Andrea Grant grew up Jehovah’s Witness, but it wasn’t until she left the church that she began looking back into her native ancestry. That investigation led Grant to the artistic path she finds herself on now.
Grant is a Canadian-born writer and multimedia artist of mixed-blood Coast Salish Native ancestry. Whether it be poems or graphic novels, Grant’s work is deeply informed by native heritage, which she weaves together with folklore and fairy tales, as well as more modern feminist ideas.
In 2020, Grant made her first short film called “Modern Native,” based on a poem of hers of the same name. With her new spoken word film “Night Swimming,” she’s followed that same trajectory again, bringing her words to life in a visual medium.
Rough Draft Atlanta recently spoke with Grant about her work and her new film. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
You had a pretty interesting upbringing. You grew up Jehovah’s Witness and started to explore your native heritage a little bit later in life. What was the turning point for you as far as your religion and exploring your heritage in that way?
Andrea Grant: For me, I don’t think I ever believed the religion. It’s very patriarchal and very male-dominated, and I was fortunate because my parents weren’t really that religious. We would go to church a lot – I wonder how I got homework done, honestly.
When I was a teenager, I tried to leave. But they really get you in their clutches, meaning that if you leave, if they catch you smoking a cigarette, or dating a boy that’s not in it or something, you’ll get excommunicated and then people won’t talk to you. So, for me, that was always unacceptable and horrific. But I just sort of, I don’t know, went along with it for longer than I should have. And then my dad was the first one to really leave. He started having what Joseph Campbell describes in mythology as a shamanistic breakdown. He would be walking in the woods and he would see spirits and ancestors and he thought [they were] satanic, so he was terrified and he would pray, like – oh no, please make this go away. Then he came out much stronger. So he just completely abandoned the JW religion and started on an exploration for his father’s roots and where his family was from. That passed on to me. I thought, well if father doesn’t believe it, why should I have to? And then everyone kind of eventually left.
I was really pressured into a horrible, horrible young marriage to a guy whose family was really powerful in the church. So it was really just after that bad marriage and just wanting to escape, and feeling frantic, that – it was self preservation. It was like, either I kill myself, or I leave, you know? It was really extreme. As I’m sure any of us who go through a major exodus and abandonment of something in our lives that we really don’t want to be a part of, or be associated with anymore, know – it’s pretty common, I think, to just really go inward and kind of implode a little bit, and then restructure your beliefs and figure out what you want. It’s been an interesting journey, for sure.
You had your writing career and then made your first short film to go along with a poem with “Modern Native” in 2020. What was the impetus for turning that into a short film? What made you decide to take that creative leap?
Grant: It was one of the longest poems that I’ve ever written. I felt it channeled my tribe and their mythology as well as was influenced by fairy tales. I really wanted something that would represent through the next generation. Native people, our storytellers who are younger, we’re still learning from the elders and having cultural advisors who are maybe in their 70s and 80s. They’re very helpful, but who are we now? A lot of us are mixed, and how does that translate? What happens when we leave our tribe and then we go to the city and we go build something there, and how do you keep those threads and that connection and not lose yourself in distractions?
I filmed some scenes in New York, and then there’s this amazing place in downtown LA called Indian Alley – it’s literally just an alley. It’s murals by different Native American artists, and has an interesting story behind it. It’s certainly a place where people came from different states and congregated and got into trouble – drugs and alcohol – but then they’re rehabilitation is there and everything. And then I really wanted to film on Vancouver Island and Penelakut Island, and was really lucky to have some of the younger Native artists and creatives appear in the film. I just felt such a connection to everything. It was amazingly magical.
You mentioned that you’re influenced and really interested in fairy tales and folklore. What do you think draws you to those types of storytelling methods?
Grant: I love fantasy. I love surrealist writers. I love poetry. So I guess I’ve always read graphic novels and wrote my own graphic novel series for a while. I’ve just always been interested in mixing things that aren’t supposed to go together. So say like, aspects of a Grimm fairy tale, and then a Native American story modernized or reimagined, so that it feels current. There’s one thing [about] being kind of a gatekeeper of some knowledge – the elders said, okay well, you can reinterpret some of these stories, but some of them you just can’t duplicate the secrets. So that’s interesting too.
Speaking of “Modern Native,” I was reading something you said about it, and you’ve touched on this here as well, as far as learning how to continue to share an oral tradition. You were talking about how film comes into play, how it’s contemporary and accessible. I wondered, what do you think is the future of keeping oral traditions alive? Film is accessible, now more than ever in some ways, but I think there has been a shift away from film in terms of how important it is to the cultural consciousness. So, from your perspective, how do you see that oral tradition continuing?
Grant: I think books will always be important, print will always be important. Of course, people are using Kindle and ebooks now, and reading in different ways and turning the pages. But I think everybody loves a beautiful book, with pictures and a gorgeous cover. They become heirlooms, you know? Something that you collect and you dust off carefully and that you give to people sometimes, or whatnot.
I agree with what you said about film. I think the challenge with film is the funding, always. I’m very fortunate. I apply for a lot of First Nations arts grants and I win a lot of them. The budgets are never close to what you end up spending [laughs], but I mean, it’s something. You can always find a way to do things in a shorter form, or in a way that isn’t like a Hollywood budget. I think animation is interesting too. Illustrated stories, short stories, graphic novels, and possibly animation in the future is something that I see. But again, you have to find people that have that skill set. But I find there are so many people overseas who are so talented and so happy. And the American dollar on a tight budget is fine, you know? It’s a lot of money for them. I love working with people all over the world and not just limiting it.
Pivoting to “Night Swimming.” In this film, you use various elements of water, various bodies of water as this sort of allegory within the piece. What drew you to using water and why do you think it’s an apt metaphor for the emotional range of women?
Grant: Shakespeare had that play “The Tempest,” and that always stuck with me – this emotional woman causing storms … Water is so accessible to us. You know, everybody loves to be on a beautiful beach. Some people love rain and a storm. I would just stand in the rain and get wet sometimes, you know? It doesn’t bother me. I just think it’s healing, just how water is so cleansing, or a hot bath is so cleansing. It seems very feminine to me.
There are so many beautiful places in this project. When you’re writing something like this, are you thinking in terms of visuals right away, or does that come later?
Grant: It comes later. Usually, when I’m writing – and this is the longest poem I’ve ever written. They’re not usually this long [laughs] – I’ll get an idea for a scene. Like, I’ll get an idea for, “there’s always a rainstorm inside of me,” what that looks like. Then I start kind of putting it together and cutting things out, and moving things around, and then it starts to take a life of its own. It takes a long time to write a long poem like that. And I suppose that I had images in mind of rain, and storms and tsunami and being at the pool, being at the ocean. But when I know I’m going to be able to turn it into some kind of visual, I’ll have two columns … one has the poem on it, and then I break down every couple of lines into a scene idea. Then I think about where could we physically do that? What time of day ,where is it crowded, where is it isolated, and all of that stuff. It’s definitely a process.