Sienna Belanger in a scene from the documentary "Horse Woman sn?klca??sqáx?a? tklmílx?" filmed in the North Okanagan.

Image Credit: YOUTUBE

A North Okanagan mother and daughter are celebrating the release of their documentary about the need for resilience, familial and cultural ties, and a connection to the land.

Mariel Belanger and her daughter Sienna Belanger from the Okanagan Indian Band were awarded $20,000 from Telus Storyhive, a program that supports content creators in B.C. and Alberta.

Horse Woman sn?klca??sqáx?a? tklmílx? is a 32-minute short film documentary that explores explores the importance of the land they live on in relation to their Syilx culture.

The doc dives into their lives as they navigate what used to be a rocky, intergenerational trauma-filled relationship while surviving the 2022 White Rock Lake wildfire. The pair was living together at the time, but their lives couldn’t have been more separate.

Sienna was disconnected from her mother and starting down a bad path, due to relationships she made with her peers and only truly felt herself when she was with the free-spirited horses.

During the wildfire, Sienna was watching over wild horses on their land and as the skies darkened and pieces of ash floated down, she noticed the horses coughing and becoming uncomfortable with their living conditions. She felt she needed to wrangle up the wild horses, leave their land and escape.

“I was outside a lot so I could see the impacts of the fire and how close it was getting,” Sienna said. “(Mariel and her mother) weren't believing me. I was getting really anxious because my horses were starting to get affected by the smoke... this giant pillar of smoke just kept getting closer and closer.”

Sienna did what she felt was right and left her home with the wild horses while Mariel stayed behind. As the fire grew and the sky turned into a black mass, Mariel realized she was wrong.

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The turning point for mother and daughter gave them a new perspective on their relationship and Sienna's relationship with the horses. She didn't save the horses they horses saved her by reconnecting her with her Indigenous culture.

The documentary ends with the two working together to make their land prosperous, to tie themselves back to their ancestral roots and to keep their cultural history which in turn leads them to prosperity.

“It's about the land just as much as it is about us,” Mariel said. “It's about our healing after all of the intergenerational trauma, and the effects of colonization that are still being felt today and the healing that we've done to navigate this.”

The Syilx language Nsyilxc?n is written and used as a tool throughout the film to show the important relation between Syilx culture and the land. Many of the Nsyilxc?n words used translate only to full phrases in the English language. The representation of both languages side by side is meant to show how full, rich and connected Syilx culture is to the land.

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