City man creates doc on Indigenous music scene

By Alexandra Noad - Lethbridge Herald Local Journalism Initiative Reporter on December 12, 2024.

An Indigenous Lethbridge man has created a documentary on the Indigenous perspective on the music scene.
Jerry Morrison is the lead creative on the documentary Kitsi’nooki, which translates from Blackfoot to you see me.
The documentary was funded by Telus Storyhive Indigenous storytellers 2.0.
Music has been part of Morrison’s live for a long time. He began making music about 18 years ago and created a hip-hop band 10 years ago.
In the beginning of his music career Morrison performed out in Brocket says he has fond memories of being able to play in front of members of his community supporting him throughout the years.
“It was a huge privilege to perform in front of everybody from Elders to younger people to little kids who were in the crowd and to have everybody be so receptive in support of us,” said Morrison.
It was through this support which led Morrison to teach himself film and animation to help create music videos.
Morrison learned everything either on the internet or through others in the film community.
It was through these connections Morrison found himself working alongside other filmmakers on their Storyhive productions.
One of these connections was Demi Zaleskova, who ended up being Morrison’s productions director.
Morrison says he was working on Zaleskova’s documentary “The Art of Windy City” when Zaleskova saw Storyhive call out for Indigenous Stories 2.0 and encouraged him to apply for it.
Morrison added he was hesitant to apply as he wasn’t sure what he would do his documentary on, but Zaleskova encouraged him saying he would figure it out as he went along.
“I was like ‘I don’t know what I would make a documentary about’ and she was like ‘It’s OK, you can figure it out as you go,'” said Morrison
Through this encouragement, Morrison applied and was a suitable candidate for the grant.
Morrison quickly went to work and in his 20-minute supplementary program, which he did a radio interview with his friends Dai Hewison.
Hewison unfortunately passed away earlier this year and Morrison had already sent the final version of his documentary to Telus and wasn’t able to give a tribute to Hewison.
“I do want to just take the time to thank him and all our friends at CKXU for everthing they did and just to say how much an impact he made on our community,” said Morrison.
Morrison added Hewison was a big support to many people in the community, especially in the music scene, and provided them the time of day to be interviewed on his talk show.
Morrison says the documentary was also inspired by his late father, who passed away six years ago.
“It was a huge loss to my family. He was a huge supporter to everything we did and he was a source of community to all the young people in our neighborhood,” said Morrison.
Morrison added he knows his father would have been proud to see this documentary on Telus video on demand.
Once Morrison completed his supplementary program, he began working on the main documentary.
The documentary begins with a performance with Morrison, along with some other artists.
Throughout the course of making the documentary, Morrison worked closely with Piikani Secondary School to help the kids bring their projects to life, whether it be music videos, recording music and even silk screen printing on shirts.
Morrison says it was an eye-opening experience working with the students in Brocket.
“It really opened our eyes to how we came from a similar position, being young Indigenous creators here in the community and how we came together out of a need to create community, when it was taken from us,” said Morrison.
The documentary closes with a performance from the students, which was performed for their school.
Morrison hosted a screening of his documentary at the Brocket firehall and will host another screening for the students and staff at the Piikani schools.
Morrison also hopes to host a night at the Movie Mill where he will screen his documentary along with preview of a Storyhive docu-series he’s working on alongside Javier Escuella, called Silent suffering, about the mental health crisis and opioid epidemic for First Nation communities and some episodes of Sound Bites, another Storyhive series Morrison was involved with.
While Morrison may be in the postproduction phase of his documentary, he is keeping busy with projects both personal and collaborative.
“We’ve created a whole community of artists that work together and help each other’s productions,” said Morrison.
Morrison says his documentary was well received by his community.
“We got a great reception from everybody. We had people crying because it really touched them in a nice way and it resonated with people of all ages,” said Morrison.
Morrison hopes this documentary sparks desire to emerging artists to believe in themselves and believe they are worth the funding, the stage, the funding and their ideas matter.
“I just want everybody to be proud of their own work and to be proud of the people who are putting out art in the community and it’s important to show support for each other.
Kitsi’nooki can be found on Telus On Demand as well as on the Storyhive’s Youtube.

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