The Iroquois Creation Story Film

A combination of live-action and animation, the Iroquois Creation Story is a 17-minute film based on the ancient and complex Iroquois Creation Story. Since its debut in October 2015, it has garnered awards including Red Nation Film Festival, Los Angeles (Best Animation and Best Short Film) and Indianer Inuit Film Festival in Stuttgart, Germany (Best Animation). It has been shown at film festivals around the world, including New Zealand, Canada, and Europe, and can be viewed in the Orientation Theater at Ganondagan’s Seneca Art & Culture Center. The film has also been screened in nearly 20 festivals, winning six awards for Best Animation and one for Best Music.

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Producer G. Peter Jemison guided every stage and brought together two unlikely dance groups—traditional Haudenosaunee Social Dancers and Garth Fagan Dance—plus the Rochester Institute of Technology’s Department of Film and Animation under the direction of Professor Cathleen Ashworth. Jemison created the character concept art and style, recruited and guided the Iroquois voice actors, singers and dancers, and designed the dancers’ masks.

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There are many versions of the Iroquois Creation Story. This artistic interpretation is based on the story told in 1899 by Chief John Arthur Gibson to J.N.B. Hewitt, and based on the book Iroquois Creation Story translated by John Mohawk in 2005.