Burying the stereotypes

Independent filmmaker Loretta Todd joins forces with the UBC First Nations
Studies Program in research probing media representations of Aboriginal
lives

BY MADELEINE DE TRENQUALYE

BREAKING STEREOTYPES: Independent filmmaker Loretta Todd has partnered up
with UBC First Nations Studies to investigate representations of Aboriginal
lives in media (Photo courtesy of Loretta Todd).

Dec 21, 2005 | Growing up in Northern Alberta, filmmaker Loretta Todd
remembers going to school and watching documentaries from the National Film
Board of Canada about Native communities. She remembers the way Aboriginal
people were depicted in these documentaries — demeaning and clichéd
representations that made other people in her class laugh. As a filmmaker,
Todd, who is Métis/Cree, has spent the last 15 years of her life
challenging the stereotypes she believes are still deeply entrenched in
today’s media.

The award-winning director, writer and producer has partnered up with the
UBC First Nations Studies Program to examine representations of Aboriginals
in media more thoroughly, in a three-year project titled the Aboriginal
History Media Arts Lab.

With a $210,000 grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research
Council of Canada, the federal granting body, Todd will work with students
and members of UBC First Nations Studies, as well as members of the
community, to explore ways of enhancing the quality and quantity of
Aboriginal media.

“It’s too obvious to say that current representations are damaging,” says
Todd, whose films have been screened worldwide, including at the Sundance
Film Festival, New York University and the Museum of Modern Art.

“There is a legacy of misrepresentation — and of native people playing
certain roles in the western imagination.”

Todd, who has written and lectured extensively on Aboriginal media,
believes that current public imagery of aboriginals sees them being stuck
in the past, rather than as part of the present. It also tends to portray
Aboriginal peoples as one-dimensional — acting either as positive or
negative role models.

“The usual task of these representations is to cast us as part of a distant
past, rather than a dynamic present,” Todd says. “Or, if we are in the
present, then it is only if we are good or bad role models — rather than
human beings.”

For the first meeting of the media lab, participants gathered to watch the
first episode of the 17-part CBC series Canada: A People’s History, which
chronicles the story of Canada. The series initially aired in 2000, and has
since been awarded three Gemini Awards and multiple international honours.
The group also visited Storyeum, the new $22 million tourist attraction in
Gastown that aims to educate its visitors on Canadian history through a
series of historical vignettes.

After the visits, the group critiqued the two productions in free-flowing
conversation.

Todd believes the representations of Aboriginals in the series and Storyeum
are guilty of replicating the same traditional stereotypes of Aboriginal
people that have been projected for decades.

“If there are any illusions about the legacy of colonialism on the
representation of Aboriginal people, then those two are perfect
illustrations,” says Todd, who studied film at Simon Fraser University and
was instrumental in founding the Aboriginal Arts Program at the Banff
Centre.

“I know the prevailing attitude is to say, ‘Well that was then and this is
now.’ Well this is now, and the imagery hasn’t really changed —though it
may hide behind a degree of political correctness.”

Professor Linc Kesler, director of the First Nations Studies Program,
agrees.

“You can see that the tactic is to pull out these little moments of BC
history and make the moments stand for the bigger picture,” says Kesler,
referring to the historical vignettes in Storyeum.

“But their way of doing that with Aboriginal representation— it was like
being stuck in The Last of the Mohicans or something. It was a little
romanticized and stereotypical in a way that made people laugh. It was a
little alienating. Well, more than a little alienating, it was quite
alienating. Not complimentary.”

Kesler, whose research focuses on the relationship between technological
change and representation of knowledge, says it’s important to think about
these current representations to come up with a sense of what should happen
next in the development of Aboriginal media productions. For instance, the
trip to Storyeum prompted a lot of questions about different ways to
present Aboriginal histories.

“Is the basic format itself a problem?” Kesler asks. “This little
historical enacted vignette — is that viable, or is that in itself a
problem? If the idea has validity, how would it need to work in a way that
we find has more integrity from the aboriginal point of view? How would we
like to represent Aboriginals so that non-aboriginal communities can
understand better?”

He says these are the type of questions Todd has been asking, and these are
questions that will be addressed in the media lab. Kesler and Todd have
been discussing the need to create interface between the UBC First Nations
Studies Program and the film community for a number of years now, which is
why one of the lab’s principal aims is to create a place of exchange
between Aboriginal media makers —filmmakers and writers — scholars,
Aboriginal students, and other members of the Aboriginal community.

Through a series of discussions, the lab will explore ways to improve the
quality and quantity of Aboriginal history in the media. Students from the
First Nations Studies Program will play a part in the lab by preparing
research papers related to each discussion theme, which are intended to
spark reactions and engage debate.

Kesler says that one of the purposes is to sort through some of these
issues in an intellectual and organized way.

“People talk about those issues informally, but they don’t have as much
effect as if they were more organized into a body of discussion which is
the way everything else happens in the academic world,” he says.

Once this body of discussion has been organized, it will be easier to
approach school boards about the issue of what kinds of educational media
are being shown in classes.

“I think it’s fairly safe to say that Aboriginal issues and Aboriginal
histories are rather seriously underrepresented in Canadian school
systems,” says Kesler. “So how do we create materials that give broader
accessibility to perspectives and histories that students aren’t already
getting? Someone needs to ask this, and ask it in a way that has force
—raising it with school boards and educational decision makers. That’s
happened to some extent, but it would be more effective if we had the
intellectual infrastructure — that’s what the lab has to think about — how
to give more profile to how the history is being represented, and to what
end.”

He says that many students in the program are excited about the chance to
work with Todd, whose films reflect many issues that are not addressed in
mainstream media.

Kesler believes that what characterizes Todd’s work is her ability to cover
stories that would not be picked up by filmmakers from outside the
community. Her films promote a different way of looking and thinking about
certain issues within her community, he says. “People are aware of what she
has done and are aware of what that represents — doing that kind of
filmmaking.”

In an essay that originally appeared in North Of Everything: English
Canadian Cinema Since 1980 (University of Alberta Press, 2002), Todd said
her inspiration to pursue film came at an early age, on one snowy night
when she turned on the television to watch the horror classic Nosferatu.
She recalls being too terrified to even change the channel, but also being
drawn to the film because it was so beautiful.

“I began to understand that filmmakers used the tools of storytellers,
which appealed to my Cree love of craft. And I also realized that
filmmakers can make people feel things,” she says.