Join us for a screening of Shelley Niro’s film, Honey Moccasin!

We’re rolling out the red carpet to celebrate RBC Artist in Residence Melissa General’s residency and the Shelley Niro: 500 Year Itch exhibition. Stick around for a Q&A session with Shelley and Melissa following the screening!

The first of its kind in Canada made by an Indigenous 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 Zachery John (Billy 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 re-appropriation 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.

Artist Bio:
Shelley Niro is a Bay of Quinte Mohawk, member of the Six Nations of the Grand River, turtle clan.

Niro attended a graphic arts course for a while at Durham College in Oshawa, concentrating on photography, drawing and art history. Years later Niro went to Ontario College of Art in Toronto. She graduated with Honours. In 2019 she was honoured with an honorary doctorate from the Ontario College of Arts and Design University.

Shelley was the inaugural recipient of the Aboriginal Arts Award presented through the Ontario Arts Council in 2012. In 2017 Niro received the Governor General’s Award For The Arts from Canada Council, the Scotiabank Photography Award and the Hnatsyshyn Foundation Reveal Award. She became an honorary elder in the Indigenous Curatorial Collective. In 2019 Niro was the Laureate of the Paul de Hueck and Norman Walford Career Achievement Award for Photography.

Niro has recently completed film production on a film, CAFE DAUGHTER. Niro’s film work has received support from Telefilm Canada, the Indigenous Screen Office, Ontario Creates and The Northern Ontario Film Office.