Alanis Obomsawin (Abenaki) is an unparalleled voice in documentary filmmaking. Her radical, lifelong career spans more than five decades and centers the lives and voices of Indigenous communities. Her more than 50 films lay bare the ongoing challenges faced by Indigenous people under settler colonialism. Expressing oral traditions through filmmaking, Obomsawin’s collective body of work has transformed documentary cinema by making Indigenous stories visible and creating new Indigenous futures.
Alanis Obomsawin: A Lifetime of Insistence
October 13-November 4
This fall at the Walker, a series of screenings will showcase Obomsawin’s work and includes an in-person Walker Dialogue with Danis Goulet (Night Raiders, Reservation Dogs) and an event for all ages.
View the Walker-made series trailer.
ABOUT ALANIS OBOMSAWIN
Alanis Obomsawin (Abenaki, b. 1932, near Lebanon, New Hampshire) is one of Canada’s most distinguished documentary filmmakers. She began her career as a professional singer and storyteller before joining the National Film Board in 1967. Her award-winning films address the struggles of Indigenous peoples in Canada from their perspective, giving prominence to voices that have long been ignored or dismissed. A Companion of the Order of Canada and a Grand Officer of the Ordre national du Québec, she has received the Prix Albert-Tessier and the Canadian Screen Awards’ Humanitarian Award, as well as multiple Governor General’s Awards, lifetime achievement awards, and honorary degrees.
October 13 and 14, 7 pm
$15 ($12 Walker members, seniors, and students), free for students on Friday
Friday’s screening will be introduced by Laura Ortman (White Mountain Apache)
Before Alanis Obomsawin (Abenaki) began her lifelong career making films, she was a singer. Her 1977 film Amisk documents the James Bay Festival, a nine-day convergence of Indigenous musicians from across North America to perform in solidarity against a hydroelectric development on Cree land. Featuring performances by Akalise Novalinga (Inuit), Gordon Tootoosis (Cree), Tom Jackson (Cree), Duke Redbird (Chippewa), Willie Dunn (Micmac), as well as Obomsawin herself, Amisk is not only a concert film but also a declaration of culture, resistance, and the future of Indigenous sovereignty. (Canada, 1977, 40 min.)
Preceding Amisk are two recent short videos by Laura Ortman (White Mountain Apache) and Elisa Harkins (Cherokee/Muscogee). Ortman’s My Soul Remainer, made in collaboration with Nanobah Becker (Diné) and Jock Soto (Diné), features the artist in one of her sound-sculpting and atmospheric solo violin performances atop a mountain in New Mexico. In Teach Me a Song, the artist features Indigenous friends teaching her songs in an ongoing project concerned with language and song preservation.
Total running time for the screening: 70 min.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Elisa Harkins is a Native American (Cherokee/Muscogee) artist and composer based in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Her work is concerned with translation, language preservation, and Indigenous musicology. Harkins uses the Cherokee and Mvskoke languages, electronic music, sculpture, and the body as her tools. She is the first person to use the Cherokee language in a contemporary song. Harkins received a BA from Columbia College, Chicago, and an MFA from CalArts. She has since continued her education at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. She has exhibited her work at Crystal Bridges; Documenta 14; the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the Heard Museum, Phoenix; and the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Harkins created the Indigenous concert series called 6 Moons and published a CD of Muscogee/Seminole Hymns. She is also the DJ of Mvhayv Radio, an Indigenous radio show on 99.1FM in Indianapolis, and streaming from OK#1 in Tulsa. Radio III / ᎦᏬᏂᏍᎩ ᏦᎢ is a dance performance that features music and choreography by Harkins. With support from PICA and Western Front, songs from the performance have been collected into a double LP, which can be found on Harkins’s Bandcamp. Harkins resides on the Muscogee Reservation and is an enrolled member of the Muscogee Nation.
Laura Ortman (b. Arizona, 1973) is a soloist musician, composer, and vibrant collaborator who creates across multiple platforms, including recorded albums, live performances, and filmic and artistic soundtracks. Ortman has collaborated with artists Tony Conrad, Jock Soto, Raven Chacon, Nanobah Becker, Okkyung Lee, Martin Bisi, Jeffrey Gibson, Caroline Monnet, Tanya Lukin Linklater, and Martha Colburn, and as part of the trio In Defense of Memory. An inquisitive and exquisite violinist, Ortman is versed in Apache violin, piano, electric guitar, keyboards, and amplified violin, and often sings through a megaphone. She is a producer of capacious field recordings. In 2008 Ortman founded the Coast Orchestra, an all Native American orchestral ensemble that performed a live soundtrack to Edward Curtis’s film In the Land of the Head Hunters (1914), the first silent feature film to star an all Native American cast. Ortman has performed at the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York; the Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal; the Stone residency; the New Museum, New York; imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival; the 2019 Whitney Biennial; and the Centre Pompidou, Paris, among countless venues in the United States, Canada, and Europe. Ortman lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance by Alanis Obomsawin
October 20 and 21, 7 pm
$15 ($12 Walker members, seniors, and students), free for students on Friday
“A watershed film in the history of First Peoples cinema.” —Jesse Wente, Indigenous Screen Office
In the summer of 1990, an armed standoff over a planned golf course on Kanien’kéhaka (Mohawk) land unfolded. Filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin (Abenaki) embedded herself on the front lines of this conflict for 78 days to film the discord between the protesters, police, and military. Extending from the tradition of militant cinema that developed during liberation movements around the globe in the 1960s, Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance is a potent and continually relevant film about sovereignty and Indigenous land rights. (1993, Canada, DCP, 119 min.)
