Alanis Obomsawin Films | Alanis Obomsawin Filmography | Alanis Obomsawin Biography | Alanis Obomsawin Career | Alanis Obomsawin Awards

Documentarian Alanis Obomsawin has become one of Canada?s leading native filmmakers?and has garnered international renown?in a career spanning more than a quarter of a century, a career that emerged out of a unique background. Soon after her birth in New Hampshire, her family moved to Canada, where they initially lived on the Odonak Reserve, northeast of Montreal. There, Obomsawin learned the songs and stories of her people, the Abenaki. When she was nine, her family moved again, this time settling in Trois-Rivi?res, a small town 75 miles northeast of Montreal, where Obomsawin was the only native child and had to endure cultural isolation and racial discrimination?experiences that had a profound effect on her later filmmaking. Following this typically difficult native childhood, Obomsawin moved to Montreal in the late 1950s, where she eventually emerged as a singer and storyteller out of the circle of writers, photographers, and artists she had joined. During the 1960s she traveled widely throughout Canada, the United States, and Europe performing in universities, prisons, art centers, and at folk festivals for humanitarian causes; she even made several guest appearances on the Canadian version of the television series Sesame Street, and was named ?Outstanding Canadian of the Year? in 1965 by Maclean?s magazine. In 1967, Canada?s National Film Board (NFB) invited her to work as an adviser on several film projects, leading to her entrance into documentary filmmaking and a long-term relationship with the NFB. Making this move was a natural one for Obomsawin, the storyteller; she has said that ?to make a film you have to be able to tell a story. Filmmaking for me is really storytelling.?

All of Obomsawin?s films deal with one or more aspects of native life, culture, and customs, conveyed through the sensitive and perceptive prism of an insider (it is worth noting that she also writes and co-produces, and often narrates, her films). Her 1971 debut, Christmas at Moose Factory, tells the story of life at the Cree settlement of Moose Factory through the artwork of its native children. After directing two multimedia educational packages in 1973 and 1976, she returned to film in 1977 with the award-winning Mother of Many Children, her first feature-length documentary. For this film, Obomsawin traveled throughout Canada to document the seminal role that women play?by using language and storytelling to pass on their culture?in what are largely matrilineal societies.

Also in 1977 came Amisk, in which Obomsawin showcased native music and dancing at a concert that was part of a week-long festival. Held in Montreal, the purpose of the festival was to raise funds in support of the Cree people of James Bay, who were battling to save their land from a massive hydroelectric project being built by the government of Quebec. This was the first of several films in which Obomsawin documents conflicts between native peoples and the government, which is somewhat ironic given that she was awarded the prestigious Order of Canada in 1983. In fact, the year following this honor, Obomsawin directed Incident at Restigouche, which portrays a showdown over salmon fishing rights between the Micmac people on the Restigouche Reserve and the Ontario Provincial Police. Snappily edited, the film draws on television coverage of two police raids of the reserve, montaged news photographs, maps, courtroom drawings, shots of Micmac fishermen, on-camera interviews, and footage of salmon migrating and spawning. Although it plays down the issue of overfishing and is thus not entirely even-handed in its approach, Incident at Restigouche?like many of Obomsawin?s films?gives voice to native peoples whose rights are too often trampled upon.

In Richard Cardinal, Obomsawin drew upon a diary left behind by the M?tis title character who had committed suicide in 1984 at age 17 after being shuttled?incredibly?between 28 foster homes, group homes, and shelters in Alberta. To tell this story of abuse and neglect inflicted by the child-welfare system, Obomsawin intersperses quotes from his diary with scenes from his life reconstructed by actors, interviews with some of his foster parents, and depictions of the squalid settings the agencies placed him in.

Obomsawin?s next films continued to portray the difficulties of native life in Canada but also highlighted the importance of collective action and tradition in efforts to help native peoples overcome these difficulties. Poundmaker?s Lodge focuses on a treatment center in St. Albert, Alberta, where native people attempt to rebuild their substance abuse-devastated lives through mutual support, the sweat lodge and other rituals, and the rediscovery of their traditions. In No Address Obomsawin depicts the plight of native people who become part of the homeless population of Montreal soon after arriving there in search of a better life; it also looks, however, at the work of various organizations, such as the Montreal Native Friendship Centre, which attempt to help these individuals. In yet another portrayal of a community organization, Le Patro Le Pr?vost 80 Years Later showcases the 1909-founded Patro Le Pr?vost, a downtown Montreal religious-oriented center that brings people in the community together through various programs and activities.

In the 1990s, Obomsawin has spent much of her time documenting the summer and early fall 1990 confrontation in the Mohawk village of Kanehsatake near Oka, Quebec, between the Mohawks, the provincial police, and Canadian army?and this historic event?s aftermath. She has so far made three films centering on the Oka crisis, with the first, the 1993-released Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance, becoming her most-celebrated film yet. During the entire 78-day standoff?which grew out of a scheme to have the government take over Mohawk pine-forest land to build a golf course?Obomsawin lived with the Mohawks, thus very much imparting an insider?s perspective to the film. But this film, unlike Incident at Restigouche, is more even-handed in its politics, with, for example, an army major being portrayed rather sympathetically. More importantly, Obomsawin in this two-hour-long film takes the time to put the Oka crisis into a historical context, namely the nearly three centuries of land-grabbing in and around Montreal at the expense of the Mohawks. This powerful documentary?winner of 18 international awards?thus fulfilled her intention of presenting a community to itself, at the same time that it provided to outsiders a complex record of an important event and its impact on the people involved.

Obomsawin next provided intimate portraits of two of the Mohawks involved in the Oka crisis through 1995?s My Name Is Kahentiiosta and 1997?s Spudwrench?Kahnawake Man. The former focuses on a young woman named Kahentiiosta, who is arrested during the crisis and then detained for longer than the other women because the government will not accept her aboriginal name in court. Spudwrench tells the story of Randy Home, a high-steel worker who adopted the code name ?spudwrench? during the crisis, and of the generations of Mohawk high-steel workers who have traveled around North America to work on some of the tallest buildings in the world. In both films, Obomsawin is careful to detail the reasons why these and other Mohawks were willing to risk their lives to save their sacred land.

Throughout her increasingly impressive career, Obomsawin has lived up to her goal of making documentary films both for her own community and for the outside world. She concisely summed up her approach when she said, ?I make films for the world, [but] first of all I think of the people who I am documenting.??DAVID E. SALAMIE