Centering on building a small fire, Dan reflects on returning to their hometown of the oil industry, Fort McMurray, and their family’s ancestral territory in Fort Chipewyan. As someone who grew up in foster care, Little Fires is a return to the land and an embodied memory. Dan offers footage of the aftermath of the 2016 Fort McMurray wildfire, referred to locally as “The Beast,” at the bank of Horse River where the fire initially sparked.

Accompanying the videos is a voiceover of Dan’s poem The Arrival, which engages directly with The Book of Dene—a 1976 missionary publication produced by Catholic priests at Holy Angels Residential School in Fort Chipewyan. The book contains translated oral histories of Chipewyan people, told originally in different dialects of Dene, then translated into French and later English for publication. The original speakers, including Dan’s ancestors, were never recorded.

In Fort Chipewyan, Dan documents the eerie dry shores of Athabasca Lake, where the water level has never been this low since time immemorial. They visit the shoreline where the remains of the Holy Angels building lie after being anonymously burnt down, including the site where parents of the children who were forced to attend would set up camp on the river banks at night to keep close but also let their children know they were still there. Dan’s family was forcibly enrolled at Holy Angels for generations, from its founding in 1873 to its closure in 1974.