NFB Film Thursdays Presents The Mushuau Innu: Surviving Canada
Media Advisory, December 1, 2004
Innu Take Appeal to Parliment Hill
Media Advisory, November 30, 2004
Documentary casts unfliching eye
The Telegram, October 15, 2004
Hard-hitting documentary
CBC Feature, October 13, 2004
NTV Centre Stage
October 13, 2004
Highlights of Media Launch
October 13, 2004
The Mushuau Innu: Surviving Canada
The Morning Show, CBC Radio, October 13, 2004
Trying to Survive
The Express, October 13-19, 2004
Show probes Innu's plight
The Telegram, October 13, 2004
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NATIONAL
FILM BOARDWednesday, December 1, 2004 Media Advisory
NFB Film Thursdays Presents
The Mushuau Innu: Surviving Canada
Toronto, ON, December 1, 2004: Best Boy Productions is pleased to announce a special Toronto screening on Thursday, December 9 at 7pm of The Mushuau Innu: Surviving Canada, a provocative documentary film about the present day challenges faced by the Innu community of Newfoundland and Labrador. The film will be shown at the National Film Board of Canada’s Cinema as part of its NFB Film Thursdays series. The screening is run in participation with OMNI Television.
Filmmaker Ed Martin takes a searing look at how these communities cope with the well-chronicled problems of substance abuse and substandard living conditions of the Innu community. The film highlights the social and political ramifications of the January 2002 relocation of the Innu in Davis Inlet to the community of Natuashish, Labrador. The film features interviews with Innu leaders from Natuashish and others. The special screening will be followed by a question and answer session with the filmmaker as well as representatives from the Innu community.
The Mushuau Innu: Surviving Canada is produced by Best Boy Productions of St. John’s, NL, in association with OMNI Television. The documentary will air on CBC Newsworld in January, 2005. The film was lauded earlier this year in Geneva at an Aboriginal conference sponsored by the United Nations, and is scheduled to appear at a number of European festivals in 2005.
The film will screen in Ottawa on December 7, 2004 for Members of Parliament and the National Press Gallery.
About NFB Film Thursdays
National Film Board of Canada (NFB) Film Thursdays is a weekly public screening program featuring an international showcase of award-winning films. The NFB’s Film Thursdays celebrates the best in international films, animation, and documentaries including the best short films from the Worldwide Short Film Festival and Prends ça court, provocative documentaries and features from OMNI TV and the Icelandic Consulate. On the first Thursday of every month, enjoy Toronto’s only monthly French language cinema program, Ciné-Jeudi. Watch films you can’t see anywhere else at the NFB’s high-tech, state-of-the-art digital facility at 150 John Street in the heart of downtown Toronto.
Media contact:
Deborah Collins
Best Boy Productions
Telephone: 709-722-0140
Email: deborah@firstcontact.caFor screening information:
Pia Musngi
National Film Board
Telephone: 416-973-7114
Email: p.musngi@nfb.ca
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Tuesday, November 30, 2004 Media Advisory
Innu Take Appeal to Parliament Hill
Screening Date: December 7, 2004, 6:00 p.m.
Location: Room 200, West Block, Parliament Hill
Hosted by: Senator Bill Rompkey
Ottawa, ON, November 30, 2004—Representatives of the Mushuau Innu of Newfoundland and Labrador are heading to Parliament Hill to appeal for help. They will present the no-holds-barred documentary The Mushuau Innu: Surviving Canada. It chronicles their assimilation into white society, an uneasy merger which launched their nation on a path of self- destruction.
Produced by Best Boy Productions of St. John's in conjunction with OMNI Television, The Mushuau Innu: Surviving Canada premiered on OMNI.2 on October 16th, 2004. The documentary will air on CBC Newsworld in January 2005.
The Innu are no strangers to television. National headlines have depicted the children who sniff gas, the rampant violence, and a suicide rate that is among the highest in the world. This documentary explores the reasons behind those headlines.
It depicts the forced assimilation of the Innu of Labrador, described by a Royal Commission in 1994 as a "violation of their constitutional rights." It examines how those violations led to the stripping of Innu culture, and a subsequent loss of purpose and self-worth.
