“In many of my works, I feel there is a level of performance. Each photograph is like a “still” within a larger story. After coming into possession of my great-grandmother’s diary, for example, I began to consider film as a medium to bring together fragments. These fragments are not the entire story, but they are part of my journey of piecing together their stories....
... nipēhtēnān kiteh | We Can Hear Your Heartbeat was inspired by the train that no longer runs near the Rez. Objects, photographs, and stories belonging to my grandmothers speak of their connection to the train. For example, a government-issued travel card belonged to my Grandma Lena. The travel card gave “Indians” the right to ride on the train at a reduced price. In another story, Grandma Lena tells of her family travelling to Biggar (Sask.) in 1939 to see the cross-Canada tour of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth on their royal train. The trip to see this spectacle was by horse and wagon, which lasted about 12 hours. While waiting around, Grandma Lena and her brothers and sisters would put pennies on the tracks to flatten them. In another photograph I found of my great-Grandmother Bella, she was a young girl who was enrolled at the Battleford Industrial School. It shows her sitting among several male train workers along with Industrial school teachers and classmates...
... All these connections to trains are filled with positive and negative stories. Trains were a powerful symbol of unity for an interconnected society across North America, but they also led to irreparable damage to the environment and greatly impacted other minority groups in the construction process and the autonomy of Indigenous nations. Trains threatened communities as settlement expanded into territories inhabited by Indigenous peoples. You will see in the film I retrace their journeys along paths to discover their memories, though the tracks have now been reclaimed by the natural world." - Meryl McMaster, interview by AGO Insider, discussing the exhibition Bloodline at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, published March 22, 2023. Accessed at https://ago.ca/agoinsider/meryl-mcmaster-her-new-work-and-solo-exhibition.