Festival celebrates Aboriginal culture

Montreal's First Peoples' Festival 2006, organized by Land InSights/ Terre En Vues, will spotlight Aboriginal culture through an impressive variety of art exhibits, films and literary events. It will take place in two separate parts this year.

The festival will first hold its visual arts segment from May 25 to June 8 followed by the outdoor segment on June 21 to 25.

This year's new president is Alanis Obomsawin, who is stepping in after the passing of Myra Cree last fall. Cree had been Land InSights' board president since the founding of the organization in 1988.

A member of the Abenaki Nation and one of Canada's most distinguished documentary filmmakers and artists, Obomsawin created an etching called Osunkhiline, which she has offered to the festival for the cover of this year's program.

The festival's visual arts segment opens with 15 contemporary Nunavik Inuit sculptors presented by the Canadian Guild of Crafts. This exhibit featuring Northern Quebec artists' current productions and will continue until June 30.

First Nations' Written Heritage: Exploring, Annotating, Revealing will run from May 29 until Oct. 1 at the Grande Bibliotheque. Artists from various communities in Quebec, such as Cree, Innu, Abenaki and Mohawk, were asked to create pieces of art inspired by a written text about or by Aboriginal people.

On May 27, Robert Davidson On The Threshold Of Abstraction will open at the McCord Museum and will continue until Oct. 15. This Haida artist's exhibit was developed with the University of British Columbia's anthropology department in partnership with the National Gallery of Canada. Starting June 7, Kanien'kehaka Onkwawen:na Raotitiohkawa Cultural Centre in Kahnawake, will feature Mohawk artist Steve McComber, 40 Years of Sculpture.

True to its traditions, the festival will honor film and video productions that celebrate work from First Nations in the three Americas.

At a world premiere in Kahnesatake, the First Peoples' Festival will present Indian Summer: the Oka Crisis, a four-hour television series. It was produced by Claudio Luca and written and directed by Gil Cardinal. It stars Alex Rice as Ellen Gabriel and Tony Nardi as cabinet minister John Ciaccia. Gary Farmer, Tantoo Cardinal, Eric Schweig and Billy Merasty are part of the cast as well as many members of the Kahnesatake and Kahnawake communities who took part in the filming. After the premiere the film moves to the communities of Kahnawake and Montreal.
Among the many documentaries featured in the 2006 program, will be Trudell, a film about famous Native poet and activist John Trudell, and the final version of Nilesh Patel's Brocket 99­Rockin' the Country. Another Canadian premiere, A Bride of the Seventh Heaven, is a feature film by Nenet filmmaker Anastasia Lapsui, who also created Seven Songs from the Tundra.
June 8 will be devoted to First Nations youth productions. The highlight will be the departure of six teams of young First Nations reporters-filmmakers for La course autour du Quebec, a Via le Monde undertaking in partnership with the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network.

Literary events will commemorate the 35th anniversary of Recherches amerindiennes au Quebec, a Quebec edited magazine devoted to Native studies in North America. It will also host the Albin Michel publishing house launch of the French translation of Three Day Road by Ojibway author Joseph Boyden. Boyden tells the homecoming story of a First Nations man who fought in a Canadian battalion during the First World War.

On June 21 there will be the launch of Bernard Saladin d'Anglure's Inuit tales, along with Ullami, a Web site devoted to traditional Inuit culture in a new virtual world.

Also on June 21, Celinda Sosa, Bolivia's minister of economic development and micro industry, will be speaking about the affirmation of the social and cultural identity of Andean Aboriginal peoples and their emergence on the political scene. Bolivia's Aymara speaking president Evos Morales, who wishes to nationalize his county's oil and gas reserves, was sworn in as the first Indigenous leader in the world last January.

This date will also mark the opening of the outdoor segment of the First Peoples' Festival. The St. Lawrence Valley Iroquoian culture will be highlighted, accompanied by the participation of the Cherokee nation and the Attikamekw from Manawan, who are celebrating their centenary of permanent settlement. This popular forum will be a meeting ground for exchanges between Aboriginal communities and the general public.