An Indigenous Point of View

Recommended Viewing: During our discussion, Concordia University professor emerita, Monika Gagnon, who has met Alanis Obomsawin, interviewed her and wrote about her, recommended those interested in exploring her work further, to watch these films:

• Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance
• Honour to Senator Murray Sinclair
• Incident at Restigouche
• Waban-aki: People from Where the Sun Rises. 
• Christmas at Moose Factory
• Trick or Treaty
• Amisk (Obomsawin sings in this documentary.)

As National Truth and Reconciliation Day approached, we explored the remarkable career and legacy of Abenaki filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin.

On Sunday, Sept. 27, 1:00-3:00 pm, at the Revue Cinema, we watched a selection of Obomsawin’s documentaries from the 1970s to the 2020s, followed by a discussion of the focus of her films, her techniques, her influence and the doors she opened for other indigenous filmmakers.

Obamsawen began her artistic career as a singer and story teller, but pivoted to filmmaking in the early 1970s. Over five decades, she has directed more than 60 films, depicting details of indigenous lives and culture and offering behind-the-scenes perspectives on First Nations’ resistance such as the Kanien’kéhaka standoff, known as the Oka crisis.

According to critic Jesse Wente, as quoted in The Walrus magazine, “It’s hard to imagine someone else who has had quite the same influence on Canada’s understanding of itself as Alanis.”

And as Obomsawin has commented: “So much history can be lost if no one tells the story – so that’s what I do. I tell the stories. This is my way of fighting for social change.”

We also included two short documentaries about Obomsawin herself. The full list we screened, a mix of Obomsawan’s short documentaries, is below.

The films are provided courtesy of the National Film Board of Canada.

After the event, we adjourned to Back Lane Studios for a reception, where we watched a brand-new short documentary about the neighbourhood Peace Garden, which was created with help from the Mississaugas of the Credit and is an expression of reconciliation.  We also enjoyed  songs performed by our neighbour, artist and singer Cathy Hunt.

Our Guests:

We were honoured to have Monika Gagnon, professor emerita at Concordia University, who joined us on Zoom, and Mia Jones, a representative from imagineNATIVE, the world’s largest presenter of indigenous screen media, who was at the cinema:

MONIKA GAGNON: A Professor Emeritus of Communication Studies at Concordia University, she is an award-winning scholar, curator, and cultural critic whose work has shaped conversations on race, representation, and visual culture in Canada. Over a career spanning four decades, she has brought together art, archives, and public memory to illuminate overlooked histories and experimental practices in media and cinema.

Her acclaimed books — including Other Conundrums: Race, Culture and Canadian Art (2000) and Reimagining Cinema: Film at Expo 67 (2015) — have become touchstones in Canadian cultural studies, while recent edited volumes such as In Search of Expo 67 (2021) and Charles Gagnon: The Colour of Time, the Sound of Space (2025) extend her interest in archives, collaboration, and institutional memory. Gagnon was on the founding collectives of Border/lines magazine and Public Access, was co-editor of the artist-run centre magazine, Parallelogramme and director of Artspeak Gallery, and she has curated exhibitions at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, DHC/ART, The Power Plant, Galerie Oboro and the Cinémathèque Québécoise. Her creative-research projects explore “posthumous cinema” and unfinished film archives.

The recipient of the Concordia University Research Fellowship for excellence in the Person & Society domain in 2017, she continues to write and speak on art, media, and cultural politics. Through her writing, curating, and teaching, Gagnon has fostered vital dialogues between artists, scholars, and publics, helping to reimagine how Canada tells its cultural stories.

MIA JONES: An Onondaga, Dene, and Cree artist from Six Nations of the Grand River, Mia relocated to Toronto in 2021 to attend OCAD, majoring in Integrated Media. During her time there, Mia created & co-hosted a comedic, pop-culture-focused podcast called Endless, Nameless, with frequent collaborator Gabriella Rigakos. This gave her opportunities to interview featured filmmakers at TIFF 2023 and encouraged her to pursue more visual storytelling. She and Rigakos later partnered on a short film, Sick Bird, which premiered in Toronto this year at Pendance Film Festival, with a following U.S. screening at NFFTY in Seattle.

Currently, Mia works at imagineNATIVE in the Programming Department. Through imagineNATIVE, she works collaboratively to uplift young storytellers and open the doors for Indigenous media to expand into the mainstream. Mia leads with a surrealist and self-reflective lens, encouraging her communities to tell their own stories with an experimental voice.

FILMS SCREENED: