Woman Dress
In this video work, trans Plains-Cree and Scots filmmaker, TJ Cuthand, and her Auntie, Beth Cuthand, share one of their family’s oral stories about a Two Spirit person named Woman Dress. Since the Cree language in which the story was originally told does not have pronouns, Beth Cuthand alternates between he/him and she/her pronouns to refer to the story’s titular figure, who one day appears and begins to travel from camp to camp and tribe to tribe, telling stories. One day, the child, now a teenager, is gifted a dress that grows every time s/he tells a story. Cuthand’s work explores queer indigenous identity, voice, storytelling, mental illness, and neurodiversity. In an interview with programmer Nicole Gingras for the 39th Festival International du Film sur l’Art (FIFA), Cuthand states that, as her work has matured (and as larger budgets have necessitated more collaboration), she has grown “from speaking from one viewpoint to trying to think in a more community based way.” Woman Dress foregrounds its narrative as a communal one, while also conveying the obstacles to communal storytelling, such as the difficulties of translating a story from one language into another, and the reluctance of TJ’s grandfather to tell stories about Two Spirited people due to Christianity’s influence on his relationship to his culture. The story of Woman Dress has no ending, as it is still in progress. Beth Cuthand concludes the video by affirming that “as long as we tell the stories, they’ll live.”