Alanis Obomsawin was born in 1932 and is a member of the Abenaki Nation. She spent her early years on the Odanak reserve, then at the age of six relocated to Trois Rivieres, Quebec, where her family was the only Indigenous peoples in the community. Driven by the need for truthful and respectful education about Indigenous peoples, while in her early 20s, Alanis began performing as a singer and storyteller and toured in Canada, the US and Europe including managing her own stage at the Mariposa Folk Festival in the 1960s.
In the late 1960s Alanis was hired as a consultant by the National Film Board of Canada where she went on to become one of the most acclaimed Indigenous directors in the world, completing dozens of documentaries, exploring the lives and concerns of Indigenous peoples including violent conflicts such as the raids on the Mi’kmaq over fishing rights in the early 1980s and the historic Mohawk standoff at Oka.
Alanis has an incredible list of well-deserved awards and honors including honorary doctorates from the universities of York, Carleton, UBC, Western, McGill, Concordia, and Dalhousie. In 1983 she was made a Member of the Order of Canada, she’s received the Governor General’s Performing Arts award for Lifetime Artistic Achievement, the Glenn Gould Prize, the prix Albert-Tessier for contribution to Quebecois cinema, and many others.
In this episode of Conflict, Power, & Persuasion we take a walk through time, discussing the struggles to realize Indigenous rights and the path to reconciliation.
Some topics discussed include:
And much more!
Links:
CBC’s Telescope Episode: https://www.cbc.ca/archives/entry/alanis-obomsawin-the-activist
Bush Lady Album: https://alanisobomsawin.bandcamp.com/
NFA Documentary Films: https://www.nfb.ca/directors/alanis-obomsawin/
