If you want Google Maps directions from Whapmagoostui, Quebec to Parliament Hill, Ottawa, our trusted search engine doesn’t know what to do with itself. That wasn’t the case for six Cree First Nation youths, who arrived at the capital on Monday. They trekked the 1,600km distance with the help of a guide to show their support of the Idle No More movement.

The Whapmagoostui community resides at the shore of Hudson Bay, Quebec. Led by David Kawapit, who turned 18 on the journey, the crew left home on snowshoes in mid January. The forecast was -58 on their first night. Along the way, close to 400 others from First Nation communities joined the walk, and the cause.

The journey parallels Chief Theresa Spence’s hunger strike in an attempt to meet with Stephen Harper. Spence survived on a liquids-only diet on Turtle Island for six weeks before Harper agreed to chat. The Cree walkers travelled for 10 weeks. Only this time, Harper never showed.

Green Party leader Elizabeth May was there, and said, “It says a lot that Stephen Harper isn’t here … It says a lot that we need to move heaven and earth to meet First Nations on a nation-to-nation basis with respect.”

Granted, our conservative Prime Minister is busy, and just because we fall under his regime doesn’t mean we dictate his itinerary. But when his government stubbornly and consistently ignores the rights of First Nations’, they have every right to demand his attention.

Harper is taking heat for being absent, welcoming the Toronto Zoo’s new batch of Chinese pandas who arrived via FedEx, the day that the walkers arrived. Sure, this trade may strengthen our relationship with communist China. But it was at the cost of showing the First Nations respect. Certainly Harper was aware that they were scheduled to arrive then, as thousands of others awaited their arrival atop Parliament Hill. It prompted this petition, requesting that Harper refrain from further pointless photo ops.

This matters because aboriginal injustice and the environment matter. The Idle No More movement can easily be described as a quest for equal rights and respect. The ending to this historical pilgrimage takes place at a peak of tension. Increased funding for First Nations has been budgeted for, but not delivered.

The Cree youths met with Aboriginal Affairs Minister Bernard Valcourt, who now says he plans on visiting in the summer. They left for home yesterday. For this trip, they took a well-deserved plane ride.

Jesse Gouchey and the mural he painted to honour the memory of Gloria Black Plume

In 1999, filmmaker Xstine Cook was living in Ramsay, an inner-city working class Calgary neighbourhood, when Gloria Black Plume, an aboriginal social worker, was murdered in an alleyway five houses away from her home. Cook now lives on the property where the murder took place. She felt the need to memorialize Black Plume’s life and work.

“She was a blood mother and grandmother and her murderers walked free,” Cook said during her introduction to Spirit of the Bluebird, the short film she made with animator Jesse Gouchey in Black Plume’s honour. Cook was speaking at Toronto’s ImagineNATIVE Film & Media Arts Festival in October, where it received the best short documentary award. “Something about it grabbed hold of me and I vowed to put a mural there in her memory.”

Though originally conceived as a mural project, Cook was inspired by video artist BLU, who creates stop-motion animated films using murals, to create a film as well. “I thought it would be so much better to go beyond just the alleyway where it’s not very high traffic,” she says. “No one really knows the story, no one will discover the story there, whereas if we make a film it’s just a matter of finding the artist that can do it.”

Cook connected with Gouchey, a Cree aerosol artist, through Calgary’s Quickdraw Animation Society. Gouchey developed a storyboard of a mother bluebird and her children in a natural landscape. “I wanted something feminine,” says Gouchey. “And I wanted something that was familiar to the land too, to keep the story close to home.”

Gouchey began by painting the background scenes on a fence and garage. He then brought in a butterfly, a bluebird and a bear, photographing every image, and each time redoing the background to make it look as if the figure had never been there. He painted from July to September 2010, taking over 1,800 images. Dappled sunlight, shadows, a fence and real shrubs contribute to the short film’s unusual, ethereal effect.

Black Plume’s family contributed to Spirit of the Bluebird by attending the mural’s unveiling in October 2010. One of the speakers, Shirley Prairie Chicken, brought along her son Jonathan Tall Man, who offered his drum and voice, which became the soundtrack to the film.

When Black Plume’s daughter Kaily Bird attends screenings, such as the one in September at the Toronto International Film Festival, Cook says her presence draws attention to the epidemic of missing and murdered aboriginal women in Calgary.

“We’ll show this to non-native people and they’ll be touched,” says Cook. “But generally you show it to a native person and they cry, because they know someone that’s been murdered.”

Spirit of the Bluebird has screened at dozens of North American festivals so far, and Cook and Gouchey would like to see it go overseas. The two are working on a new short film and planning a larger community mural project.

“It’s racism and people need to see it,” says Gouchey. “This family went through hell, and this is just one case of many murders.”