Obomsawin produces NFB film about the story of her own Abenaki people
Politics closer to home - BRENDAN KELLY, The Gazette - August 31, 2006
After her powerful Kanehsatake epic, Alanis Obomsawin takes on a more personal subject: the story of her own Abenaki people in Quebec
The world premiere of Alanis Obomsawin's Waban-Aki: People From Where the Sun Rises takes place tonight at the Montreal film fest.
Thirty-six years after she first began toiling as a documentary filmmaker, Alanis Obomsawin finally decided to return home with a film crew.
Home in her case is Odanak, the Abenaki village near Sorel, just south of the St. Lawrence River, where Obomsawin spent most of the first nine years of her life.
The result is Waban-Aki: People From Where the Sun Rises, a fascinating look at the history of this small native community which was famous in the early 20th century for its exceptionally talented basket-makers. The National Film Board production has its world premiere today at the Montreal World Film Festival, with simultaneous screenings in English and French at the Quartier Latin cinema.
The Montreal filmmaker, who is a member of the Abenaki nation, has won awards and acclaim across the globe for often-activist films that have explored everything from a controversial police raid on a Quebec Mi'kmaq reserve (Incident at Restigouche, 1984) to the suicide of a teenager (Richard Cardinal: Cry from a Diary of a Metis Child, 1986).
She also made four powerful films about different aspects of the 1990 Oka Crisis, including the 1993 epic Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance, which won the Citytv Award as best Canadian feature at the Toronto Film Festival that year.
Waban-Aki is one of Obomsawin's most personal films. It's also the first time she's devoted an entire movie to the Abenaki people.
"I always felt I had to do something for my own people," Obomsawin said in a recent interview on the terrace of the apartment where she's lived for the past 38 years, on a quiet street minutes from the heart of downtown.
"I've been wanting to do this for quite a few years."
Obomsawin was born in an Abenaki community in New Hampshire, but moved with her parents at the age of six months to Odanak on the banks of the St. Francis River, northeast of Montreal. She stayed there until the age of nine, when her father moved the family to Trois Rivieres because he had found work near there as a hunting and fishing guide.
"I have very good memories of my childhood (in Odanak)," said Obomsawin.
"We didn't have electricity or running water but I didn't know we were poor."
Waban-Aki features many older Odanak residents talking about the days when the village was a bustling centre for basket-making and it is partly a nostalgic portrait of a bygone era. But Obomsawin is never one to shy away from political arguments and, about midway through the documentary, it veers off into an account of the negative impact of the federal Indian Act on natives across the country.
Obomsawin said that more engage section came naturally because "making this film, I realized some horrifying things."
There are indeed poignant moments in which Abenaki women talk of losing their official native status because they married non-natives, and how the law continues to haunt the lives of their grandchildren.
From the very beginning of her career in the early '60s when she was a folksinger, Obomsawin has always believed in the political power of art, and she hasn't become any less idealistic over the years.
"It's the voice of the people being heard and it can make changes," she said.
When Obomsawin was first making native-themed documentaries at the NFB in the early '70s, there were fewer media outlets for explorations of Canada's native culture. But she's happy to note that things have gotten a lot better, thanks to the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (APTN) and the NFB's ongoing production of films about native issues.
Like so many of Obomsawin's films, Waban-Aki doesn't gloss over the sorry history of how natives have been treated by successive Canadian governments. Though there is still anger in her voice when she talks of how native culture has been (mis)treated, she refuses to even contemplate becoming bitter.
"Canadians are generous people," said Obomsawin.
"There are all kinds of problems in our country, but I think people are tired of seeing injustice. There's been a lot of progress in the last 30 years in terms of the education system and in terms of realizing the value of the First Nations people. Thirty years ago, you were punished if you spoke your language at school. Now they're teaching (these languages) at university."
Waban-Aki: People From Where the Sun Rises screens today at 7:20 p.m. at Quartier Latin, with two screenings, one in English and the other in French.
© The Gazette (Montreal) 2006