Description of the interview with Jeff Barnaby

I’m a Mi’gMaq from Listiguj, the reserve best known because of the SQ raid on it in 1979. Alanis Obomsawin made a film about those events.

When I was very young, I became very interested in the arts, especially writing, music and drawing. But after discovering cinema and seeing the extent of prejudice against Aboriginal peoples in films, I decided to go into a filmmaking career.

It is true that my films are violent, hyperbolic and extreme. My characters intensely express the dull pain and silent despair experienced every day in our communities. I’m not going to approach the loss of our languages and the erosion of our cultures with dainty white gloves. We have only an inkling as to how much we have lost and what we are desperately missing. My films are an alarm siren. To wake people up from their lethargy, we can’t hesitate to give people a good kick in the rear end.

My next film will be feature length, a zombie story set on an Amerindian reserve.

I hope film can give Amerindians what was taken from them: pride, wanting to be what they are, to speak their languages and safeguard their cultures.