90 per cent of the community members in Davis Inlet became alcoholic. Many of the children still sniff gas. Many more suffer from chronic disease and depression, a bitter irony in a country considered to be one of the best in the world.
In January of 2002, the federal government provided funding to move the Mushuau Innu to the new community of Natuashish, at a cost of more than $150 million. But life has not improved for the Innu. It has gotten worse. This documentary shows why.
Since July of 2004, there have been four suicides, and according to community leaders, suicide attempts continue at a rate of 10-12 per month. A study released on November 12 by the Newfoundland and Labrador Centre for Health Information revealed the rate of attempted suicides for Labrador Innu adolescents to be seventeen times higher than the provincial average.
The Mushuau Innu: Surviving Canada was lauded earlier this year in Geneva, at an aboriginal conference sponsored by the United Nations, and it is scheduled to appear at the some of the European Festivals in 2005. But the Innu feel the help they need must come from the decision-makers in Ottawa, and hope to engage in productive dialogue during their visit.
Officials of the federal departments of Health and Northern and Aboriginal Affairs have been invited to the screening, as have the Prime Minister and Members of Parliament.
Community leaders from Natuashish will be in attendance, including former chief Simeon Tshakapesh, as well as Prote Poker, Luke Riche and George Rich. Innu representatives from Quebec will also be there.
The screening will commence at 6:00 p.m., followed by a reception at approximately 7:00 p.m.
The Mushuau Innu: Surviving Canada has been translated into four additional languages including Italian, Inuktitut, Mandarin and Portuguese.
NOTE: Beta clips from the documentary and press photographs will be available at the screening.
For further information, contact:
Deborah Collins
Best Boy Productions
Phone: (709) 722-0140
Email: deborah@firstcontact.ca
Janice Marshall
Office of Senator Bill Rompkey
Phone: (613) 947-9584
Email: marshj@sen.parl.gc.ca
Friday, October 13, 2004 The Telegram
Show probes Innu’s plight
BY JEAN EDWARDS STACEY
The Telegram
The Mushuau Innu: Surviving Canada, a documentary produced by Best Boy Productions of St. John’s in conjunction with OMNI Television, will premiere on Canadian television Oct. 16.
The 46-minute documentary about the Innu of Natuashish will be seen Saturday on OMNI.2 Television, a satellite station of Rogers Television, at 8:30 p.m. NDT.
Producer, director and writer Ed Martin said OMNI is negotiating with national broadcasters and he’s hopeful a cross-Canada showing of the documentary is in the works.
Martin said the documentary was sparked after he came across a 1993 Canadian Human Rights Commission report which condemned the federal government’s treatment of the Innu, and concluded Ottawa had failed to meet its constitutional responsibility for the Innu since Newfoundland’s entry into Confederation in 1949.
Rights violated
“The federal government has been in violation of the constitutional rights of the Innu for more than 50 years,” Martin said, adding the documentary explores the impact these constitutional violations have had on the Innu and their future as a people.
Martin explained what he tried to do was to place the Innu in their historical context so they can be understood today.
“Who are the Innu and why should we care about them?” he asked when requested to sum up what the documentary is about.
“While it’s true that many Innu are alcoholics and that many neglect their children and many have problems with drug abuse, the documentary deals with how it came to this.”
About 2,000 Innu live in Labrador, most in the communities of Sheshatshiu and Natuashish, where about 700 people were relocated from Davis Inlet in January 2002.
Problems growing
The federal government spent $152 million over five years to build Natuashish, but according to residents, social problems are worse in the new community than they were in Davis Inlet.
Drug and alcohol use is rampant and the community has seen four suicides in the past few months, including that of 21-year-old nephew of former Innu chief Simeon Tashakapesh.
Several tragedies in the early 1990s focused national and international attention on the health and social problems of people in Davis Inlet, an island to which the provincial government relocated Innu from their original home in 1967.
In February 1992, six children in Davis Inlet died in a house fire.
In January 1993, six teens were captured on video under the influence of gas and yelling they wanted to die.
