Heartbeat of the Earth film series a hit

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With its first major television production, Heartbeat of the Earth, Missinipi Broadcasting Corporation (MBC) has signaled that it has successfully made the transition to television from a 15-year history of Aboriginal radio programming.

This winter the 13-part, half-hour series was broadcast on Saskatchewan Communications Network (SCN) and is still being run nationally on the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network. The La Ronge-based production company that filmed the program, Y'utthe Askiy Productions, is just completing its last episode on the Dene winter carnival in Wollaston Lake.

"The reception of the series up here has been very good," said Melanie Jackson, an editor with Y'utthe Askiy Productions. "There haven't been a lot of accurate depictions of northern Saskatchewan. Life is very, very different from southern living."

MBC plans to continue to run its radio station, while at the same time continuing to produce television programs out of its new facilities in La Ronge. To properly reflect the land and people of the North, the MBC facilities were named Y'utthe Askiy Productions, with Y'utthe meaning north in Dene and Askiy meaning land in Cree.

Jackson, who is from Sakimay-Soto First Nation, east of Regina, moved her family from Regina to La Ronge last January to begin pre-production work. The television series was produced and directed by her Cree husband Dennis Jackson, who is from the Peter Ballantyne First Nation in northern Saskatchewan.

"The show focused on communities in northern Saskatchewan and the different qualities that each has to offer," she said.

"Language was the key - it's strong throughout the North in either Dene or Cree. It's still very prominent, while in the south languages are still very weak."

For example, the Dene language is still "very, very strong" in La Loche where classes from preschool to high school are taught in Dene, said Jackson. As a result, many of the cultural traditions are flourishing in that community.

Northerners are concerned that Aboriginal people in the South didn't seem to be concerned they were losing their languages and weren't taking any drastic steps to preserve it, she said.

At 17, Jackson began her broadcasting career as a volunteer with Shaw Cable in Saskatoon, and has since worked with Cable Regina, Much Music and PSN. As a long-time resident of urban centres, she was struck by how northern Aboriginal people still have strong ties to the land.

"There were always ties to the land. If people didn't have a cabin, somewhere, if they didn't have a cabin they'd be trapping. If it wasn't trapping, it was fishing. Everyone had knowledge about how to survive out on the land," said Jackson.

The Heartbeat of the Earth series is now being marketed internationally in Europe. Sat Kumar, a program manager with SCN, said more and more issues and concerns and cultures are being shared on an international level. He expects international audiences would also enjoy the series.

Although sophisticated rating systems are not used by SCN, Kumar believes the series is well produced and has been popular with the public.

"I plan to play the heck out of it," said Kumar.

SCN is broadcasting the show Thursday at 9 p.m. and Sunday at 5 p.m. They plan to rebroadcast the series again next winter.

SCN contributed $50,000 to production costs, considerably more than it usually funds for a series.

"It was a new thing because we hadn't done anything in the North before. So it was important to get this sort of thing started," Kumar said.

Y'utthe Askiy Productions now plans a series on Aboriginal women that will be filmed across Saskatchewan. It also hopes to produce another 13 to 26 episodes of Heartbeat of the Earth, this time using different communities.

As well, they plan to focus on more contentious topics in the series, said Jackson. A justice-related episode will focus on the origins of the two Aboriginal men who were found frozen on the outskirts of Saskatoon this winter. Another epsode will look at the so-called "battle for souls," the issue of Native spirituality clashing with organized religion.