Across Turtle Island and beyond, Indigenous dancers are fighting to occupy dance spaces and venues that excluded their ancestors. Margaret Grenier grew up immersed in the traditions of her Gitxsan and Cree ancestry, traditions that are only around today because her parents and grandparents fought to keep them alive.
During the ban, Grenier's grandmother hid the family's regalia within the walls of her home to protect and maintain them. Once the ban ended in 1951, Grenier's mother and father worked to revitalize traditional dance. "It has been the women in our family that have carried forward the work," Grenier said. "And I think that it's something that we want to be able to leave to our daughters and we want to be able to do it in a way that they can bring their voice to the stories that are going to come.", celebrates the legacy of her late mother Margerat Harris who Grenier says is the reason Gitxsan people "even have song and dance today.
"I graduated from the École de danse Contemporaine de Montréal in 2014," Aubin-Malo said. "After that, I really wanted to focus on my Indigenous identity. And I was like: 'It's through dance, but how can I start that?'"Aubin-Malo eventually attended the Canada Dance Festival in Ottawa and met James Jones, also known as Notorious Cree on TikTok, who encouraged her to travel to Vancouver and learn more about pow wow dance.
That's when Aubin-Malo decided to take matters into her own hands. In 2021, she started a collective with two others where they hosted 30 Indigenous-only workshops over three years at the Place des Arts in Montreal. Aubin-Malo says this was intentional so that each Indigenous dancer would feel comfortable in the space.
As Sara pushed for more answers, she discovered that her people did not dance in the traditional sense of the word. When they would— a form of singing in Sámi culture — they would sway, adjust the belts on their girdles and do other natural movements.
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