It was events such as those which sparked international media attention and led to plans to relocate to Sango Bay (Natuashish).
While Natuashish garners more headlines, the community of Sheshatshiu also suffers from high rates of alcohol and drug abuse.
The town has erupted in violence several times since contentious band elections last spring.
The Mushuau Innu: Surviving Canada is available in five languages including English, Italian, Inuktitut, Mandarin and Portuguese. Oct. 16 will be its English premiere in Canada.
Friday, October 15, 2004 The Telegram
Documentary casts unflinching eye
Troubled Labrador Innu community under microscope
BY DENE MOORE
The Canadian Press
When the lights came up following the first Canadian screening of The Mushuau Innu: Surviving Canada, there was silence.
After several minutes, Natuashish Chief Simon Pokue stood before a microphone at the front of the room.
Pokue had probably intended to thank those who came to which the documentary, filmed over three years as the Mushuau Innu moved from Davis Inlet to Natuashish on the coast of Labrador.
He might have intended to thank director Ed Martin or perhaps appeal for more help.
Instead, Pokue fought back tears before he quickly and quietly explained that the young man whose face had recently filled the screen, the young man who had wandered out into the frozen forest one drunken night and never returned, was his son.
Darren Pokue was the first young Innu to die in the newly built community of Natuashish, but he was not the last. There have been four suicides in the past three months.
“This documentary was not easy to produce and it is not easy to watch,” Deborah Collins of Best Boy Productions warned before the screening for the media last week at the Health Sciences Centre in St. John’s.
The tragedies of the Mushuau Innu of Davis Inlet have played out in headlines for more than a decade.
In the early 1990s, the community attracted worldwide attention after six children died in a house fire while their parents were out drinking.
A few months later, several children were captured on videotape inhaling gasoline fumes, screaming that they wanted to die.
Outsiders were shocked at news images from the remote shantytown, where Innu lived in shacks without insulation or running water.
Martin’s 46-minute documentary revisits the history of the Innu and how they came to inhabit one of the darkest spots in modern Canadian history.
Over three years, the St. John’s-based director cast an unflinching eye inside the lives of the Innu, from staggering drunk adults to glassy-eyed children with plastic bags of gasoline over their mouths.
“They opened up the entire community and said, ‘There’s nothing here that we will hide from you,’ ” Martin said after the screening.
It was a life-altering experience.
“I asked myself every day, ‘How could this be in Canada?’ ”
Martin spoke to Innu leaders, doctors, anthropologists and former government bureaucrats for the film. He did not speak to anyone from Health Canada or Indian and Northern Affairs, as both declined interview requests.
Even as residents of Davis Inlet loaded their belongings onto snowmobiles nearly two years ago, many knew the move to Natuashish would fail.
No treatment plan was enacted, no counseling had taken place, and today many residents say Natuashish is worse than Davis Inlet ever was.
Alcohol is cheaper. Drugs are more available. Hope has given way to hopelessness.The Mushuau Innu: Surviving Canada airs Saturday at 8:30 p.m. NT on OMNI.2 Television, a multicultural specialty channel seen across the country on Bell ExpressVu.
The film played recently at a United Nations conference in Europe, and it will be screened at the British Museum in London Jan. 22, American Indian Day.
Best Boy Productions is also in talks with cable network to air the film.
October 13-19, 2004 The Express
Trying to survive
The Innu hope a new documentary will bring
understanding, and healing
BY CRAIG WELSH
The Express
All the Innu want, according to documentarian Ed Martin, is for the truth to be told. All of it. Both the good and the bad.
“The Innu are an incredibly honest people. They are honest to the point of hurting themselves,” Martin says.
And in telling that truth, terrible things come out about the way the Innu are living.
“It’s not a happy situation to see a community that’s more than 80 per cent alcoholic,” he says. “It’s not a happy situation where you see parents abandoning their children. That’s a horrible truth. That’s a terrible thing to admit to.”
But that’s not all there is to the Innu. There is much more, but that gets forgotten. People on the island watching and reading the news, who only hear endless horror stories, forget it. It’s even forgotten by the Innu.
