This all-Native production, by director Shelley Niro (Mohawk), is part of the Smoke Signals new wave of films that examine Native identity in the 1990’s. Set on the Grand Pine Indian Reservation, aka “Reservation X”, HONEY MOCCASIN combines elements of melodrama, performance art, cable access, and ‘whodunit’ to question conventions of ethnic and sexual identity as well as film narrative. A comedy/thriller complete with a fashion show and torchy musical numbers, this witty film employs a surreal pastiche of styles to depict the rivalry between bars The Smokin’ Moccasin and The Inukshuk Cafe, the saga of closeted drag queen/powwow clothing thief Zachary John, and the travails of crusading investigator Honey Moccasin. This irreverent reappropriation of familiar narrative strategies serves as a provocative spring-board for an investigation of authenticity, cultural identity, and the articulation of modern Native American experience in cinematic language and pop culture.

Tired of the daily grind, meek office drone Paul Keswick decides to try a new look. Almost immediately, his life takes a turn for the unexpected as he is routinely mistaken for literary rock star David Hawk. Initially intoxicated by the attention, his experience soon turns to horror after a chance encounter with the man he pretends to be and the dead woman he is suspected of murdering. Can Paul Keswick prove his true identity in time, and is everything really what it appears to be?

Sandra Laronde (Misko Kizhigoo Migizii Kwe, “Red Sky Eagle Woman”) is a champion of Indigenous arts and the founding artistic director of Red Sky Performance.