Indigenous Speaker Series: Ayita and the Resurgence of Women’s Medicine

This discussion will centre around the creative process of the making of Ayita, a modern-day creation story meeting Indigenous realities, told through text and movement. Delving into the land and its connection to the body when weaving ceremony, Indigenous nehiyaw structures and ways of being as a means of inspiration when creating stories. Bringing the sacred back into our women’s medicine and shattering old narratives to shift paradigms through our message as artists and creators. This is the rematriation.

More about Teneil Whiskeyjack

Teneil Whiskeyjack is a Nehiyaw Iskwew from Saddle Lake First Nation. Teneil is an award-winning actor, playwright, dancer, wellness advocate and mother. Her work stems from a Cree lens that is rooted in a creative process that cultivates expressions that express  ritual, performance art, theatre and the land with emphasis on the body and how to create story from the body. 

Teneil started as an actor at the age of 9 in an animation series Stories from the Seventh Fire. She garnered Outstanding Performance by an Actress in Film with Hallmark Entertainment’s Dreamkeeper and has been in multiple films and television series such as RenegadePress.com, Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee, and most recently TRIBAL: Season 2.

She transitioned into theatre in 2016, in the production of A Musta: Muskikiy Muskwa Iskwew and BlueBirds. Teneil made her playwright’s debut with the world premiere of Ayita, which is an intermix of Indigenous contemporary dance and theatre for the 10th annual headlining show at SkirtsAfire Festival in March 2022 with the second incarnation of Ayita to premiere in her home community of Saddle Lake on the land. 

She currently performs around Canada and the U.S with the hit show Bear Grease. A comical hip hopera of the classic film Grease. Which has sold out shows in Vegas, Los Angeles, Vancouver and Calgary. Teneil holds a Bachelor of Arts degree with a major in Drama and continues to nurture her curiosities through art as a vehicle to our resurgence of our Indigenous ways of being through storytelling.