-(Keith): Part of why I tattoo is to honour the people and my family that have come before me.

Tattooing is an act of resistance.

It's a part of who you are.

It's a constant reminder of where you come from, who you come from and it's a power of the people that came before you that you feel connected to, truly connected to.

(theme music) ♪♪♪ (soft music) -(narrator): Edmonton, Alberta, located in Treaty 6 Territory, has the second largest urban Indigenous population in Canada.

It's where multidisciplinary Mohawk artist Keith Callihoo calls home.

And his home studio is where he's most likely to be found.

♪♪♪ Today, Keith is preparing for a tattoo session with his wife Donita.

There is no better way to practice than on his own skin.

-I'm working on a flower right now and finding techniques and how to... bring colour and shape that would honour beadwork.

Tattooing really is a sacred vulnerable act.

What I am tattooing right now on my leg is a big part of my relationship with my kokum, my grandma.

But I was raised by women.

I think that's why a lot of my artwork is telling this story with flowers.

It reminds me of my aunties and grandmothers.

It honours the women in my life and especially my daughter.

(chiming) -(narrator): When not tattooing, Keith dedicates his time to his family: wife Donita and 9-year-old daughter, Hayden.

-Okay.

So, this is kale.

-Okay.

-Two... -How many are there?

-You know what?

Let's do a couple more.

-Can I help you?

-Eh?

-Can I help you?

-Yeah, put this one.

Leave those.

Just put it right there.

(dog barking) -(narrator): They've created an escape from the city in their own backyard.

-When it's nice out, we make as much out of as being outside as possible.

-Dad, you just whacked a wasp.

-Yeah?

-It's under there.

(gasp) (laughing) ♪♪♪ -(Keith): You're hungry for some salmon?

-(Donita): You want to try some salad?

-(narrator): Keith is set to show Donita the tattoo he's been working on all day.

This design honours her ancestors from Saddle Lake Cree Nation.

-I didn't stencil this.

I drew it, like freehand.

-Okay.

-I can stencil it if you want so that it's like... symmetrical, like you can... Same size each petal or I can go dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot!

-So that it has more of that beading effect?

-Yeah.

-I love the design like I love the shape of the flower.

-Okay.

-And I think the only thing that I'd want to see added is the... having more of the... where it looks like beading.

I'm not sold on the blue yet!

-No!

No, no, but it's my leg.

-It's true.

It's your leg.

(laughing) -My legs are becoming a reference.

-I'm like nervous but excited.

(laughing) -(narrator): Keith is one step closer to finalizing the design for Donita's tattoo.

(soft music) Keith is putting some final touches on a tattoo design for his friend Dawn.

-(Keith): This is one of the tattoos that someone has given me the permission to take what they tell me and then to tell that story through my storytelling.

These are the stars for the Capricorn constellation.

These ones.

And then... what I did, I put pieces in that are options but can also be put away.

-Hum-hum.

-I like the constellation and then, it can be like a talking piece for me.

And I think that it kind of looks out of place to me, yeah.

-That's yours.

It's your story.

It's your skin.

♪♪♪ -(Keith): When I'm sitting with people, when I'm hearing their stories when they're sharing them; the sound, the feel, the words, the breath that's shared between the people, I feel blessed to be a part of that.

Here we go.

-Okay.

I've just recently really started to take to heart how much I am influenced by... the moon and its phases and how much my people, my culture is influenced by the moon.

And... the way that it resonated with me was like, I need to get a tattoo of it.

♪♪♪ -It started with the moon phases... -Yeah.

-And... I've seen that a lot of people are getting those and to me, it would be like almost like copying other people's design.

To me, the moon has always been about grandmother.

♪♪♪ So, the next sitting will be, like, the stars, the finishing off of the clouds, the thunder beam.

And then the session after that, we'll do the colour.

And then the session after that, we'll do the stitching and then the session after that... (laughing) -(narrator): Keith's wife Donita joins in to watch the progress of their friend's tattoo.

-The grandmother is a moon.

Yeah, and I didn't realize that before.

I just thought she was just cute... -(Donita): Kokum.

-Yeah, a cute chunky kokum.

It's just beautiful and... completely represents everything that I'm coming to know about myself, who I am and how I want to live my life.

-(Keith): I think in getting to know one another, the women in our lives and the knowledge and the teachings and the love that they've shared with us is... pretty much what I wanted to honour in this.

Carving is for me... my form of self-care.

Once I start carving, I get lost in it and, you know, it can seem like 15 minutes went by, but actually about seven hours went by... And... I don't know what I'm gonna carve until I start putting the chisels and the knives to the wood.

But I do know that through a common theme in most of my carvings is I always put a bear, being bear clan.

Hey!

Want to come and sit?

Pull the chair.

Anytime I'm doing a new art medium whether it's airbrush, whether it's working with clay, spray painting... she's always there and I don't ask her, I don't force her to do that.

I wait for her to want to come in and participate and try it out.

So, you see how my thumb is here and my thumb is here?

I'm pulling it and then you can just push it.

Try that.

I'm not a believer of "you can't touch that", you know, "put that down".

Let the children play with it, be observant, teach them everything about that as best you can.

I'm not really putting any pressure on it, it's like butter.

Those are things I didn't have when I was younger at her age.

Yeah.

-Like that?

-Yeah.

That little bit, yeah.

-Who taught you how to carve?

-No one.

-You just learned?

-Yeah.

Just watching people that were carvers and, you know, emulating them and I liked how the effects that they could do and... Watch your thumb!

And it's the same thing like with drawing or painting.

Like, you see different artists and different techniques.

It's like airbrushing, nobody taught airbrushing.

-The one thing that dad has for art that I don't have is patience.

If I'm not good at something right away, I don't keep at it.

-(Hayden): I like doing this.

-(Keith): Awesome.

-Feel like a walking stick?

-Could be.

So, whoever would use this... Their hand would fit there.

Feel it.

Put your hand there.

-Yeah, that's awesome.

-A big part of why I tattoo and what got me to tattoo is it's another form of our language of what we do, and I want that to pass on to Hayden for her to be around.

She's watching, she's listening.

-Bring it to me.

♪♪♪ -(narrator): Keith and Hayden are heading off to spend the day on the land of their ancestors.

-(Keith): Going out to the land is me saying I'm still here.

I haven't given up.

Yes, there's farmers.

There's ranchers.

There's gravel pits that have occupied this land now, but the land hasn't gone anywhere.

-(narrator): A short drive northwest of Edmonton brings Keith to what once was the home of Michel First Nation.

-Nice to see you!

-Nice to see you again!

-(narrator): Keith is meeting up with his cousin Jodi and her two children, Thomas and Isabella, who are about to receive tattoos from Keith.

-(Jodi): This is Leo.

(laughing) -(narrator): There is no better place to start their tattoo journey than on the land where they came from.

The Michel First Nation was started by descendants from the Kahnawake Mohawk community near Montreal, Quebec who portaged to Alberta during the fur trade in the early 1800s.

The Michel community was pressured to enfranchise in 1958 to survive.

The enfranchisement meant the community was no longer recognized as Indigenous and their reserve lands were sold by the Canadian government.

Without a land base to call home, families were scattered.

The Michel First Nation was the first and only community in Canada to enfranchise.

Changes to the Indian Act allowed for people to regain official Indigenous Status.

But the Canadian government still refuses to recognize the Michel First Nation as a group or nation.

-(Keith): There was no water here up until a couple years ago, fracking and gravel pits, they take the water.

-(Jodi): They needed to build the roads, the sidewalks in Saint-Albert and in Edmonton and so they starved the Indians off the land so they could have access to the gravel.

-(Keith): We always got to remember that... When we come here, it's special.

You know, we're family and our relatives, our ancestors, they were here, they were right here.

You know, in all the stories that I've heard, I've come to understand that they enfranchised our grandparents because they didn't want us going to residential school.

