Interconnectedness explored in RRU professor’s new film

Shih [Interconnectedness] premieres March 20 at Royal Roads University Centre for Dialogue, 4th floor, Sequoia Building. Screening runs 2 to 3:30 p.m. and a panel discussion, audience Q&A and reception follow from 3:30 to 5 p.m. It’s a free event and all are welcome. For more information on the film, read Geo Takach’s blog.

Seven years in the making, Shih [Interconnectedness] is a feature film that explores intersections of environmental communication, arts-based creation and Indigenous ways of knowing that was prompted by Geo Takach’s move to BC to work at Royal Roads University.

Premiering March 20 at Royal Roads, where Takach is a professor and program head of the online Bachelor of Arts in Professional Communication program, Shih (Interconnectedness) is a documentary in which he visits with artists, teachers and researchers, almost all of them Indigenous, exploring the project’s central question: How can we bring environmental, Indigenous and arts-based approaches into dialogue to improve relationships with the Earth and its First Peoples?

“I found a very natural alliance there that is not only called for but, I think, absolutely essential among environmentalist ways of thinking and Indigenous ways of knowing,” Takach says. “And the flip side of both — despoiling the planet, colonizing Indigenous people by imperialist forces — to me, they’re also two sides of the same dark coin. They’re both colonization in that you’re taking more than you need from the Earth at a rate faster than the Earth can sustain, or you are taking away the land and the children and the lives of people who have been here since time immemorial.

For Takach — who says of the seven-year odyssey of Shih, “It took a long time but the learning is taking a long time, too” — a path to environmental and social justice and healing is clear, and something Indigenous peoples have known in their cultures for generations.

He also highlights the contributions to the film of Indigenous artists including Butch Dick and Damian John, the latter of whom painted his answer to the project’s central question in a major work that’s revealed in the film. Meanwhile, visual recorder Mo Dawson captures essences of the conversations in a mural that also takes shape as the story unfolds.

“The arts are a wonderful vehicle for expression and sharing, and inspiring engagement, conversation and — hopefully, ultimately — action,” he says.

Takach, who grew up in Alberta, says when he moved to Lekwungen-speaking peoples’ territory in Victoria, he noticed there was more recognition of Indigeneity, Indigenous peoples and their lands, which prompted him to educate himself through reading, conversations and a lot of listening. From those relationships grew his 85-minute film, largely funded by grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.

“By putting things under a microscope and siloing them so we can understand them better, we learn a lot of great stuff. But a real danger in doing that is you lose sight of the totality. We have lost sight of the bigger picture that everything is connected and related.”

Shih (Interconnectedness) premieres March 20 at Royal Roads University Centre for Dialogue, 4th floor, Sequoia Building. Screening runs 2 to 3:30 p.m. and a panel discussion, audience Q&A and reception follow from 3:30 to 5 p.m. It’s a free event and all are welcome. For more information on the film, read Geo Takach’s blog.

Learn more about the Bachelor of Arts in Professional Communication.