Tracey Deer — [ windspeaker confidential ]

Windspeaker: What one quality do you most value in a friend?
Tracey Deer: I think the quality I appreciate most is that my friends be understanding. For a friend to stand by me despite my faults, especially when I disappear into work, is really incredible.

W: What is it that really makes you mad?
T.D.: Ignorance, jealousy and hatred are so prevalent and destructive. Our people can be so blinded by these negative emotions that it cripples our communities. It makes me mad to see so many people’s potential lay dormant because of it.

W: When are you at your happiest?
T.D.: I love it when I’m knee deep in the creative process – filming on set or in the edit suite. And showing my work to an audience is one of my biggest joys.

W: What one word best describes you when you are at your worst?
T.D.: Impatient.

W: What one person do you most admire and why?
T.D.: My mother is such a positive force and outstanding role model; I would not be who I am today without her guidance and love. I try to be as strong and caring as she is everyday.

W: What is the most difficult thing you’ve ever had to do?
T.D.: I think working with friends is extremely difficult. It takes so much discipline on both ends. I avoid it if I can.

W: What is your greatest accomplishment?
T.D.: I’m most proud of the films I’ve created and the impact they have had on peoples’ lives.

W: What one goal remains out of reach?
T.D.: I’ve always dreamed of being a mother one day. Right now, it’s still just a dream.

W: If you couldn’t do what you’re doing today, what would you be doing?
T.D.: I would be a dancer.

W: What is the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
T.D.: Not to worry and get caught up in what everyone thinks of me, but to focus on remaining true to myself and to the people that I care about.

W: Did you take it?
T.D.: Now that I live back in my community, there can be a lot of negativity sometimes that threatens to pull me down. I often have to remind myself to follow that advice.

W: How do you hope to be remembered?
T.D.: I hope to be remembered as a Kanienkehaka woman who did her best to affect positive change in our communities.

Kahnawake Mohawk filmmaker Tracey Deer has multiple credits to her name, as a producer, writer and director. She began her professional career with CanWest Broadcasting in Montreal, and later joined Rezolution Pictures to co-direct One More River: The Deal that Split the Cree, with Neil Diamond, which won the Best Documentary Award at the 2005 Rendez-vous du cinema Québécois in Montreal and was nominated for Best Social/Political Documentary at the Geminis.

She next wrote, directed and filmed Mohawk Girls, about the lives of three teenagers, and herself as a teen, growing up in Kahnawake, which won the Alanis Obomsawin Best Documentary Award at the 2005 imagineNATIVE Film & Media Arts Festival.

Her recent documentary, Club Native, focuses on the issues of community membership and blood quantum was an official selection of Hot Docs 2008, won the Colin Low Award for Best Canadian Documentary at DOXA/Documentary Film and Video Festival, and won additional awards at imagineNative, First Peoples’ Festival (Land InSights) and Weeneebeg Film Festival.

Tracey won the 2009 Gemini for best documentary writing and Club Native won the Canada Award, a special Gemini prize for the best multicultural program.

She has also teamed up with director Paul Rickard of Mushkeg Media to co-write and co-direct a feature documentary for APTN about a grassroots Mohawk language immersion school in Akwesasne called Kanien’kehaka: Living the Language.

Deer formed Mohawk Princess Pictures in 2006, which produced her first short fiction called Escape Hatch, a dramedy about the romantic misadventures of a Mohawk woman on her quest for love.

In the fall of 2009, Tracey teamed up again with Rezolution Pictures to transform her short Escape Hatch into the pilot Mohawk Girls, the series for APTN, scheduled to air in the fall of 2010.

Deer is working on a health show, a number of feature documentary ideas and a fiction feature screenplay.