Still Standing episode featured Siksika Nation
By Adelle Ellis, Times Reporter
Photo Courtesy of CBC
The show features Canadian comedian Jonny Harris who visits small towns across the country searching for survival stories filled with community resilience. He spends some time talking with and getting to know the locals and their stories, learning about the communities before performing a free comedy show celebrating the towns he visits.
Harris visited Siksika Nation in November 2018 after becoming fascinated to learn more about the community, after one of the story producers for the series shot an unrelated documentary about the Old Sun Indian Relay Team competing in the Calgary Stampede.
“Obviously Siksika fit the bill in many ways – both historical and cultural struggles, and more recent ones like the super-flood of 2013 … the more I learned about the flood the more shocked I became,” said Harris who featured much of his comedy show around the flood.
Harris immersed himself in the lives of the locals, visiting with the 2019 Calgary Stampede First Nation’s Princess Astokomii Smith and standing under a bridge over the Bow River with Allayna Many Guns as he learned about how high the flood waters reached. He hung out with the Old Sun Indian Relay Team to learn about the sport and how buffalo was traditionally hunted. Harris talked with local filmmaker Trevor Soloway who made his first documentary, Siksika Strong, about the flood, and he visited the Blackfoot Crossing Historical Park which he described as “architecturally one of the most beautiful in the country.”
Harris delivered a rousing original stand-up comedy routine, a toast for the whole community, at the Siksika Nation High School Theatre on Nov. 26, 2018.
“The live taping was fantastic; the crowd was amazing,” said Harris who has visited several Indigenous communities across the country for the series.
He acknowledged that many Indigenous communities have faced heavier historical hardships than a simple story of a key industry being shut down, and they don’t make it their mission to make an episode of Still Standing into a truth and reconciliation seminar. But he said they acknowledge “that these towns have had a long, difficult and oftentimes unfair history … once we do that – acknowledge it – we can focus on the positive things and try to have some fun.
“Siksika also had many endearing and inspiring stories,” Harris added. “It was great to see what is happening now with the Old Sun Community College which used to be a residential school and is now essentially supporting and teaching the culture it once discouraged and supressed.” As with most communities he visits, Harris is more impressed with the sense of resiliency.
For the stories that Still Standing wishes to tell, stories about survival, about finishing the race even when you get knocked down, Harris noted Siksika Nation perfectly fit the bill and that the stories he heard and the things he learned is why he does it and that it “says it all right there.”
To watch the episode online visit https://gem.cbc.ca/media/still-standing/season-5/episode-13/38e815a-011991ba61e