Through an expanded understanding of the vaquero, this film navigates the duality of the rodeo clown's forced femininity. Through drag and performativity the vaquero character is a reflection of the artist's trans and queer self, as they navigate their ancestry, gender performance and expression through the landscapes of their Mexican heritage. This film examines how gender performance and gender expression can be influenced by grief, ancestry, the landscapes of our childhood, pop culture and shared heritage.

This film is currently in festivals and will premier shortly here 

I grew up with vaqueros, my dad was one. He often didn't show sensitivity. When the rodeo clowns came on they were the first drag persona I saw, the men for once showed emotions and were flamboyant in their movement, A polar opposite to the hyper masculinity they would show in everyday life.

Femme Cowboy 

Super 8 footage layered with Sharpie marked lines and circles obscuring the image illustrates the story of the filmmaker’s experience with temporary episodes of migraine related blindness and her cousin’s self induced blindness later in life. Paralleling the experience of Blindness with Mental Illness, Cuthand deftly elucidates that any of us could lose any of our abilities at any time.

TJ Cuthand is a filmmaker and performance artist, writer and curator of Plains Cree as well as Scottish and Irish descent. He is credited with coining the term Indigiqueer, for modern Indigenous LGBTQ people. 

Sight

Alopecic wings look for a hole to leave their garbage in, 

 - worlds and silhouettes
inﬂated balls of rebellion ooze antipathy everywhere...
silhouettes ﬂooded with craters release torpor and mercromine...
memories of hostile worlds that dance with the sound of chromatic bursts. Alopecic wings look for a hole to leave their garbage...
spikes full of ibuprofen surround crestfallen skyscrapers...
a hell of contradictory peace elongates the nakedness of the fool.
sunken ﬂies in adamantium walls look at you with dread...
arrows gestated at sunset make up an asymptomatic veil
of fear and ignorance. 




I'm still on the other side...
openly chained to your destiny...
destroying rotten nightmares of ancestors and predecessors..
and all this while I have breakfast.


don't point at me...
turn against your patches...I have deﬁnitely come to stay...suffer.

The Ignored Alopecia of the Fly

The documentary cover an overview of historical and contemporary Native American concepts of gender, sexuality and sexual orientation. This documentary explores the berdache tradition in Native American culture, in which individuals who embody feminine and masculine qualities act as a conduit between the physical and spiritual world, and because of this are placed in positions of power within the community.

Two Spirit People

 travels the Plains, gathering and sharing stories. Featuring archival images and dramatized re-enactments, this film shares a Cuthand family oral story, honouring and respecting Woman Dress without imposing colonial binaries on them.


Categories

Indigenous