Fancy Dance starring Lily Gladstone is a film by, about and for First Nations people — and it shows
The film Fancy Dance opens with the sounds of birds and crickets in a forest. The next thing you hear is hushed dialogue, in Cayuga language.
Two people make their way along a curving river, one with a metal detector and the other plucking crayfish from the pristine green water.
Fancy Dance is a film that would have once been a distant dream for Indigenous people: storytelling through film, told by Indigenous people.
The directorial feature debut for Native American filmmaker Erica Tremblay, it was filmed primarily on Cherokee Land, but is set in the director’s home nation of Seneca-Cayuga.
The Cayuga language is one of many native languages with few remaining fluent speakers, but Tremblay spent years taking intensive language courses so she could imagine a community where, as is the case in this film, the language lives on.
Lending this film its star power is Piegan Blackfeet and Nez Perce actor Lily Gladstone, who shot to fame last year following their portrayal of Mollie Burkhart in Martin Scorsese’s 2023 epic, Killers of the Flower Moon. That role helped them become the first Native American person to win the Golden Globe award for Best Actress, and to be nominated for a Best Actress Oscar (they lost to Emma Stone).
While Gladstone’s character in Killers of the Flower Moon helped portray historic injustices inflicted on First Nations people, here the actor brings quiet dignity and queer energy to the character of Jax, someone grappling with the very modern challenges Indigenous people are still facing.
Jax’s sister, Tawi, has gone missing, leaving it up to them to look after their 13-year-old niece Roki (Isabel DeRoy-Olson of the Tr’ondek Hwech’in and Anishinaabe Native American nations, making her debut). While Jax frantically searches for Tawi, Roki is convinced that her mother will return soon, insisting she would never miss their annual mother-daughter dance at an upcoming powwow.
But as the police do less than nothing to help look for Tawi, white authorities also threaten to take Roki from Jax, wanting to place the child with her white grandfather Frank (Shea Whigham), away from the reservation where she has grown up.
So the pair hit the road, battling through twists and turns that you won’t see coming as they try to escape the long arm of the colonisers’ laws, try to find their sister and mother, and just try to be together.
DeRoy-Olson and Gladstone lead an amazing portrayal of what so many Indigenous communities live daily: the desperation and trauma of finding missing relatives, as well as forced child removal and ongoing colonisation.
Gladstone brings a level of realism and soul to the film that strikes painfully true. As the plot plays out and their situation becomes more precarious, they tap into a deep sense of hopelessness.
DeRoy-Olson also delivers a memorable performance from the heart, as she is pushed and pulled by white welfare workers, family members and pain over her missing mother. And Whigham’s (Joker; The Righteous Gemstones) turn as Frank is also sure to bring critical acclaim.
Fancy Dance is painful, and sometimes hard to watch, but it’s also got joy in it.
Tremblay said in the press notes that although she wanted to convey the real issues facing Indigenous people, she also wanted to portray the “joy and happiness in Indian Country, which often gets lost in mainstream portrayals of our communities”.
This film feels like a positive shift in the streaming wars, as services like Apple TV+ invest more in original stories, and make space for First Nations perspectives.
Closer to home, films like The New Boy (2023) and Windcatcher (2024) show renewed investment in local Indigenous stories and, as the space expands, hopefully it will open doors for more stories to be told from the Indigenous perspective.
It’s an exciting time to be an Indigenous storyteller, and Fancy Dance leads the way in what is sure to be a dynamic space in coming years.
SOURCE: ABCNEWS
