Since it's National Aboriginal Day today (June 21) in Canada, here's a roundup of recently announced national initiatives to address systemic inequities and problems facing indigenous content in the film industry, as well as a few local screenings to take in.

Indigenous Screen Office

On June 12, Canadian heritage minister Mélanie Joly announced that several industry organizations were collaborating to create an Indigenous Screen Office in Canada.

The contributing organizations include the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network, CBC, the Canada Media Fund, Telefilm Canada, the Canadian Media Producers Association, and the National Film Board of Canada (NFB).

The office will focus on the development, production, and marketing of indigenous talent and content. It will address issues such as systemic barriers that prevent indigenous stories from being told on screen, inadequate funding, distribution difficulties, geographical challenges, and a lack of indigenous representation.

The office was created in response to an industry-wide undertaking to develop recommendations on supporting Indigenous screen-based industries.

National Film Board of Canada

Then on June 20, the NFB announced a three-year plan in response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada's recommendations.

The plan will cover four main areas: institutional transformation; industry leadership; production; and distribution, collection management, and education.

The NFB's commitment include achieving representational parity in their own workforce by 2025, ensuring 15 percent of production spending is on indigenous-directed project, developing guidelines and protocols for producing and distributing indigenous works, developing protocols for accessing and reusing archives, and providing cultural-competency training for all staff.

“The NFB acknowledges its enormous debt to the first generation of Indigenous filmmakers at the NFB, first and foremost Alanis Obomsawin,” NFB chairperson and government film commissioner Claude Joli-Coeur stated in a news release. “Alanis joined the NFB in 1967 and fought against an often hostile environment to create an unparalleled body of work that has fundamentally recast understandings of Indigenous realities and relationships with settler society. The struggles of Alanis and others to claim a space for Indigenous voices within the NFB, on Canadian screens and within the broader Canadian production industry constitute the foundations for the commitments we are making today.”

Among the current members of the NFB's Indigenous Advisory Group (which includes Obomsawin) is local filmmaker Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers, as well as Lisa Jackson (a former Vancouverite now in Toronto).

Vancouver screenings

One of the NFB's locally made films is Marie Clements' non-fiction musical The Road Forward, which takes a look at the history of First Nations activism in British Columbia. The film opened the 2017 DOXA Documentary Film Festival in May, and will be back at Vancity Theatre for a theatrical run from July 14 to 20.

Prior to that, Vancouver viewers can check out a free screening at 7 p.m. on June 29 at the Cinematheque (1131 Howe Street).

The 1993 NFB documentary Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance, by the aforementioned Alanis Obomsawin, chronicles the 1990 Oka crisis. During an armed standoff against provincial police and the Canadian military that lasted 78 days, Quebec Mohawks protested the planned expansion of a golf course into their traditional land.    

It's part of the Canada on Screen series, which is a yearlong program of free screenings of Canadian films. For more information on the screenings, visit the Cinematheque website.

Whistler Film Festival and Summit

Today (June 21), the Whistler Film Festival opened its call for applications for their fifth annual Aboriginal Filmmaker Fellowship.

Up to six emerging indigenous Canadian film artists (with short films, webisode projects, or TV pilots) will be able to attend a four-day creative and business immersion program from November 29 to December 3 at the Whistler Film Festival and Summit.

Participants will receive individual and project feedback from industry mentors and group sessions, have access to the festival's screenings and industry summit.

The application deadline is August 30. 

For more information or to apply, visit the WFF website.