Alanis Obomsawin

Alanis Obomsawin, a member of the Abenaki Nation, is one of Canada’s foremost documentary filmmakers. The many films that she has directed with the National Film Board of Canada explore the lives and concerns of Canada’s First Nations. Her 50th and most recent film, Our People Will Be Healed, reveals how a Cree community in Manitoba has been enriched by an adequately funded school that nurtures Indigenous culture.
Obomsawin originally launched her career in 1960 as a professional singer in New York City. In 1967, NFB producers Joe Koenig and Bob Verrall invited her to act as a consultant for a film on Indigenous people. Obomsawin quickly fell in love with the camera and never looked back.
As an activist filmmaker, Obomsawin has always been driven by a desire to give Canada’s first peoples a voice. This can be seen in all her films, from Christmas at Moose Factory (1971), which depicts life in a Cree village in James Bay through children’s drawings, to We Can’t Make the Same Mistake Twice (2016), which describes the legal battle that First Nations waged from 2007 to 2016 so that their children would receive the same care as other Canadian children. Throughout her career, Obomsawin has consistently focused her lens on the importance of roots and intergenerational bonds in preserving First Nations culture.
Obomsawin is no stranger to documenting emerging conflicts, as evidenced by her four films on the Oka Crisis of 1990: Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance (1993), winner of 18 international awards; My Name Is Kahentiiosta (1995); Spudwrench: Kahnawake Man (1997); and Rocks at Whiskey Trench(2000).
Her other documentary films include Incident at Restigouche(1984), a gripping account of the provincial police raids on a Quebec Mi’gmaq reserve; the moving Richard Cardinal: Cry from a Diary of a Métis Child (1986), about a teenager who commits suicide; and No Address (1988), which looks at homelessness in Montreal. Obomsawin’s more recent films include The People of the Kattawapiskak River (2012), which exposes the housing crisis facing the Cree of James Bay and was named Best Social/Political Documentary at the Canadian Screen Awards (2014), and Hi-Ho Mistahey!, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival Film (TIFF) in 2013 and was nominated for Best Feature Length Documentary at the 2014 Canadian Screen Awards.
Especially close to Obomsawin’s heart are the Odanak people and their stories, as witnessed by her short film Sigwan (2005) and her follow-up, the multi-award-winning Waban-aki: People from Where the Sun Rises (2006). In Our Nationhood (2003), Obomsawin captures the determination of the Listuguj Mi’gmaq people to manage the natural resources of their traditional lands. With Is the Crown at War with Us? (2002), the accomplished filmmaker takes a close look at the conflict between the Mi’gmaq and their Acadian neighbours over fishing rights in Burnt Church, New Brunswick.
Obomsawin was inducted into the Playback Canadian Film & Television Hall of Fame in 2010 and honoured during the inaugural Birks Diamond Tribute to the Year’s Women in Film at TIFF in 2013. In 2014, Obomsawin also received the Humanitarian Award for Exceptional Contributions to Community and Public Service from the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television.