The Island Weights
Total run time: 10:00
HD video, 16mm film scans, stereo, 2-channel, synchronous loop
Edition of 3, 2 AP
Sky Hopinka’s two-channel film is a cycle centered on the narrative of the Island Weights—one
of the Ho-Chunk creation stories about four individual water spirits sent to the cardinal points of
the Earth to keep it from spinning out chaotically. Originating in what is now Wisconsin, the Ho-
Chunk nation—which translates to “People of the Big Voice”—spans from Red Banks to
Trempealeau and across the pines and the waterways from Minneapolis to Milwaukee. Broken
into five parts—wijirawaséwe (the Island Weights), yoiréreginarere (the west one), rek’úhuhíra
(the south one), hą́boguominàgara (the eastern one), siniwagúreginągere (the north one)—the
film accompanies an individual narrating their journey along these boundaries of Ho-Chunk
homelands in search of the worn and weary Weights. Images take viewers from the churning
waters of the Mississippi River into serene forests, over still lakes, through vast shopping malls,
along earthen effigy mounds, and the platformed remnants of Cahokian society. The narrator is
attempting not simply to meet the Weights, but to restore the tired beings who have kept this
world in place.
- Lucia Momoh for Prospect.5
