Writer and documentary maker Tanya Talaga, producer and writer Jennifer Podemski and APTN CEO Monika Ille on why Indigenous TV matters.
Toronto Star: There’s a scene in Tanya Talaga’s docuseries “The Knowing” in which she and Indigenous elder Darrell Boissoneau visit a train bridge in Garden River First Nation in Ontario that, for more than 50 years, has been emblazoned with the words “THIS IS INDIAN LAND.”
Boissoneau and five others painted it that way, despite risk of arrest, because of televised images of the 1973 occupation of Wounded Knee, S.D., by followers of the American Indian Movement. “It was the first time we saw our people standing up because of TV,” Boissoneau says in the doc.
Because of TV, CBC Gem viewers can watch that scene and others in the series about Talaga’s search for missing relatives and how it’s intertwined with Canada’s oppression of its Indigenous Peoples.
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Television is also where you’ll find the annual “Remembering the Children: National Day for Truth and Reconciliation” broadcast on APTN and CBC on Monday.
And television is how writer, producer and director Jennifer Podemski has reached audiences through Crave and APTN shows like the Sixties Scoop drama “Little Bird” and the comedy “Don’t Even.”
It’s an important, if imperfect, tool in the fraught journey toward truth and reconciliation.
“There’s a lot of truth to be told in this country. And so I hope people see the documentary and it helps,” said Talaga in a Zoom interview, speaking after “The Knowing” had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival and before it debuted on CBC Gem on Sept. 25.
She started making the series while writing her book of the same title. “I just really thought to myself, ‘I need to record this. So much is happening,’ especially after Kamloops,” she said, referring to the detection in 2021 of the suspected remains of missing children at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School — a discovery that set off searches across Canada for the graves of other children at other schools., collectively referred to as “the missing.”
In “The Knowing,” Talaga records not only her frustrating hunt for information about her great-great-grandmother Annie Carpenter — impeded by a lack of documentation that plagues all Indigenous families — but the erasure of Indigenous culture and lives in colonial institutions like residential schools, “Indian” hospitals and psychiatric facilities.
She and her team of researchers, producers, editors and technical crew captured history in the making, including the 2022 apology by Pope Francis for the role of the Catholic Church in colonial abuse; and the Pope’s subsequent trip to Canada and second apology in Maskwacis, Alta., for residential school atrocities.
Talaga, who is Anishinaabe, said she and Mohawk co-director Courtney Montour made the docuseries primarily for their Indigenous community, but she hopes it’s widely seen, including in high schools, colleges and universities: “It’s important we get our stories out, and our stories are heard and people see them.”
And while she has other projects on the go, including the feature-length documentary “Nadaamaadis,” about a residential school survivor turned land-back activist, she would gladly make another TV series.
“If I could keep this team that I’ve got and keep them going, I would love that.”
Jennifer Podemski has plenty of experience writing and producing TV series and films as well as acting in them. Like Talaga, she created her own production company, Redcloud Studios, to get her projects made. Yet she still finds it a struggle to put her shows in front of viewers — even after the success of “Little Bird,” the acclaimed drama she cocreated that won a record 13 Canadian Screen Awards.
“It absolutely moved the needle in terms of consciousness and awareness outside of the industry, (but) it didn’t move the needle too much for my career,” she said of the show in a phone interview.
“Things are changing so quickly in the industry and people … aren’t as excited to make stuff these days. So I’m just in development like any other writer-producer.”
Podemski, who is Ojibwe, named a handful of Indigenous programs that have already premiered or are still to come, including “North of North,” a Netflix, CBC and APTN comedy that started production in March; “Acting Good,” a Crave comedy that has released two seasons with a third to come; and “Don’t Even,” a Crave and APTN comedy in which Podemski co-starred, which debuted in August.
She knows of many other Indigenous series in development, including her own, but without commitments they will actually air.
