Whether it’s doing research in community, organizing student groups or even narrating a film, Tekenikhon (Neeko) Doreen likes to be involved.  

Doreen, who is Mohawk from Tyendinaga Mohawk territory, is a third-year honours student in the Indigenous Studies program at McMaster. She plays an active role in building community on campus: She’s a co-director of CISSA (Cooperative of Indigenous Students Studies & Alumni), organizes and leads a student drum group, supports the weekly beading group in Indigenous Student Services, and runs an Indigenous language club.  

She’s taken on roles as a Student Ambassador for the Indigenous Summer Transition Class and a TA for the Intro to Indigenous Studies course, and is spending this summer working with Indigenous Student Services, working on programming and events like Indigenous Grad.  

McMaster professor Allan Downey came to her Indigenous Fall Transition class in 2024 to do a presentation about a film he’d worked on, Rotinonhsión:ni Ironworkers. The film tells the story of Indigenous ironworkers from Kahnawà:ke  and Akwesasne communities, who relocated to Brooklyn to boarding houses in a small community called “Little Caughnawaga,” to help create some of North America’s most iconic landmarks.  

“In his presentation, he just kept saying, ‘If your professors are doing research projects and you want to get involved, just ask. The worst thing they’ll say is no, and the best thing that they’ll say is they have research grants and research they need help with,” Doreen said.  

She walked up to him immediately after the presentation and asked if he had any student positions available. Within 24 hours she was a research assistant, starting what would become “the most amazing experience I’ve ever had.”  

As a research assistant, Doreen worked with Downey and several other students on a digital animated film called Deskaheh. The film tells the story of Haudenosaunee leader Deskaheh Levi General’s travels 1923 to 1925 from Six Nations of the Grand River to the League of Nations, where he sought to gain international recognition of the Haudenosaunee’s sovereignty.  

Doreen was a co-director and also narrated the whole film. Through the project, “I learned a lot about doing research in community and through community,” Doreen said.  

“It’s not something you can go in with a timeline and be like, ‘going to be done in a month’… it’s about relationship building. Our video ended up being extended due to the information that we had to capture, things that the community wanted to see in it.”  

The team first released the film at McMaster in December 2024, and “getting to see it all come together was life changing,” Doreen said. 

They showed the film to students, community and faculty at the university and had a discussion panel. The audience included students all the way from elementary age through university.  

Doreen also went to a conference about Deskaheh at the Woodland Cultural Centre in December, where the team showed the film and Doreen shared her experiences working on it with Indigenous scholars, community members and hereditary chiefs.  

“That was really cool,” she said. “To be able to sit on a stage with so many different Indigenous scholars who have been doing this work probably twice as long as I’ve been alive… I learn so much.”  

“The biggest thing that I’ve learned throughout the whole process is that you never stop learning, especially about a big story like this.”  

Most recently, she presented at the annual Haudenosaunee Storytellers Conference in Buffalo, New York.  

“It’s a really big conference,” Doreen said. “It was my first time going, so to be able to go as a first-time attendee as well as a first-time presenter was absolutely incredible.”  

Sharing the work

The project is finished in the sense that they’ve completed and released the film: but the work continues.  

“Talking about it and being able to share it is really what the end goal of the project was,” Doreen said. It’s about “getting more people aware of Indigenous history and the history of Deskaheh Levi General, who was a hereditary chief for Six Nations.”  

When people see the film and engage with it, Doreen’s biggest hope is that they come away understanding that “our history is important.”  

“It’s important to learn, it’s important to share, it’s important to talk about,” Doreen said. “Specifically… Haudenosaunee women play a really important role in our communities, and they always have. And I try to really advocate for that and bring light to that because I find it’s very overshadowed today.”  

For students who see the film or hear about her experience, Doreen hopes it shows them that “you can be a part of anything you want to be a part of.”  

“Indigenous students don’t necessarily always see themselves as getting these opportunities, as having these life changing experiences all the time,” Doreen said.  

“But I really, in my work and in being able to share this, advocate for the fact that we can do this,” Doreen said.  

“Our voices do deserve to be heard; our histories deserve to be heard by us.”  

Co-created by Allan Downey, Tekenikhon Doreen, Jersee Hill, Kira Gibson, and Saki Murotani, Deskaheh is the result of an Indigenous youth mentorship program at McMaster University titled Resurgent Histories, which empowers Indigenous youth to create digital animations that bring Indigenous histories to life for public education. Learn more at: https://resurgenthistories.humanities.mcmaster.ca/