Kaniehtiio Horn is an actor-writer-director known for Reservation Dogs, The Lowdown, Mohawk, and more. In the piece below, she details the making of her feature film directorial debut, Seeds, which is in theaters today from Indican Pictures.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve seen a lot of Indigenous filmmakers explore healing through their work, but I find myself exploring rage. I\u2019m from Kahnawake, near Montreal, where my people, the Kanienkehaka, have fought colonialism for 500 years. During a well-known stand-off in 1990, my family was protesting plans to expand a golf course onto Native land when my sister, then 14, was bayoneted in the chest by a Canadian soldier, while protecting me. I was four.<\/p>\n
As a mixed race, white-passing Kanienkehaka woman, I never believed I would be cast to play an Indigenous person. Growing up, I was disillusioned: I never saw any Indigenous people on screen who didn\u2019t have two braids and a heavy broken accent, either drunk or mystical. Here I was, blue-eyed and light-skinned, so I figured I better focus on being the best performer possible and building a diverse resume.<\/p>\n
Related Headlines<\/strong><\/p>\n I knew I wanted to make my own things eventually. I had dabbled in filmmaking when I made my 2012 short \u201cThe Smoke Shack,\u201d with Big Soul Productions, about my time working in a cigarette store on Kahnawake. Then I auditioned for the late Jeff Barnaby\u2019s short film called \u201cThe Colony,\u201d which was looking for a dark-skinned, curvy Native woman.<\/p>\n I went in extremely prepared, and knocked the scene out of the park. He cast me, and being young and insecure about my identity, I asked if he wanted me to darken my red hair \u2014 \u201cyou know, to \u2018look more native.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n He said, \u201cIf anything, dye it even more red. You\u2019re a fuckin\u2019 Indian and that\u2019s it.\u201d<\/p>\n That was my first taste of a Native person being at the helm of a project and making the decisions. Real recognizing real. Fuck yeah. It also lit a fire in me to make my own projects.<\/p>\n I remember the day things changed. I was smoking a cigarette with some crew while filming Ted Geoghegan\u2019s 2017 film Mohawk. It was a particularly grueling shoot all over the woods in upper New York state. I thought, I just want to make a film with friends in one location, do some stunts and practical FX, kill people, and have some damn fun. Inspired by Home Alone, Shaun of the Dead and the Canadian classic Clearcut, I wanted to make the kind of fun ride I saw as a teenager, for this generation. I craved seeing a smart, relatable, kick-ass Indigenous female lead who I could cheer on, and a soundtrack I could rock out to.<\/p>\n Main image: Seeds writer, director and star Kaniehtiio Horn. Courtesy of Indican Pictures.<\/p>\n The pandemic gave me time to think, and put my thoughts into a script that became Seeds. I developed the story and found the tone, then showed it to executives, taking in their feedback.<\/p>\n A producer, Leonard Farlinger, liked the idea of a story about a Native woman returning to her roots and finding out that the company she works for is taking advantage of her people, again. We took an early draft to the Frontieres film market in Montreal, as part of the Fantasia Film Festival, and met with executives, financiers and producers who weighed in on the script. We worked on it and took it to Canada\u2019s Indigenous Screen Office, which became our first investor. The fact that I was Native was a positive in a time when the world was finally recognizing who we are as a culture.<\/p>\n I drew on some of my own lived experiences of leaving and returning to the rez, and the idea of figuring out what it means to be an Indigenous person in this day and age, but remaining tied to our past and to the land we were put here to care for.<\/p>\n I wanted to make an Indigenous film that relates to everyone. Having the antagonist go after money seemed like a clich\u00e9 to me, and I wanted something that was precious to my people in particular. That\u2019s how I landed on the Three Sisters \u2014 corn, beans, and squash. They are seeds, or sustenance. The company in the film tries to control these seeds, and the metaphor just made sense. I never intended to write an anti-colonial, genre-bending, food sustainability film. I just followed my creative instincts and where they led me organically.<\/p>\n \nKaniehtiio Horn on the Bringing Seeds to the Screen<\/h2>\n
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