Recognizing the best in Aboriginal music

Page 13

The five nominees for this year's Juno Award in the Best Music of Aboriginal Canada category will be honored at a pre-Juno event in Toronto.

The Honoring Our Own ceremony will be held March 3 at the Coloured Stone, located on Richmond St. in Toronto. This is the eighth year the event has been held to recognize and celebrate Aboriginal artists nominated for a Juno Award.

This year's nominees include Susan Aglukark, who is nominated for her album Unsung Heroes, C-Weed, nominated for Run As One, Mishi Donovan, nominated for Journey Home, John Gracie, nominated for Figure Love Out, and Florent Vollant, nominated for Nipaiamianan.

The ceremony is being organized by the Best Music of Aboriginal Canada Committee of the Canadian Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences (CARAS) and the Association for Native Development in the Performing and Visual Arts (ANDPVA), with sponsorship from the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network.

Honoring Our Own will be broadcast live on the Internet at www.thewebparty.tv, and taped for future broadcast on APTN and on CKLN's syndicated Native program, Renegade Radio.

The Junos will be held March 4 at Copps Coliseum in Hamilton, Ont., and will be broadcast live on CBC Television.

*****

Anyone wanting to submit entries for the 2001 Telefilm Canada/Aboriginal Peoples Television Network Awards has until April 30 to do so.

The annual competition is open to Aboriginal made-for-TV productions, produced in English, French, or in an Aboriginal language.

Entries must have been completed between May 1, 2000 and May 1, 2001, and must either have been aired on television, or be scheduled for future television broadcast.

Two awards will be given out, one for best Canadian Aboriginal-language television production, and one for best Canadian English or French-language Aboriginal television program.

The award winners will receive a $10,000 pre-approved contribution from Telefilm Canada for development or production of a new work eligible for Telefilm funding, as well as the use of post-production facilities at the Banff Centre for the Arts, also worth $10,000. The awards will be presented during the Banff Television Festival in June.

For more information about the 2001 Telefilm Canada/Aboriginal Peoples Television Network Awards, visit the APTN website at http://www.aptn.ca.

*****

Aboriginal film-makers will be well-represented at this year's Local Heroes International Film Festival with the works of Shirley Cheechoo, Alanis Obomsawin, and Dennis Allen to be screened as part of the event.

Local Heroes will run from March 16 to 23 in Edmonton, providing a venue for the screening of independent films from Canada and around the world.

Cheechoo's film Backroads, which she wrote, directed and acts in, tells the story of Ella Lee, a First Nations woman who finds herself at the mercy of an unsympathetic justice system after killing her abusive husband.

Rocks at Whiskey Trench is Obomsawin's contribution to the festival. The documentary examines the aftermath of one of the incidents that took place in Kanehsatake a decade ago during the Oka land claim protest- the stoning of a procession of Mohawk vehicles as they crossed the Mercier Bridge.

Allen's short film Someplace Better, tells the story of an elderly Dene widower who kills his abusive grandson in self-defense. Expecting the worst, he calls on an old friend to help him prepare for a journey to the spirit world, while a young Dene police officer must decide what to do when he discovers the man's guilt.

For more information about the Local Heroes International Film Festival, visit the National Screen Institute website at www.nsi-canada.ca

*****

A three-part series examining government in three different Aboriginal communities in Canada will air on Skylight March 5, 12 and 19.

The series, Aboriginal Governance, produced by Dorothy Christian, looks at how governance is impacted by the Indian Act, focusing on the Adams Lake band in Shuswap territory in B.C.; howthe Iroquois Confederacy's traditional system of government has changed over the years in Kahnawake, Que.; and how spirituality and governance work together, also focusing on Kahnawake.

Skylight airs at 7 p.m. ET/PT

March 27 will see the world premiere broadcast of Spirit Wind, which documents the voyage by members of the Miawpukek First Nation, who in 1999 travelled by birch bark canoe from Conne River, Nfld. across the Cabot Strait to Chapel Island, N.S.

The documentary, written and directed by Catherine Martin, looks at the journey as well as the preparations and obstacles faced by the crew in their attempt to symbolically reconnect the Mi'kmaq Nations with each other, and their ancestors.

Spirit Wind will air at 9 p.m. ET/PT