That’s why Martin is hoping his new documentary, The Mushuau Innu: Surviving Canada, will impact the people who see it. He wants the documentary to be more than just a recounting of the Innu’s troubles, but also how they got there and what they’re going to have to do to fix things.
That’s why Surviving Canada is not just for non-aboriginals, it’s also meant for the Innu.
“The Innu would rather be sober and happy than despondent and alcoholic,” Martin says. “I think the Innu leadership is hoping that two things might happen; that the Innu would come to understand something about their history and what led them to this sad place, and that the non-aboriginal world might see something of that same thing. Because, when you see a community that is alcoholic, you are seeing the results of many, many years of systemic abuse.
“But we have to look past the results, because it is easy to condemn them today and say, ‘Look, why don’t they get their act together and stop drinking?’ But that’s superficial acknowledgement of the immediate program. We need to go much deeper.”
‘COMING TO GRIPS’
But trying to get that information out and through to people is much harder than it sounds. People in the province have built up a wall, almost a resistance, to news about the problems facing the Innu in Labrador. When news breaks, as it has in recent weeks, about more drinking in Innu communities and more arrests, there is a kind of indifference to the problem.
If it were anywhere else, people would be horrified. But more problems in Natuashish barely registers any more. Alcoholism, gas sniffing, abuse and suicides don’t sound alarms like such problems once did. Martin knows this. He began his journey with the Innu in 2000 when in Labrador working on something else. He thought he knew all about the problems the Innu faced, but was shocked when he began to dig. Like many, Martin believed the move from Davis Inlet to Natuashish would help.
It didn’t. Things kept getting worse, something he saw first-hand during his three trips to Natuashish.
And even though he has finished the documentary, he’s not finished with the people. He was in close contact with Innu leaders during the recent troubles within the community. But whereas others might be immune to the problems, he’s deeply affected by what he see happening.
“I deal with this every day now. I have a hard time coming to grips with the fact that we have done this to yet another group of people, yet I am at a loss to know as to how we can now contribute to making it better.”
Surviving Canada will be on the airways in this country, but Martin says the documentary is also garnering international attention. While he can’t say if it has been sold to there countries yet, there is interest. The plight of aboriginals is something that interests people, especially in Europe.
And Martin says the Innu are happy with the attention. Canada has been blasted by different international organizations, including the United Nations and Amnesty International, over how it has treated aboriginals such as the Innu.
It’s the kind of interest the Innu feels is vital for them to survive.
“We can say that without being hyperbolic because they are actually talking about their very survival,” Martin says.
“They are on a fast road to extinction. And, again, we say that without exaggeration because it sounds ridiculous that such a thing could happen in this country, yet it is happening in front of our very eyes. “But they feel their best opportunity to get the help they need is to bring the attention of their plight to the international community. And they see the documentary as a vehicle to doing that.”
Surviving Canada will air on the OMNI Channel this Friday and on the Biography channel in December.
Martin hopes it will be shown on CBC at some point in the future, but says that’s up to the documentary’s distributor.
October 13, 2004
The Mushuau Innu: Surviving Canada
It's been more than two years since the people of Davis Inlet, Labrador moved into the brand new $150 million community of Natuashish. While the people may be in a different place, the community's pain continues.
A new television documentary which will make its English premiere this weekend looks at why this geographical cure didn't work. "The Mushuau Innu: Surviving Canada" explores why the alcoholism, gas sniffing, child neglect, depression, and suicide in the old community migrated to the new one. This excerpt from the film was recorded at the graveyard in Davis Inlet.
The writer, producer and director of "The Mushuau Innu: Surviving Canada" is Ed Martin. Jeff Gilhooly welcomed him to the studio to talk about the film.
The English premiere of "The Mushuau Innu: Surviving Canada" is this Saturday, October 16th on the digital channel OMNI.2, available to subscribers of the Bell ExpressVu satellite service.
It is also scheduled to air December 5th on the Biography Channel, and negotiations continue with mainstream broadcasters and networks who may show it at a later date.
October 13, 2004
Surviving Canada
Azzo Rezori reports on a hard-hitting documentary on the problems of the Innu people. (runs 3:00).
Watch Here
