A whale bone, a bear emerging, and a culture refusing to vanish.
Stan Hill Jr. is a Haudenosaunee artist living in Miawpukek First Nation Reserve, Conne River, Newfoundland. In “The Bear Inside a Whale,” he and his family discuss racism, identity, religion, creation and art, along with the cultural extinction of the Beothuk of Newfoundland. Throughout the film, we follow Stan carving a bear out of a whale vertebra. And we visit The Rooms (museum) in St. John’s, Newfoundland, where Stan talks about viewing and reclaiming Indigenous artefacts.
Cinematography
Patient, reverent close-ups of bone transforming under patient hands.
Direction
Harvey knows when to shut up and let the family speak.
Production
The Rooms museum sequence: colonial archive as contested ground.
Director
Kenneth J. Harvey
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
The Beothuk were declared extinct in 1829 with the death of Shanawdithit; this film treats that 'extinction' as an open wound, not closed history.
Stan Hill Jr. is sixth-generation Haudenosaunee carver; his father Stan Sr. pioneered soapstone sculpture in Newfoundland, making this literally inheritance in bone.
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