Indigenous Film Festival
Film Title: The Shirt
Director: Shelley Niro
Length: 5 minutes



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Click to download a printable Shelley Niro Bio.

Description

A work depicting a cool and tough-looking Indian woman who faces the camera directly. Poised against the landscape of "America," she wears an American flag bandanna on her head, dark aviator sunglasses, dungarees, and a white t-shirt. The t-shirt bears a different message in each frame, sequentially revealing a discourse on colonialism. Printed in bold black ink, the shirt first reads, "My ancestors were annihilated exterminated murdered and massacred." The narrative printed on the shirt continues in the following frames: "They were lied to cheated tricked and deceived," "Attempts were made to assimilate colonize enslave and displace them," and "And all I get is this shirt." By frame six, the Indian woman is stripped of her accessories and left topless, exposed to the elements. This brutal, truthful message speaks of a history of invasion that indigenous people have experienced worldwide. Fulfilling the important matriarchal role, Niro declares that the consequences of colonialism are still with us - an essential reminder in a time of globalization when the experience of the "other" tends to be forgotten. In the seventh frame, the Indian woman is gone, replaced by an all-American white woman wearing the shirt, taken right off the other woman's back. The last two images focus on the land, a reminder of the sacred realm that continues to be eroded by global and colonial actions. The Shirt is a souvenir, a memory and legacy of the effects of an intrusion felt by indigenous people and their homelands. It is worn by many.

Biography on Shelly Niro

Niro is a filmmaker, painter, photographer and writer who has exhibited her work in Canada and the United States. born in Niagara Falls, New York, Shelley Niro is a member of the Mohawk Nation, Iroquois Confederacy, Turtle Clan, Six Nations Reserve.

in 1992 Niro co-produced, along with Anna Gronau, "It Starts With A Whisper", a short bestowing several awards. In conjunction with her visual arts awards, Niro was a fellow at the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institute (1997) and was acclaimed by the the New York State Historical Association for her exhibit, "Where We Stand", contemporary haudenosaunee artists.

Recently completing a Masters of Fine Art at the University of Western Ontario, Niro's thesis contended with the re-discovery and re-addressing of basic myths, legends and history of the Iroquois people. Her research resulted in an intensive study of the diaspora of the Mohawk nation. Teacher, photographer, painter, and filmmaker Shelley Niro trained in Durham College's Graphics Programme in Oshawa, Ontario (1978) and at the Ontario College of Art in Toronto. Her work is consistently innovative, both in terms of its use of the photographic medium (hand-tinting, matte boards, and diptychs or triptychs) and its critical re-presentation of stereotypical images of First Nations people in general, and women in particular. Frequently utilizing strategies of masquerade, parody and appropriation, with herself or family members and friends as models, Niro's work is significant for its subversion and re-creation of new identities and images in counterpoint to the long and damaging history of white representation of Native peoples.

Niro continues to serve on juries, panels, and committees.

Film Credits

Director - Shelley Niro
Producers - Shelley Niro