You can't take away our nationhood, you can't take away our Indianness, you can't take away our spirit.

-(Thomas): Our kokum's dad was the last one to be chief of this reserve and getting his name on my arm will remind me every day where I'm from.

-I remember when we sat down, we talked about the tattoo and I said, "Well, when do you want them?

", you said, "As soon as possible".

And I get that.

And today we don't have that larger collective of people that we can go to, to hear that knowledge about what that is.

So that's a big reason why dad tattoos, it's to remind ourselves where we come from, who we are.

-Because they said we weren't allowed to tattoo before.

-Hum-hum.

-(Jodi): It was illegal.

-One day you'll grow up and you'll have kids and you'll be a kokum.

-Don't tell me about that right now.

(laughing) ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ -(narrator): Keith continues to keep his relationship to the land and his ancestors' stories alive through his artwork and tattoo practice.

And always with Hayden by his side.

-Get your stick.

Go, get it!

-Now, bring back a duck!

-(Jodi): Right?

(laughing) -(Keith): Being out on the land with family is to me what it's all about.

(laughing) This is where I do feel home this is where I feel... relaxed.

I feel encouraged.

I feel blessed.

♪♪♪ So, on the outside... I don't know if I'm going to place them inside.

But here's the focus of the flower.

-(narrator): Donita continues her tattoo journey that started only six months earlier.

Keith is adding a beaded flower motif to the design.

-Yeah, when we first started, I'd never thought I'd be getting like pretty much half a sleeve.

(laughing) -You don't know who you're married to.

-Oh well, I guess, eh?

I really wanted my right arm to be about my ancestors and about my connection to family and also to include the next generation which would be our daughter.

And so when we had our daughter then a name came to us and in Cree, it sounds like "nikomna" and it's a type of wild berry and it can also represent different types of berries, including a wild blueberry.

We decided on that middle name.

Hayden became, like, little blueberry.

And so that's where I began with my tattooing, is to begin with the blueberry.

We are just doing the flower piece today.

-Yeah.

Just this.

-Okay.

-I'll just go stencil it.

-Okay.

♪♪♪ -(Keith): The journey of doing Donita's tattoos is that I get to see them all the time And so, we could be having breakfast or coffee or she's just standing there and I'll look at the tattoo and in my mind, I'm looking at where that tattoo is going and the potential and based on the stories that Donita wants to place on her arm and on her skin.

♪♪♪ Okay.

Give me that arm.

-Alright.

♪♪♪ -(narrator): Throughout the day, Hayden checks in on mom and dad.

-Does it hurt?

-It always does.

But some parts are definitely worse than others.

The painting that we have on the wall is of my kokum.

Her name was Mary Poitras.

I think I was told she was about 19, 20 years old in that picture and she was actually walking in Edmonton, and the Edmonton Journal, they used to take pictures of people in the streets and so they gave her that picture and Keith surprised me one Christmas by painting that picture.

And of course, I burst into tears because it was, like, my kokum is passed away.

I was raised by my kokum and mishom... For the first part of my life.

ou know for this flower; beaded flowers and the flower patterns are the grandmothers and so it makes me think... think of her and my family.

-(Keith): You don't know where you come from, you don't know where you're going.

This is just one way to contribute that you're not going to erase us, you're not going to... tell us who we are and who we can't be.

♪♪♪ -Think you'll tattoo someday?

-Yes.

-(Donita): It takes a lot of patience.

-Hum-hum.

Like carving.

-Hum-hum.

It's funny when you get a tattoo, you're always thinking about the next one.

I don't know if that happens to everybody, but it's like you can see... it just become something where it becomes a part of that continuing story.

-And that's not even complete yet, right?

We just like planted the garden and then we are going to do another part and it's like in phases and then move on to next, but I see so much more.

I love how the colour and your skin tone... just bounces, it's really nice.

It's an honour to be a part of your story, like, your personal story; where your people come from, your ancestors, your family, you know I don't say that lightly, it's an honour.

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Closed Captioning: Épilogue Technical Services Inc.