Walker Dialogue: Alanis Obomsawin with Danis Goulet
Thursday, November 2, 7 pm
Free
Celebrate the work of Alanis Obomsawin (Abenaki) in a special onstage conversation with Danis Goulet (Cree-Métis). Spanning more than 50 films, Obomsawin’s collective body of work has transformed documentary cinema by making Indigenous stories visible and creating new Indigenous futures. Reaching across her lifelong work as an impassioned artist, the dialogue will explore how Obomsawin has used her position as an artist and filmmaker to transform the lives of Indigenous peoples.
Goulet, who has called Obomsawin “the grandmother of Indigenous film,” cites Obomsawin as one of her influences. An independent director whose debut feature film, Night Raiders, screened at the Walker in 2022, Goulet has recently directed several episodes of the series Reservation Dogs. She has also championed Obomsawin’s films through her work at imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival and the Toronto International Film Festival.
The conversation will include a screening of Obomsawin’s first film, Christmas at Moose Factory (1971, 13 min.), filmed at a residential school in northern Ontario and composed entirely of drawings and stories by young Cree children.
Before the dialogue, join us for a Community Reception in the Main Lobby at 5:30 pm.
Free tickets are available at 5 pm from the Main Lobby desk. Show your interest via this form.
ABOUT DANIS GOULET
Danis Goulet (b. 1977) is a Cree-Métis writer and director originally from Northern Saskatchewan in Canada. Her debut feature Night Raiders (2021) premiered at the Berlinale and was selected as a Gala Presentation of the Toronto International Film Festival in 2021. Goulet’s feature and her earlier short films, Wakening (2013) and Barefoot (2012), have screened at festivals around the world, including Sundance, Berlin, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). Goulet has recently directed several episodes for the Sterlin Harjo and Taika Waititi–created series Reservation Dogs. She is a former director of the imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival, an alumna of the National Screen Institute and the TIFF Filmmaker Lab, and a current member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Goulet currently lives in Toronto.
Accessibility and Content Notes
This program will have ASL interpretation.
Content note: The short film Christmas at Moose Factory was made at a residential school in Northern Ontario in 1971. The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, based in Minneapolis, provides a resource list for trauma responses. The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition leads in the pursuit of understanding and addressing the ongoing trauma created by the US Indian Boarding School policy. More info at boardingschoolhealing.org.
For information about accessibility or to request additional accommodations for this program, call 612.375.7564 or email access@walkerart.org.
For more information about accessibility at the Walker, visit our Access page.
Alanis Obomsawin at Free First Saturday
Saturday, November 4, 1 pm
Free
“My main interest all my life has been education because that’s where you develop yourself, where you learn to hate or to love.” —Alanis Obomsawin
In honor of Abenaki filmmaker and artist Obomsawin’s lifelong dedication to education, see a special selection of her short films that uplift Indigenous children. Obomsawin will introduce the screening in the Walker Cinema at 1 pm.
Obomsawin’s early documentaries create a remarkable visual archive of Indigenous communities. Mount Currie Summer Camp (1975) was made with a Stl’atl’imx (Líl̓wat) community, seen through the beautiful faces of children going about their daily routines. Partridge (1972) shares family memories and a story of how the spirit of the partridge protects children in the Atikamekw community of Manawan. A 1977 filmed performance features Obomsawin onstage singing a traditional lullaby, Nbaw (Hush, Sleep).
In Sigwan (2005), a drama made for young audiences, a young girl learns about acceptance from forest animals.
The shorts program concludes with Walking is Medicine (2017), the story of six young Cree men who decided to walk from Whapmagoostui, Quebec, to Ottawa. Their journey is made in the spirit of their ancestors, whose traditions were to travel long distances in the winter, crossing frozen rivers and lakes, meeting many different nations from across the country. Known as the Nishiyuu walkers, they made their journey to bring attention to Indigenous youth and to be part of a new beginning.
Total running time for the program (with intro): approximately 35 min.
Click here for more information about Free First Saturday: Generations on Nov 4. An additional program of short films will loop in the Mediatheque throughout the day (10 am – 3 pm). Made in the 1970’s, Obomsawin’s documentary portraits preserve oral histories, songs, and traditions of Indigenous peoples of Manawan and the Líl̓wat Nation for future generations: Children (1972), The Canoe (1972), Snowshoes (1972), Farming (1975), Basket (1975), Salmon (1975), Xúsum (1975), Wild Rice Harvest Kenora (1979), and June in Povungnituk – Quebec Arctic (1980).
Thank you to the National Film Board of Canada.