Storyteller Alanis Obomsawin is as prolific in her filmmaking as in her generosity

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When filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin was 16 years old, she started giving Christmas presents to every child in her Northern Quebec hometown. She made them herself, using patterns from a children’s drawing to sew stuffed animals such as horses and dogs.

“I had no money and would fill them up with rags,” Ms. Obomsawin recalled in an interview with the Globe and Mail in Ottawa. For wrapping, she used newspaper, which she drew pictures on.

“So when people say, ‘Oh, I can’t do this. I don’t have any money,’ I say, ‘Man, I had nothing and look what I did.’”

This Christmas, the 92-year-old Abenaki filmmaker and director continues the tradition, only now she is shopping for more than 50 children from Odanak, Que., north of Montreal. Each child now gets five presents (sometimes more) delivered by Ms. Obomsawin personally early in the new year, based on a wish list completed by each child and their parents.

She is as prolific in her filmmaking as in her generosity, with 65 movies under her belt and one in the works. Her current film project, which she’s been working on for a few years, focuses on child welfare.

Ms. Obomsawin was inspired to make her documentary by Cindy Blackstock, the executive director of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society. In 2007, Ms. Blackstock launched the initial case with the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal that charged Canada with discrimination for underfunding on-reserve child welfare services. The case led to historic settlement agreements to compensate and reform child welfare for First Nations.

The issue has subsequently been battled in the courts and more recently, at the Assembly of First Nations, where hundreds of chiefs have had to debate and make decisions related to a historic multi-billion dollar deal.

For Ms. Obomsawin, childhood is where she finds her roots as a storyteller.

Raised with no running water or hydro, storytelling was a big part of Ms. Obomsawin’s early life. Her father and other hunting and fishing guides would tell tales of their rich clients and the animals encountered in the bush. She and other children in the community would gather amid the flickering lights of oil lamps to listen to stories and she began to visualize stories in her own way.

“Our people would do things with nature, with water, with people, not against, not changing what nature is,” she said.

She began her career as a singer. (Just weeks ago, she performed a concert in Vancouver: “I thought I’d die, I was so nervous.”) In the early 1960s, she was the subject of a CBC documentary about her effort to fundraise for a swimming pool on her reserve. In 1967, she signed on with the NFB, eventually working on educational materials for schools, in an effort to change the Canadian narrative about Indigenous children. Her first NFB short film, in 1971, was titled Christmas at Moose Factory, about children’s experience of the holiday in that Northern Ontario community.

Since then, she has produced films at the rate of about one a year and is still probably best known as the filmmaker who stuck it out for the entire 78 days of the blockade at Oka, Que., in 1990, producing her classic Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance. After more than 56 years with the National Film Board, she is one of the most respected Indigenous filmmakers in the world.

Ms. Obomsawin says her work, rooted in her love for children, is what keeps her going.

“I love the way they express themselves. And there’s so much wisdom in what they say,” she said.

The filmmaker recalls being told her language was Satan’s language as a child.

“You grow up, you look in the mirror, you start believing these things, and it’s been very, very bad for our people, for many generations, it’s not just a few.”

About the only time she takes off work now is when she does the annual gift gathering. “I take seven or eight days and we wrap, and lot of friends come to help, and we have fun, and the kids, they’re so happy,” she said.

“I had a horrible life as a child, it was terrible. I was beat up a lot and just a terrible story, and I just didn’t want other children to go through that,” she said.

Earlier in December, Ms. Obomsawin’s advocacy for Indigenous children saw her attending an AFN assembly where she filmed and interviewed the First Nations chiefs and leaders engaged in the debate over compensation negotiations.

“I was very touched and impressed by the responsibilities that all the chiefs are taking and there’s a lot of love and good heart in the minds of all those people,” she said.

“You can tell that they really want certain things for their children and for their people.”

She said big changes are happening for Indigenous people across the country, and she sees hope.

“I can say that Canadians in general want to see justice to our [Indigenous] people, and it’s a very beautiful feeling to have, because it hasn’t been like that for many generations,” Ms. Obomsawin said.

She credits the current change in landscape to the unrelenting work of Indigenous people, in spite of childhoods full of abuses and intergenerational traumas.

“A lot of our people have written books. A lot of people are teachers. We have doctors, judges. It’s incredible the mileage that our people have done on their own,” Ms. Obomsawin.

“I’m so happy to still be alive. What a gift it is for me to see the difference. I just think I’m so lucky.”

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