2021-07-16

The 31st First Peoples' Festival will be held from August 3 to 11

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The 31st First Peoples' Festival will be held from August 3 to 11

Montreal, July 14, 2021 – The International First Peoples' Festival 2021 unveiled today the main  elements of its program and proposes an exploration of risky areas, where the buried traces of  an immemorial past are not yet erased and where the artists boldly highlight, in the fog of the  present, the paths of a luminous future. Healer and warrior, memory of the past and harbinger  of new times, Native art stands proudly in the city. 

In 2021, are showcased:  

  • 5 memorable evenings on the Quebecor stage of the Place des Festivals, decked out in  the colors of the First Nations.  
  • More than 60 films in competition for the coveted Mattiusi awards. 
  • Exhibitions at the Guild, the Quai des brumes and on Ste-Catherine Street. 

Samian wears the Algonquin language as a banner (concert / launch of his new album) on August  6th. Friendship, solidarity, cultural cooperation with Laura Niquay, QO52, and Anachnid will be on  stage with Forestare and the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne on August 4th, followed by the duo Twin  Flames on August 5th. These concerts will be held at 8:00 PM on the Place des Festivals. 

Living territories are evoked by Innu artist Sonia Robertson and her installation Le sang de la Mère  Terre (exhibition at the Guild starting August 2nd) and by Atikamekw playwright Véronique Hébert,  in a poetic-theatrical performance Là d'où vient notre sang (August 8th and 9th, Quebecor stage) 

Resistance and resilience, the work of memory and the updating of belonging, the cinema shows the strength of the links between the Aboriginal people and their territory. In A Febre, a  longshoreman thinks about his lost country in Manaus; in Out of State, Polynesians incarcerated  in the United States rediscover their culture as a salvation while serving their sentence; in A ultima floresta, the Yanomamis defend the forest. In Anerka, as in Habitat, the native traditions of  Europe are maintained in unexpected ways. Humor in Rodrick Pocowatchit's The Incredible NDN,  transmission in Lisa Koperqualuk's Ataatasiak, the symbolic journey of ancestral paths in Roxanne  Whitebean's Haudenosaunee Canoe Journey, are all ways of keeping identity alive. 

On Ste-Catherine Street, on giant panels, passers-by will be able to discover the illustrations that  Eruoma Awashish has done for a book that looks at the UN Declaration on the Rights of  Indigenous Peoples. The publication will be officially launched on August 9th, International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples. In addition, the artists who created L'enclos de Wabush, a play by Louis-Karl Sioui that was webcast in June, will participate in a screening followed by a meeting with the public. 

As of July 21st, the full program and online tickets (including those for free outdoor shows; due to the pandemic) will be available on the PresenceAutochtone.ca website.

 

https://www.facebook.com/presenceautochtoneMTL 

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