Sarah Szell

Born 2000, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan

My routes trace back to Batoche and even farther back to Red River, two famed Metis settlements in the Canadian West. My family names can be traced through my father’s matriarchal line: Gervais, Ouellet, Dumont, and Laframboise. Instant photography is a newfound passion of mine. Living on the Canadian prairies, I am able to capture the canola fields, rolling hills and lake shores that Northern Saskatchewan is so known for. However, it has been the urban landscape of my downtown area that’s encouraged me to capture the Indigenous street art found in abundance in back alleys and city street corners. It’s been powerful as a Métis woman to capture my people’s history in a form of photography that is rare and refreshing in today’s digital age. Currently, I’m in my third-year of education majoring in Indigenous Studies through SUNTEP (Saskatchewan Urban Native Teacher’s Education Program) at the University of Saskatchewan. I hope that this passion of fusing polaroid photography with Indigenous history and culture will follow me into my future career as an elementary school educator.