Artist Talk with Alanis Obomsawin

Obomsawin will talk about the intersection of art and activism, drawing on her long career as a filmmaker, singer-songwriter and visual artist. Catered lunch to follow. Free admission.

More about Obomsawin via The Canadian Encyclopedia

Committed to redressing the invisibility of Aboriginal peoples, Alanis Obomsawin’s filmmaking style resides in the unique ability to pair Aboriginal oral traditions with methods of documentary. Amisk andMother of Many Children, produced and directed in 1977, combine interviews with music, dance, drawings and archival images to validate the history of Aboriginal peoples across Canada. Of her films on young people, Richard Cardinal: Cry from a Diary of a Métis Child(1986) is the best known, and perhaps the most striking. A dramatic account of a young boy’s suicide, it led to a government report on social services for Indigenous foster children in Alberta, though little has been done to alleviate such promlems.

Her films have documented the work of Aboriginal organizations to help young people overcome alcohol and drug abuse (Poundmaker’s Lodge: A Healing Place, 1987), and provide services to homeless Indigenous peoples in Montréal (No Address, 1988.) Her films on the struggles of the Mi’kmaq over fishing rights (Incident at Restigouche, 1984) and the Mohawk-government standoff at Oka in 1990 (Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance, 1993) have been widely acclaimed, and have brought Obomsawin national and international recognition.