Life lessons from the land Father and son get back to nature in 'Nation Untamed' By: AV Kitching Posted: 5:28 PM CDT Monday, Aug. 14, 2023

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This article was published 14/08/2023 (1123 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Sam Karney and his father, Chuck, have been on quite the adventure. The duo travelled across Canada and the United States for nearly a year in 2022, ending their travels in St. Laurent.

From night spearfishing for eels in Nova Scotia and hunting mountain lions in Colorado to harvesting wild rice in Wisconsin and hunting for goose in Northern Quebec, their travels are the subject of Nation Untamed, a 13-part documentary series that concludes Saturday on APTN.

In the series, the duo embarks on wilderness adventures alongside Indigenous knowledge keepers.

“It’s more important now than ever to learn from those who live off the land,” says Karney, a filmmaker with Winnipeg’s Ice River Films whose projects include poetry series The Drift and the film A Life on the Line, in which he spent a season learning from his father, a longtime fur trapper, about running a trapline in the boreal forest.

“I encourage everyone to learn from Indigenous peoples, listen to their stories, and gain an appreciation for their deep love and concern for the Earth and its resources. We only have one planet, and they know it.”

Dall-sheep hunting in Yukon, referred to as the hardest hunt on Earth, was especially exciting, as they clambered on the peaks of mountains to capture their prey.

“My dad is not well-travelled; he likes his little piece of the bush,” Sam Karney says. “Most of these places we went he had never been and never thought he would go to.”

Along with strengthening the bond with his father, the expeditions gave the filmmaker a chance to reconnect with his heritage.

Karney, who is half-Ukrainian and half-Métis, says his Métis mother had no interest in participating in the adventure. For her, growing up Métis was a difficult experience.

“She really doesn’t want to talk about it. For her, that was a life that she had and it wasn’t great; she doesn’t have much to say on the topic,” he explains.

“I encourage everyone to learn from Indigenous peoples, listen to their stories, and gain an appreciation for their deep love and concern for the Earth and its resources.”–Sam Karney

In St. Laurent, which has one of the largest Métis communities in North America, the Karneys harvest berries, observe net-fishing techniques, gut fish and prepare a meal with a Métis family.

The matriarch of the family speaks flawless Michif, which neither father nor son could understand; the last Michif speaker in Sam’s family, his grandfather, died in 1987, 10 months before he was born. (With the assistance of a translator and a language coach, Karney narrated a second version of each episode of Nation Untamed in Michif.)

In the St. Laurent episode, Karney says he feels “jealous” of Métis culture and traditions he wasn’t taught.

“We didn’t celebrate, we didn’t do anything cultural growing up. A lot of people, up to the decade and the half, didn’t really talk about their Métis heritage,” he says.

“Also my childhood was still damn good.”

“To see the people in St. Laurent have this strong Métis culture — they speak the language, they do the traditional stuff — it was cool to be part of it and to see. It would have been nice to do it growing up, but I can’t go back in time.

“Also my childhood was still damn good.”

The filmmaker is currently finishing up production on another season of the 13-part APTN series Going Native, which stars Indigenous Canadian playwright, author and journalist Drew Hayden Taylor.

av.kitching@winnipegfreepress.com