“I want to quit all the time because I feel sometimes like it’s one giant leap forward and it’s backwards 20 steps,” Podemski said. “But I see the forest for the trees and I don’t want to give up how far I’ve come.”
She finds reason for optimism in several places, including in the non-profit organization she created, the Shine Network Institute, that has helped Indigenous women make progress in the screen industry; in the recent Emmy nominations for “Reservation Dogs” (“the best comedy series out there,” she said) and its star D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, the first Indigenous lead actor in a comedy nominee; and in the embrace of her work by viewers, including non-Indigenous ones.
“The absence of Indigenous people and stories onscreen results in a society that never thinks about Indigenous people,” Podemski said. “But when we’re on screens, and our stories and our faces and our realities are shared with the society that we exist within, it shifts the consciousness. And I think shifting the consciousness is a move toward truth and reconciliation.”
She also knows there are many stories still to be told, not just ones that focus on the trauma that Indigenous people have endured in Canada, but “comedy and horror and romance, and all kinds of different stories. I’ve read them. I’ve auditioned for them. I’ve partnered with people in development (of them). I’ve created them myself. I know that they exist.”
If anyone knows about the wide spectrum of Indigenous TV content out there, it’s Monika Ille, CEO of the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network or APTN, the world’s first national Indigenous broadcaster.
The network just celebrated its 25th anniversary as well as the launch of APTN Languages, North America’s first national Indigenous language channel.
A look at the APTN website reveals dozens of titles, including dramas, comedies, documentaries, and lifestyle, food and family programming. It also airs movies and news, and has its own streaming service, APTN Lumi.
“By having our own network, we’re giving opportunities to Indigenous creators,” said Ille, who has worked at APTN for 21 years and is a member of the Abenaki First Nation. “By controlling your narrative, you decide what to share and, most importantly, how you want to share it. And I think that makes a big difference.”
She gave the example of “Anaana’s Tent,” a children’s series in which host Rita Claire and her husky puppet teach viewers about Inuit culture.
When it was pitched to APTN and another network, “the non-Indigenous broadcaster said, ‘That’s never gonna work, the pacing is too slow. It’s way too regional. We’re not taking the show.’ So the producer came back to us saying, ‘Well, we don’t have the other broadcaster.’ And I said, ‘I don’t care. We’re gonna make this show happen because it’s true, it’s authentic. It’s what we want,’” said Ille.
APTN has the benefit of mandatory carriage, which means it must be distributed by all TV service providers in Canada, and it recently won a three-cent increase in the amount paid by subscriber per month from the CRTC.
Still, the network has felt the pinch of cord cutting, with a decrease of about three per cent in revenues from cable subscribers.
“It’s a challenge, I have to say,” said Ille. There was a time when APTN could initiate TV series on its own, like the drama “Blackstone” (2009 to 2015) or the comedy “Mohawk Girls” (2010 to 2017).
“Today, unfortunately, we need to collaborate with other broadcasters … I think, in general, the future of broadcasting will be dependent on collaboration, for all broadcasters, not only APTN,” she said.
No matter how the shows get made, Ille feels there is a growing appetite in Canada for Indigenous stories, the telling of which is part of the healing process for Indigenous people.
“You want the widest reach possible because you want the stories to be shared and you want people to hear them. There’s still lots of misinformation. There’s still some racism, (but) when you communicate your stories in your own way and people hear them, they get to maybe understand a bit more. And sometimes, with understanding comes appreciation. And I think it’s at that magical moment where stereotypes and myths, they start to fall away.”
“The Knowing” can be streamed on CBC Gem. “Little Bird” and “Don’t Even” stream on Crave and APTN. APTN and CBC stations will broadcast “Remembering the Children: National Day for Truth and Reconciliation” at 3 p.m. Monday. (September 30, 2024)
Debra Yeo is a deputy editor and a contributor to the Star’s Culture section. She is based in Toronto. Follow her on Twitter: @realityeo.