Witness the work of community members with substance-use disorder, first responders, and health professionals in the Kainai First Nation as they bring hope and change through harm reduction to Blackfoot people.

Follow filmmaker Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers as she creates an intimate portrait of her community and the impacts of the substance use and overdose epidemic. Witness the change brought by community members with substance-use disorder, first responders and medical professionals as they strive for harm reduction in the Kainai First Nation.

A portrait of a community facing radical change, Kímmapiiyipitssini: The Meaning of Empathy brings humanity and compassion to the substance-use crisis and drug-poisoning epidemic on the Kainai First Nation in southern Alberta. Filmmaker Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers welcomes viewers to witness the collective work of her community.

Surrounded by tall prairie grass gently swaying in the wind stands Elle-Máijá’s mother, Dr. Esther Tailfeathers, a family doctor and community harm-reduction advocate who teaches that, “Kimmapiiyipitssini means compassion… in our way of believing, if you help people out then you are blessed to continue to do that, and so our People are supposed to give what they have or what they can to help.” Kimmapiiyipitssini is at the heart of the harm-reduction strategy in this Blackfoot community.

Lori speaks to her experience with substance-use disorder through gentle storytelling and laughter. She is a mother and an aunty, and is currently in recovery. Lori explains that opioid agonist therapy, which manages opioid addiction with a prescribed alternative, has been essential to her recovery journey. A short distance away, in a small room at the Moses Lake Shelter, Elle-Máijá shows community members with alcohol-use disorder a video about the Managed Alcohol Program in the Downtown Eastside neighbourhood of Vancouver, BC. The program provides controlled access to alcohol and a safe consumption site. After the video, George tells Elle-Máijá, “If it works, we won’t hurt ourselves, drinking that bad stuff.” The sale of alcohol is prohibited in Kainai, which leaves some with alcohol-use disorder no choice but to consume dangerous alternatives.

Contextualized in the historical and lived trauma of settler colonialism, Kímmapiiyipitssini: The Meaning of Empathy draws a connecting line between the impacts of colonialism on Blackfoot land and people and the ongoing substance-use crisis. By questioning abstinence-only treatment, and showing the lives saved through harm-reduction models, the film asks the audience to be a part of the radical change to which the community is committed.

This need for change is felt in neighbouring city Lethbridge. In a parking lot on a brisk evening, Mark Brave Rock, founder of the SAGE Clan, leads volunteer members in prayer before they start their routine. The group patrols the streets of Lethbridge in order to provide safe drug-rig clean-up, and helps ensure the safety of street-involved vulnerable peoples. The city can be a volatile place for Indigenous peoples.

People with a substance-use disorder, both in active use and in recovery, come together with frontline workers to issue an urgent call to action: change is a matter of life or death for many people. Set among the smooth curves of the foothills of southern Alberta, Kímmapiiyipitssini: The Meaning of Empathy holds these stories in love and hope for the future.