For filmmaker Erica Tremblay, “Fancy Dance” has already achieved the highest of honors.

After screening the film for an audience of Cayuga- language speakers in Toronto this past year, one of the elders grabbed her by the cheeks and told her “good job” in Cayuga.

“Some of them were crying because they’re in their 80s and 90s and they’ve never seen their language in a film before,” says Tremblay. “To me, that’s the biggest award that the film has received so far.”

“Fancy Dance,” which hit theaters recently in limited release and is now streaming on Apple TV+, follows Jax (Lily Gladstone) and her teenage niece Roki (Isabel Deroy-Olson), for whom she has been caring since the disappearance of Roki’s mother. As Jax juggles searching for her sister and helping Roki prepare for an upcoming powwow dance, authorities come to take Roki away from the reservation and place her with her white grandfather.

Directed by Tremblay, 43, who co-wrote the script with Tlingit screenwriter Miciana Alise, “Fancy Dance” marks the Seneca- Cayuga filmmaker’s narrative feature debut. “Fancy Dance” is set in and around the Seneca-Cayuga reservation in Oklahoma.

Tremblay, who has written and directed on series such as “Reservation Dogs” and “Dark Winds,” explains that she found inspiration for the film’s story while in a three-year-long language-immersion program studying Cayuga.

“We were learning familial words at the time and I learned that the word for mother is knó:ha’ and that the word for your auntie on your maternal side was knohá:’ah, which means ‘little mother’ or your ‘other mother,’ ” says Tremblay. “This beautiful matriarchy and the importance of matrilineal kinship was so brilliantly obvious in the language and it was so moving to me.”

Through Jax and Roki’s story, “Fancy Dance” touches on ongoing systemic issues affecting Indigenous women and their communities, such as the missing and murdered crisis and the forced removal of Native American children from their families. But primarily, “Fancy Dance” is Tremblay’s love letter to her culture and the Cayuga language.

This interview with Tremblay has been edited for clarity and length.

Q: Why was it important for you to use Cayuga in this film?

A: We’re at a place with our language, Cayuga, where there are less than 20 first-language speakers left. That’s dire. I think it’s considered close to extinct as a language. I’m not a fluent speaker. I’ll always be a language learner. But I have knowledge of the language and you can’t just hold it to yourself.

Q: Jax and Roki’s relationship is at the heart of the movie. What I really enjoyed were the little routine moments they shared — moments of joy, like when Roki gets her first period.

A: It was really important to have those moments of joy and those moments of levity because that’s what it feels like in my community. I know so many Jaxes. I was raised by Jaxes and without those women and queer folks in my life, I wouldn’t be here. It’s through laughter and it’s through connection that you can transcend all of these things that are happening. My youngest niece just got her period this past month. It’s such a joyous occasion for us Haudenosaunee people. We don’t get to celebrate menses enough.

Q: I’m always happy to see cultures that celebrate periods because so often it feels like there’s a weird shame around it.

A: It’s so sad because there is. We have certain things that you can and can’t do when you’re on your period. It’s not shameful in our culture. When you’re on your period, there are certain things that you’re not allowed to be near or go around because you’re so powerful that you can disrupt it. Anthropologists tried to rewrite that, but it’s in the language, it’s in the ceremonies, it’s in the culture. I’m much more excited about accepting that than any sort of shame. I’m signing up for: I’m at my most powerful.

Q: How did you approach balancing these topics that matter to you with making entertainment?

A: Miciana and I wrote this film and made this film for Native people. We wanted the film to be a film that’s by Native people, about Native people. When Native people watch this, they’re going to see things represented accurately and authentically that make them proud and that they can identify with. So, No. 1, the responsibility when we were making the film was to Native people and to not re-traumatize or trigger Native people when they watched the film.

For the non-Native audiences that will come to find this film, we wanted to be able to talk about issues that are happening in Indian country in the hope that people who watch this can be guided to these topics by way of channeling humanity versus hitting you over the head. Every one of us on this planet can identify with the themes of love and loss and grief. Hopefully through the ebb and flows of (Jax and Roki’s) love, the audiences will recognize these systemic issues that are impacting Native people in modern times and they will think about their relationships to these systems.

Q: We’ve been in a period where it feels like there is more attention being paid to Native projects. What has it been like for you to see and experience that growth? Has the momentum stopped?

A: It’s really hard on these sets. I’ll often turn around on a tech scout and be the only woman. You might be working with collaborators that don’t want to listen to you because you’re a woman or you’re Indigenous or they just have this idea that you don’t have as much knowledge. That is very actively still happening and it ... sucks. But I have optimism that things are moving in the right direction.

But how do you make up for over 100 years of really deplorable, horrible behavior in, like, three seasons of TV? It’s going to take a lot more investment by Hollywood studios to make up for the bad behavior that existed for so long and that continues to exist. I always call on these studios and these companies: You can’t just say things out loud. You have to actually actively do things. It’s great you have these mentorship programs, but you have to hire these people and pay them and invest in their pitches and their ideas. There needs to be more active support from these institutions and we’re slowly seeing that happen. But we need more of that in order for this to not just be a fad.

Q: I’m impressed by your optimism.

A: I think as an industry, we’re all just holding on and hoping that we can get things back. My mom always taught me to be optimistic while also recognizing reality. I think that we can be optimistic and at the same time call out bad behavior from the studios and these systems. I want to work with them and I’m so excited when I do.

And I feel like my optimism is also a quality that I learned from the Jaxes in my life. When you look at Jax and Roki, the only way that they can get to the other side of what they’re facing is because they have optimism and they love each other. I feel the same way about the work of these incredible filmmakers. The only way we get to the other side of this is by linking hands and doing it together. And that comes from being inspired by these incredible Native people that I know and love that are sustaining much more. I go home (to the Seneca-Cayuga reservation) and there’s a person missing. That’s a way bigger ... deal than not getting hired in Hollywood. But it’s through laughter, through love, through humanity, through holding hands that we get to the other side of it. We’re going to survive Hollywood. We’ve survived way worse.