Our Maternal Home

At the suggestion of her inquisitive teen, filmmaker and educator Janine Windolph ventures from Saskatchewan to Quebec with her two children and younger sister, tracing their familial origins to the Cree First Nation of Waswanipi. For the young adults, Corwyn and Dawlari, meeting their distant relatives and great-auntie Irene for the first time is a momentous occasion.

Illuminating heavy and heartening historical ties, against the scenic backdrop of Waswanipi’s natural beauty, their Elders offer newfound interdependence and hands-on learning, transforming this humble visit into a sensory-filled expression of reclamation and resilience. As the family embraces time-honoured ways of seeing the land, chooses to hear and sit with stories of the past, and gathers to prepare and share a meal together, their individual perspectives mesh to forge a path of deep and necessary truth telling.

Our Maternal Home lovingly establishes a heart-centred form of resistance to confront and heal from the impacts of cultural disconnection, making space for what comes next. In her latest offering Windolph once again cultivates sacred connections, just as she did in her 2019 short documentary, Stories Are in Our Bones, when she took Corwyn and Dawlari fishing with their kokum (grandmother) in northern Treaty 6 territory. These films speak to each other as story bundles, building upon a foundation of Traditional Teachings and rediscovery. Windolph’s works invite a holistic understanding of lineage and Ancestral knowledge, blended between worlds and across generations, like medicine bound by the sinew of kinship.