WHEN: Friday, May 2, 2025 – 7:00pm
WHAT: ‘Walking Through the Fire’ Waterloo Film Premiere
Opening remarks with filmmaker and Sultans of String producer Chris McKhool and post Screening Q&A with McKhool and Indigenous Elder/’Walking Through The Fire’ collaborator, Shannon Thunderbird.
WHERE: Parkminster United Church, 275 Erb St. E., Waterloo, ON N2J 1N6
Free Public Event with registration at this link: https://walkingwaterloo.eventbrite.ca
Walking Through the Fire: Visual Album is a musical film experience unlike any other. From Métis fiddling to an East Coast Kitchen Party, rumba to rock, to the drumming of the Pacific Northwest, experience the beauty and diversity of music from Turtle Island with Elder and poet Dr. Duke Redbird, the Métis Fiddler Quartet, Ojibwe/Finnish Singer-Songwriter Marc Meriläinen (Nadjiwan), Coast Tsm’syen Singer ShannonThunderbird, The North Sound from the Prairies, Blues singer Crystal Shawanda, Heavy-Wood guitarist Don Ross, Northern Cree pow wow group, Dene singer-songwriter Leela Gilday, Inuit Throat Singers and more! Experience in full DOLBY ATMOS. 80 Minutes.
“The very fact that you’re doing this tells me that you believe in the validity of our language, you believe in the validity of our art and our music and that you want to help to bring it out. And that’s really what’s important, is for people to have faith that we can do this”
The Honourable Murray Sinclair, Ojibwe Elder and former chair of the Truth & Reconciliation Commission
A central theme running through Walking Through The Fire is the need for the truth of Indigenous experience to be told before reconciliation can begin in earnest. Embedded in the title is the energy of rebirth: fire destroys, but it also nourishes the soil to create new growth, beauty, and resiliency. Walking Through The Fire ensures that we emerge on the other side together, stronger and more unified.