We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts under the granting of "Creating, Knowing and Sharing for Indigenous Peoples" for supporting Stardale Women's Group Inc. in the Ribbon Skirt Cultural Project.

We were all very thrilled and gratified and maybe even shocked to learn that our film The Road had won an award: Best Short Documentary Film at the Montreal Independent Film Festival. As the reality began to sink in, I think all of us must have offered some words of thanks to the Creator for such recognition.

On September 24, 2020, we will present the world premiere of the short film The Road. This presentation will be the culmination of about fifteen months of work for Helen McPhaden and I, going back to an initial brainstorming session at Caffé Beano in June of 2019.

As you may know by now, last summer Helen McPhaden and I got together and envisioned a new project for the Stardale girls to work on over the winter and then present in the spring. The theme of the piece was some kind of representation of the journey of adolescent girls and women as a response to the findings of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.

Hasn't it been an interesting year so far? I use the word "interesting" deliberately, thinking of the old (supposedly, but not) Chinese curse, "May you live in interesting times!" Wherever it comes from, it seems appropriate for the year 2020. These are interesting times, and sometimes I wonder whether we are really living or merely surviving.

Sometimes when bad things happen, we see only the immediate consequences. We realize we are going to have to change our plans and adapt to the new reality. We talk about making the best of a bad situation. We start again. What else can any of us do?

It hardly matters where you go these days or whom you talk to, the hot topic in the month of June is racism. In the United States, the murder of George Floyd seems finally to have unleashed a series of protests unlike anything seen in the USA since the 1960s. Where it will end, it is impossible to say, but surely all of us, whatever our skin colour or ethnicity, are hoping for some kind of meaningful and lasting change to come of his tragic death.

One thing we all are becoming used to throughout this pandemic is Zoom and other platforms like it. It's probably fair to say that most of us don't really love communicating this way, but it serves its purpose of keeping us all connected.

Had things unfolded according to plan, we would be preparing for a gala event on Thursday May 14, featuring the premiere of the performance piece The Road. No doubt this would have been a fantastic event; rehearsing, rewriting, finalizing costumes, taking care of a thousand little details - all part of mounting a live theatrical production.

Wasn't I surprised to learn from the Stardale website the other day that it's actually been seven years since I began working with Helen McPhaden and the Stardale girls? Seven years is a long time for anything these days!

How many times have we heard that this month? “In these changing times.” “In these difficult times.” “In these unpredictable times.”

It’s hard to fathom how drastically and dramatically our world has changed in the few weeks since I wrote my last post. The isolation, the fear, the uncertainty that many of us find ourselves living with now are hardly new phenomena for our First Nations girls.

We are sadly on hiatus with The Road project at Stardale. Like the rest of the world, we have been forced into “social isolation.”

Those who have been following these blog posts this year will be aware that I am working with the girls of the Stardale Women’s Group creating a performance piece based on the “Highway of Tears,” a response to the Final Report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, which is titled “Reclaiming Power and Place.”

Last week, Dr. Linda Many Guns and the good people from the National Centre for Collaboration for Indigenous Education descended upon us and instead of having our usual working session, we were treated to a feast.

Artistic creation is always an act of faith. Whether you're working alone as I usually do, or involved in collective creation like at Stardale, all you can do each time out is hope for the best and take what you are given. As with anything else some days are better than others.

The Stardale Women's Group began 2020 with a special expanded circle which welcomed several special guests including our elder, Wanda Fast Rider and special guest Dr. Linda Many Guns from the University of Lethbridge Indigenous Studies Department.

We are living in an interesting time, which as you may know is a curse in China, as when they say "May you live in interesting times." In many ways, the world seems out of joint. The economy is perilous in Alberta and beyond, the climate is both fragile and volatile, many of our leaders are reviled, not revered. And on it goes.

In generating a collective script for performance with the Stardale girls, perhaps the most delicate part is creating a comfortable and safe environment where they feel they can share their thoughts and stories.

Helen reminds me that our current work with the girls on The Road project is actually the fourth time we have all worked together: first, we created the full version of Committing, and then the scaled down version titled Committing to our Futures; finally, last year we created the Make Believer Project. And now, The Road.