The 500 or so people living on the Mosquito (Grizzly Bear’s Head) reserve in central Saskatchewan are undergoing some introspective times. This past spring, the chief and a councillor from the band office were charged with fraud and breach of trust as part of a 5-year investigation into the (mis)management of their people’s Treaty Land Entitlement (TLE) money. Three former trustees were also charged.
Blog
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Snatching the People’s Purse
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VIDEO: Aboriginal Art in the Making
Employing a straightforward photo slide-show format to quite decent effect, these Aboriginal artist profiles from the Desert Art Centre in Alice Springs, Australia are pretty engaging in their own way. The didgeridoo-based soundtrack in many of them helps.
From their YouTube page, here is one of DAC’s shorter slide-shows, documenting a work in the making by artist Doris Bush:
Very cool to see how works like hers come together from start to finish. The color choices and palette, not to mention the composition, by these painters are amazing. I hope the Centre makes the transition to video eventually, to deepen the audience’s appreciation of each artist’s creative process.
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AUDIO: Discussing Aboriginal film and fund-raising on STREETZ-FM
In this installment of our weekly Tuesday sitdown on STREETZ 104.7 FM, Rick Harp and THE WORD host Lady V discuss two exciting bits of news about Aboriginal people working on both sides of the camera: one has to do with a Hollywood blockbuster expected out in July 2011; the other, an experimental short showing next month at the Toronto International Film Festival. We also discuss a recent tweet on the mediaINDIGENA Twitter page highlighting one of many Aboriginal-related entries to a contest awarding thousands of dollars to community projects.MI on STREETZ: Aug. 17, 2010
[audio:https://mediaindigena.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/MI-TheWord-Aug-17-10.mp3|titles=mediaINDIGENA on The Word, STREETZ 104.7 FM]
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Canada Apologizes to Inuit Families for Forced High Arctic Relocation
New Indian & Northern Affairs Minister John Duncan issued a formal apology to the descendants of 19 Inuit families who were forcibly relocated from Inukjuak and Pond Inlet to Grise Fiord and Resolute Bay in the High Arctic during the 1950’s.
According to the full statement:
“The Government of Canada apologizes for having relocated Inuit families and recognizes that the High Arctic Relocation resulted in extreme hardship and suffering for Inuit who were relocated. We deeply regret the mistakes and broken promises of this dark chapter of our history.”
As part of the apology, The Feds have committed to a series of commemoration projects and a $10-million trust. Duncan has also pledged to attend each of the commemoration events, set to take place this fall.
[Image via tunngavik.com]
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Aboriginal artist to screen at Toronto International Film Festival for second straight year
Awesome news out of Toronto and its international film festival, TIFF.
The festival has recently announced that Winnipeg-based artist Caroline Monnet will be showing her experimental short Warchild at this year’s event. The film is produced by another Winnipegger, Kevin Lee Burton, an acclaimed artist in his own right.
Warchild will make up part of the ‘Short Cuts Canada’ lineup at TIFF 2010. Here is the film’s synopsis:
Warchild is part of a trilogy of experimental documentaries done on students from Southeast Collegiate, a boarding school in Winnipeg for Aboriginal youth coming from Northern Manitoba. Recalling the aesthetic of traditional Japanese cinema, this short film portrays a young solitary figure seeking his place in society. His journey from the North to the city encapsulates his struggle to become a responsible adult and seek serenity.
This is a return engagement for Monnet, whose work IKWÉ (also produced edited by Burton, produced by the Mosaic Women’s Film Project) screened at TIFF in 2009, along with the imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival, Cine Las Americas, and the Winnipeg Aboriginal Film Festival, among many others. Both works are ably distributed by the Winnipeg Film Group.
Other Indigenous artists will be screening at TIFF as well, and we will highlight their work in future posts.
The festival runs Sept. 9 – 19. The schedule will be released Aug. 24.
