Wiikwemkoong youth hoop dancer takes home award for powerful music video

By Rick Garrick

TORONTO — Wiikwemkoong Unceded Territory hoop dancer Emilee Ann Pitawanakwat and musicians Andrea Ramolo and Kinnie Starr were recently recognized with the Canadian Independent Music Video Award in the folk category for their music video, Free. Pitawanakwat, Ramolo, and Starr co-directed and starred in the video for Free (featuring Kinnie Starr), which is included in Ramolo’s upcoming album, Quarantine Dream, and posted online.

“The video is very powerful — it’s about freedom and it’s about we’re not all free until everybody is free,” says Pitawanakwat’s mother, Sara Pitawanakwat. “It touches on MMIWG (Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls). It’s just a beautiful video. Their collaboration, to me, was just amazing. I still tear up when I watch the video because that’s to me how powerful it is.”

Sara says her nine-year-old daughter did the acting in the video, including preparing her regalia for dancing and doing some of her hoop dancer moves.

“We found out that Emilee Ann actually has a real knack for acting,” Sara says. “She has a natural ability to act, so she has now been signed with Ignite Artists in Vancouver. She has an agent now and potentially is looking at different options in terms of where that will take her.”

Sara says her daughter was very happy and excited to be recognized with the award, which was announced on March 26.

“Everybody on Mother Earth should be free regardless of whatever nation they are from,” Sara says, quoting her daughter’s comment on being recognized with the award.

Sara says her daughter’s classmates at school cheered when she told them that her video had been recognized with the award.

“Their words were like, ‘We knew you were going to win, Emilee Ann, your video was just amazing,’” Sara says.

Sara says her daughter first became interested in hoop dancing when she saw hoops for sale at a pow wow when she was about five-years-old.

“She had this natural ability to actually manoeuvre the hoops,” Sara says. “At that pow wow she actually did a little hoop dance demonstration.”

Ramolo, who co-wrote the song with Starr and Hill Kourkoutis, says she met Emilee Ann and her mother at the Every Child Matters Walk on July 1 in Toronto, where Emilee Ann performed a hoop dance for the Indigenous children whose unmarked graves had been discovered at a former Indian Residential School site in Kamloops, B.C.

“It was a very important song for us three ladies to write and we wanted to honour the themes of the song with a video that was sensitive but real — we wanted to tell the truth,” Ramolo says. “I had a dream one night and in the dream, the song was playing and Emilee is in my dream, just Emilee Ann’s face.”

Ramolo says she asked Sara if her daughter was interested in starring in and co-directing the video, and she agreed so they then workshopped some ideas together about the video.

“I’m also a school teacher so it was fun to work with her in such a creative way,” Ramolo says. “So, of course she wanted to hoop dance because it is a healing dance — she wanted to dance, she wanted to make art and paint.”

Ramolo says Emilee Ann also helped direct her when she was in front of the camera performing the song, and Starr’s part of the video was filmed in Haida Gwaii.

“We just wanted to make something special and we’re just thrilled,” Ramolo says. “This is something extra special because this is Emilee’s first award. She’s nine-years-old so to have a hand at a directorial debut, it’s pretty special. We hope that other youth see what is possible if people create a space for them to excel and to be who they are, to shine their light on the world.”