The Invention of the Flute A Dakota Legend
Channel: SKCradleboard Initiative
Date: 29/01/2015

Greg Reimer: 'Firstly, I would like to say that I had a lot of fun creating this project, both with the visuals and audio. It was great fun adapting this wonderful story and retelling it in a fresh way. I came across the Dakota story on the invention of the flute and discovered the richness in its detail and plot. This is a sweeping story about status, rejection, nature, music, renewal and love. After reading it I realized this was the story I had to adapt. However, the more I researched, the more I realized there was more than one version of the same story within the Plains groups. So I had a dilemma: which one should be chosen? I relied on the research of Kathleen Joyce-Grendahl , executive director of the International Native American Flute Association, for this adaption which takes the core similarities of each version and adds detail, description and speech from different sources, working them together into one cohesive linear tale.I knew this story had to be narrated by someone other than me, because my voice does not have the soothing tone of a storyteller. So I turned to a local spoken word artist, Dash, who has a smooth deep voice, and he graciously agreed lay down the narration. I wrote the music myself, incorporating drum, flute, and voice, all which harken back to the instruments of the Dakota people, yet just like the story, I presented them in a fresh way. Then I got to work on the drawings, taking my time with each one in order to justify the story well. The images all formed a word in the end, demonstrating another First Nation truth, that events, people, and places are intimately connected, though at first it may not seem so. After drawing, I shot the video with a filter on my phone, in synch with the music, uploaded it to my computer, and mixed the audio and video together. Then I watched it for the first time and the end product surprised me, because it made me realize that stories from the past can be brought to the present in many exciting ways.'

Completed in Native Studies 293 (Indigenou Music, inst. Lindsay Knight, 2013)