Warriors movie coming to screen near you

The Warriors are coming.  A new documentary film chronicling the Nipissing Warriors hockey team is screening at Nbissing Secondary School on Friday, May 5, from 1 – 3 p.m.  The film will be digitally released following the screening.

The remarkable Nipissing Warriors hockey team played from 1965 – 1975.  Few could have imagined their success or popularity when community members began pushing for an all-Anishinaabe team to play in the all-white, predominantly Francophone, Industrial League in Sturgeon Falls in the 1960s. It turned out that the Warriors were very good and exceptionally popular among fans for their swift, hard-hitting play. No other team packed the Sturgeon Falls arena like they did. They won the league championship their first year and would dominate league play for almost a decade.  In inter-reserve hockey they were equally successful, winning two provincial titles in the early 1970s.

As the wins and fans kept piling up, the team grew and eventually splintered into multiple teams, partially a victim of its own success as more and more people wanted to play.  The legacy is carried on today in the many children who play hockey in the Little Native Hockey League.

The project began in 2013, whenDr. Katrina Srigley, associate professor of History at Nipissing University; and Glenna Beaucage, Nipissing First Nation culture and heritage manager began to document the Warrior’s story at the direction of Nipissing First Nation and Chief Marianna Couchie. In 2014, they presented The Warrriors Exhibit in the Treaty Learning Room at the Harris Learning Library.

“Through interviews with former players, fans, and community members, we learned that the story of the Warriors was really about far more than hockey: it was about identity and belonging, about family and community, and about resisting the violence of colonialism. It became clear that the Warriors story needed to be widely shared,” said Dr. Srigley.

Emerging from the Nipissing First Nation Culture and Heritage history preservation project, the movie was jointly produced by Dr. Katrina Srigley, associate professor of History at Nipissing University; and Glenna Beaucage, Nipissing First Nation culture and heritage manager, in association with Regan Pictures.  It was directed by Dr. Srigley and filmed by Ed Regan.  Nipissing University, Nipissing First Nation and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council provided financial support.