Alanis Obomsawin

Alanis Obomsawin, (born August 31, 1932) is an Abenaki American-Canadian filmmaker, singer, artist, and activist primarily known for her documentary films.

Born in New Hampshire, United States and raised primarily in Quebec, Canada, she has written and directed many National Film Board of Canada documentaries on First Nations issues.

Obomsawin is a member of Film Fatales independent women filmmakers.

Obomsawin relates that "the basic purpose [of her films] is for our people to have a voice [...] no matter what we're talking about whether it has to do with having our existence recognized, or whether it has to do with speaking about our values, our survival, our beliefs, that we belong to something beautiful, that it's O.K. to be an Indian, to be a native person in this country".

Obomsawin, which means "pathfinder", was born on August 31, 1932, near Lebanon, New Hampshire.

When she was six months old, her family returned to the Odanak reserve located near Sorel, Quebec, northeast of Montreal, where she lived until she was nine years old.

Her mother ran a boarding house and her father was a medicine maker and a guide.

During this period they lived with her maternal aunt Jesse Benedict, her husband Levi Benedict, and their own six children.

Théophile Panadis, her mother's cousin, initiated Obomsawin into the history of the Abenaki Nation and taught her many songs and legends.

When she was nine years old, Obomsawin and her parents left Odanak for Trois-Rivières, where they were the only Native family.

Cut off, at that time speaking little French and no English, Obomsawin held fast to the songs and stories she had learned on the reserve.

Her father died of tuberculosis when she was twelve.

At 22 she left the reserve.

During a two-year stay in Florida she also learned English.

In the late 1950s she moved back to Montreal and began performing as a singer and a storyteller, making appearances on reservations, in prisons and schools, and at music festivals.

In 1960, she debuted as a singer during a concert at Town Hall in Manhattan.

In 1960, Obomsawin made her professional debut as a singer-songwriter in New York City.

As a performer Obomsawin has toured Canada, the United States and Europe performing for humanitarian causes in universities, museums, prisons, and art-centers, as well as at folk art festivals.

She was featured on the Canadian Broadcasting (CBC) television program, Telescope, regarding her campaign to found a swimming pool for native reserve.

She managed her own stage at the Mariposa Folk Festival in the 1960s.

Obomsawin first film came to the attention of the National Film Board (NFB) in the mid-1960s, when she held fundraising concerts to pay for the construction of a swimming pool in Odanak.

Children in her community were no longer able to swim in the Saint Francis River, but were not allowed to use a pool in a neighboring community, which was for white residents only.

Obomsawin's success in raising funds for a construction of a pool for Odanak children was through an interview about her film in a report by the CBC-TV's Telescope series, which was seen by NFB producers Joe Koenig and Bob Verrall.

"It was from there the National Film-Board (NFB) saw it and I was invited by some producers to talk to some of the filmmakers there," said Obomsawin.

"I discovered that they had a studio that only catered to [the] classroom, with educational film strips."

They invited the singer-storyteller to their film board to work as an advisor on a film about Aboriginal people.

She went on to direct films of her own, while continuing to perform and fight for justice for her people.

Her only child, Kisos Obomsawin, was born in 1969.

Obomsawin directed her first documentary for the NFB, Christmas at Moose Factory, in 1971.

Obomsawin's next films include: Incident at Restigouche (1984), a powerful depiction of the Quebec police raid of a Micmac reserve; Richard Cardinal: Cry from a Diary of a Métis Child (1986), the disturbing examination of an adolescent suicide; No Address (1988), a look at Montreal's homeless; as well as Mother of Many Children (1977).

Her 1988 album Bush Lady featured traditional songs of the Abenaki people, as well as original compositions.

Her best known documentary is Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance, regarding the 1990 Oka Crisis in Quebec.

She filmed an entire series of films about a 1990 Oka crisis.

The first, Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance (1993), was a feature-length film documenting the 1990 Kanienʼkehá꞉ka uprising in Kanehsatake and Oka, which has won 18 international awards.

It was followed by My Name is Kahentiiosta (1995), a film about a young Kahnawake woman who was arrested after the 78-day armed standoff, and Spudwrench – Kahnawake Man (1997), profiling Randy Horne, a high-steel worker from the Mohawk community of Kahnawake.

The 2000 NFB release Rocks at Whiskey Trench was Obomsawin's fourth film in her series about the 1990 Oka crisis.

Her credits include Gene Boy Came Home, about Aboriginal Vietnam War veteran Eugene Benedict.

The Mi'gmaq of Esgenoopetitj (Burnt Church), New Brunswick were the subject of her 2002 documentary, Is the Crown at war with us?, exploring a conflict with the Department of Fisheries and non-native fishers over fishing rights.

As of August 2017, she has directed 50 films with the NFB, with her documentary film Our People Will Be Healed, about the Helen Betty Osborne Ininiw Education Resource Centre in Norway House Cree Nation, premiering in the Masters-program of the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival.

Originally released on her own private press, it was remastered and re-released in 2018 by Constellation Records.