Fire Song

Shane, an academically bright First Nations youth who recently graduated from high school, still lives on the reserve with his mother, Jackie. Especially with their house needing major repairs, they are having troubles making ends meet, with Shane needing to do most of the heavy financial lifting as Jackie is emotionally incapacitated from wallowing in her grief over the recent suicide of her daughter, Shane's sister, Destiny. Although Shane openly has long been in a relationship with Tara, he, still in the closet, has as long been in a clandestine relationship with David. Suspicions abound at least among their peers that David is gay, such rumors which do not apply to Shane. Shane wants to move to Toronto to go to school, and wants David to come with him. Shane's plan is not only to make a better life for himself, but so that he and David can live an open life together, something he knows they cannot do on the reserve. David, however, wants to stay on the reserve to enact positive change, something that Shane asserts can never happen once David comes out of the closet. With his and Jackie's financial situation, Shane doesn't have the money for the move let alone for college. Shane has to decide how far he will go to achieve his short term goal, which becomes all the more difficult with other things happening on the reserve associated to him.