By Fred Alvarado
(Fred Alvarado is a community journalist with the Focus Media Arts Centre).

Recently, Native Earth Performing Arts celebrated its 35th edition of Weesageechak Begins to Dance with vibrant, new indigenous theater, dance and multi-disciplinary creations. This year’s festival gathered over 15 artists from across Turtle Island to develop and showcase contemporary Indigenous performances at the Aki Studio located at 585 Dundas St East in Regent Park. The event had conversations about artistic process, excerpts from new work in development, musical performances by Lacey Hill and Rebecca Hope, a mini pop-up market, and more.

RPTV Reporters Jabin Haque and Victoria Nanneti were at the festival to interview Himanshu Sitlani, Managing Director at Native Earth Performing Arts to know more about this year’s festival and the importance of this event to the Regent Park Community.

“There’s a lot to look forward at the festival — there’s a dance piece, there’s a burlesque piece, there is live music. I think it is important for the community with all the changes that are going around; indigenous stories are something it needs to be said and there is no better place than to share it with the Regent Park Community,” Himanishu Sitlani says.

At the Weesageechak Festival, Jeanette Kotowich, a multidisciplinary creator and dancer of Nêhiyaw Métis and mixed-settler ancestry, presented “Kisiskâciwan,” her solo dance piece more than seven years in the making. An exploration of cultural identity and the idea of home, Kotowich explores memories of her childhood summers and evokes the fast-flowing prairie landscape of Saskatchewan, the traditional territory of her ancestors.

Being part of the development festival in Toronto, an event which she has participated in before, is also incredibly special for her, she said.

That the festival returning in-person and this 35th edition “showcases the artistic resiliency of Indigenous performing arts practices,” Kotowich said, “and the diverse voices that’s being shared among all the creators.”

Native Earth Performing Arts is marking a milestone anniversary this year as the organization celebrates 40 years of highlighting Indigenous stories told by Indigenous artists.