TV host sets her sights on bigger things

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ITV's cavernous Studio One dwarfs the few figures taping a show. There aren't a dozen cameramen or technicians rushing about. There are two. And the host of Health Matters, Judi Halfe-Phillips.

Behind Halfe-Phillips and her Health Matters graphic are the darkened sets for ITV's news, weather and sports broadcasts. Later in the day, dozens of people will hurry around the set for the news broadcasts, but that is later. For now, Halfe-Phillips has the set almost entirely to herself.

"So, what sport's big this week?" she asks. "What sport will bump the show?"

"Pre-season baseball and curling," joked the cameraman.

"I just think health is more important than sports," Halfe-Phillips complained, "and that it should be treated that way."

Halfe-Phillips is committed to her shows, but the station isn't, and the lack of budget and support is something she's learned to work through. Her Native affairs show First Nations Now is even less regarded, in spite of her work.

"I was hired basically because I hold a token position," she said, candidly. "The show is a completely token show - it's part of their CRTC licensing position." Halfe-Phillips also said that, in spite of ITV having a show dedicated to Native affairs, they're among the last to send a camera to an Aboriginal event.

"It's frustrating, but you have to do what you can do," she said. "It's just another kind of adversity."

Halfe-Phillips has had plenty of that. She grew up in and out of foster homes, one of three children of a single mother. She had to battle the fact that she doesn't look particularly "Indian" when she grew up in Saddle Lake.

"That made it difficult," she said, "but there were few good role models for me as I was growing up.

"My mother was - and is - an alcoholic," she continued. "One of her boyfriends was the nearest thing I've known to a father. He told me once, when I asked him for some advice: 'When you get into a situation where you don't know what to do, think about what your mother would do - then do the exact opposite.' It was pretty good advice," she said bitterly.

It is a long way from there to here, as the saying goes, and Halfe-Phillips has fought to get ahead. She believes that others can do whatever they want, too.

"It's not that I don't let anything stand in my way - I'm not like that," she said. "But I don't want anything to stop me, and I know that you have to work hard to overcome obstacles.

"The best decision I ever made was to go back to school," she continued. "Knowledge is the most important thing you can possess, and it can't be taken away from you."

Now 31, with two children and a "struggling entrepreneur dancer husband," Halfe-Phillips is looking ahead to new challenges, not back at old obstacles.

"I'm not going to go anywhere here [at ITV]," she said. "The cast here is new, and I've already told them I'm leaving. I think that first impressions here weren't good, because I came in so green. I was patronized - which I can't stand - and they haven't been able to see past that.

"I can do my job, and I can do it well," she asserted. "I'm working on my resume tapes, and my longer-term goal is to be the first First Nations news anchor at a major station. I can do that; I just need somebody to take that chance on me."

Two weekly TV shows, preparing and circulating a resume, raising two children - and Halfe-Phillips has another project. She's promoting a calendar which will feature Native women she's calling "Tribal Heat."

"I'm an expert on that, on calendars," she said. Halfe-Phillips has modeled for years and was selected as the runner up for Miss Hawaiian Tropic International last year in Florida. She's been invited to the 1997 contest in Las Vegas.

"My intent is to make it sultry but not cheap," she said. "I want to turn this into something big, and to give girls from reserves a chance to get into modeling."

Halfe-Phillips said that the perception of beauty - blonde, blue-eyed, etc. - does Native women a disservice, and hat only through hard work can that stereotype be overcome.

"On model shoots, there are three blondes and a brunette," she said. "No wonder that Native girls don't have the confidence they should have. The biggest thing standing in the way of Native girls is their own confidence. It may seem frivolous, but a little bit of confidence can go an awful long way."

If that's true, then this confident young woman, who's come a long way, will likely go a lot farther.