91ÑÇÉ«

Wednesday, 4 November 2026 | 6:30 to 9:00 p.m.
Nick Mirkopoulos Screening Room (004 Accolade East)

The event involves the screening of a recently completed feature documentary. Funded by a SSHRC Insight Grant, Rodeo Women is an autoethnographic/videoethnography that documents the work of women – contemporary and historic - involved in producing rodeo in the Canadian west. Having often been invisible, these women, including Indigenous women, challenge the public's understandings of rodeo as solely the site of white masculinity. This film contributes to Canadian history as the first documentation of women's roles in rodeo production. It also challenges misconceptions of the treatment of animals involved in rodeo. The screening will include a Q&A with the Director, other scholars involved in the grant, and post-production editors. The event will engage 91ÑÇÉ« community members and invited people from the broader community - primarily film makers and film buffs - in sharing the knowledge produced from this grant. The Q&A will give attendees the opportunity to probe more deeply the process of creating the film including the role of fieldwork, pre-production engagement, reciprocity, post-production, and the complexities of being an insider-researcher.

Director Biography

Celia Haig-Brown is a Euro-Canadian video-ethnographer and author committed to respectful and reciprocal research creation. With niece Helen Haig-Brown of the Tsilhqot’in Nation, she co-directed two short documentaries based in interviews with the relatives of the students she had interviewed for her 1988 book, Resistance and Renewal: Surviving the Indian Residential School. Her next solely directed short documentary Listen to the Land addressed the complexities of the Naskapi Nation’s commitment to land and caribou in the reality of open pit mining (http://www.listeningtotheland.org/). This is her first feature film. Created around interviews with more than twenty rodeo women, the film also draws on her own experience of twelve years in the rodeo business.

Director’s Statement

Returning to the culture and communities of rodeo has been an incredible gift for me. The welcoming faces and outstretched hands and hearts made the project a joy. Each one of the women involved was delighted with finally being recognized for their work. And many men also acknowledged that this honouring was long overdue. Film crew, editors, musicians, and especially the women gave their best to make this film.

Sponsored by the Office of the Vice-President Research & Innovation, Faculty of Education, and the Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies