Trailer for Darlene and Truckhouse (2023), a short documentary about a Mi’kmaw grassroots grandmother’s relationship to frontlines activism and the healing she has found through it.
This film was co-produced with Ry Pembroke.
Hope Moon, a 20-year-old university student, walks across the Grand Parade in Halifax, Nova Scotia to get ready for her speech at her local climate strike rally on September 27, 2019.
Young girl holds a sign and waits for her local climate strike march to begin in Victoria Park, Halifax on September 27, 2019.
Protestors hold up five fingers at a rally in Hong Kong in the summer of 2019, signalling their five demands: 1) full withdrawal of the extradition bill, 2) a commission of inquiry into police brutality, 3) a retraction of the the classification of protesters as “rioters,” 4) amnesty for arrested protesters, and 5) dual universal suffrage, namely for both the Legislative Council and the Chief Executive.
Youth are seen visiting and leaving flowers by the eight-metre tall Pillar of Shame at Hong Kong University on June 4, 2019, a monument symbolizing the lives lost in Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989. The statue was removed from the campus on 23 December, 2021.
Darlene, 2019
“You’re sitting up there and you’re protected. We’re not protected. You’re not protecting us. You’re not protecting our waterways. Mother Earth doesn’t have a voice. The water doesn’t have a voice. That’s why I stand here. That’s why my women are sitting on the river and stopping your Alton Gas.”
Darlene Gilbert, Mi’kmaw grandmother and water protector, confronts Justin Trudeau about the federal government’s inaction towards the halting of the Alton Gas project on March 28, 2019 outside Northwood Terrace — a retirement home situated in the north end of Halifax, where the prime minister held a public event and spoke to local elders about healthcare. Trudeau opened the event by stating that he was going to reconcile his relationship with Indigenous people.
Security specifically did not allow Gilbert, an Indigenous elder, inside the space. When the event wrapped up an hour later, Trudeau came outside to speak with Gilbert alongside the five university students who were standing in solidarity with her and the Stop Alton Gas resistance movement. With cameras pointed at him from all sides, Trudeau responded to Gilbert: “We’re going to work with local communities. We’re going to work with local chiefs. We’re going to work with the provincial government. We’re going to move forward. We’re going to work with the grandmothers. We’re going to work with the community.”
For 3 years now, Mi’kmaq water protectors have been asserting their rights under the Peace and Friendship treaties by occupying the Treaty Truck House that they had built on the Shubenacadie River, effectively preventing Alton Gas from breaking provincial, federal, and treaty laws. The government continues to ignore these acts of resistance, allowing the company to proceed with the building of its worksite.
Settlers are responsible for reading up on Alton Gas on stopaltongas.wordpress.com and donating to the Treaty Truckhouse legal fund if possible.
Groups of people stand in solidarity with the Muslim community to condemn the Christchurch mosque shootings at a vigil organized by Masuma Asad Khan at the Halifax Grand Parade on March 16, 2019.