are considered our very close animal relatives. They are very resilient, and it is their deep instinct to return to our home territory. I heard from an elder that they too migrate under the starlight. We want our salmon to come home, and we need to continue to respect them for them to be able to return to abundance. Wolves are one of our main clans in the Yukon…one of the main inspirations for this film was a dream I had about a wolf floating down the side of our sacred mountain in the form of mist. Owls are considered messengers for our people. They are also guardians of trails, and they could pass along not only knowledge of what’s happening on the land, but also warnings or welcomes about which path to take,” she says.
When asked about any difficulties involved in the collaborative process of the film, Rousseau mentions that the only challenge for her was time. “This is the most amazing collaboration I have ever had. It is such an easy process to work with Darcy. I am honoured by the artistic freedom she allows me in working with her paintings and ideas…I am still amazed every time that I watch Starlight Sojourn that this is something that we made. I find that working in collaboration with Darcy elevates my practice to something that I wouldn’t be able to achieve on my own,” she comments.
Dion writes in her book that art has been interlaced through every facet of traditional Indigenous life. She notes that Indigenous arts today occupy a complete range of practices such as sacred and ceremonial, community-based, amateur and professional, as well as traditional and contemporary. Art has been and always will be a part of life.
Animation is one of these practices. Rousseau mentions that “it was important for us to create a natural soundscape to add to the mood and to ground the images. The salmon are important and majestic, so I was able to find a booming noise to signify their dignity when they swim across the night sky…most of the audio clips are sourced and then mixed together, and I played with volume to enhance some of the narrative moments such as when the wolf runs down the mountain.”
Being able to watch this short film was truly a gift. In her book, Dion writes that people often ask her why having a “status” and a status card even matters. She writes that people wonder why anyone would even need a card to prove that they are Indigenous, to which she states that “I do not need the card to know my Indigenous identity. I do need a card documenting my status number to access my treaty rights.”
I have Indigenous blood, and my status card proves that despite the dwindling of my ancestors’ lineage, it’s my responsibility to uncover the knowledge of their culture by learning from those who continue to tell the stories of their people.
McDiarmid and Rousseau are in the process of developing three more collaborative projects. All of them target traditional knowledge, heritage, and conservation. Specifically, they will be focusing on species that are all around them in the Yukon.
Rousseau believes that it’s important that people become inspired by their animation. “I hope that audiences will feel inspired to learn more about conservation efforts in their territories,” she says, “and that more of us will return to long ago ways of respecting and protecting our animal relatives.”