Description of the interview with Tracey Deer

Tracey Deer decided to become a filmmaker at the age of 12. She saved up pocket money to rent video cameras and made little movies with her friends. One Christmas, she was given a camera of her own. A filmmaker was born! Since then, she never stopped writing screenplays and directing her friends in her films about teenage life.

She loved Hollywood and making movies was her dream. In college, she took a course on documentary filmmaking and realised that it was her favourite form of expression. Documentaries are so much a part of human reality.

She returned to Montreal to visit her family before leaving for Los Angeles or New York to start out on her career … so she thought. But instead, she met people from a local production company who hired her right away. She started out as a production assistant, and very quickly was promoted to the position of assistant director.

She suggested filming the documentary "Mohawk Girls" to the producer and things kept on from there. More recently, she has been working on two other documentaries and has founded her own production company.

She co-directed the film "One More River – the Deal that Split the Cree". This was an important step in her life. To start off, since she was Mohawk, she knew practically nothing about Cree culture, which she had to learn on the ground. However, the co-director was a Cree, which made this task easier. Making a film about the culture of another First Nations people is very different from making one about your own.

When she was working on "Mohawk Girls", she was always afraid that it would displease the people in her community. But finally, she didn't have to fear their reaction, as local people praised and supported her work.

Her next film, "Club Native", is about identity and belonging. Who were we, who are we and where are we going? The film looks at people who are affected by questions of identity. It isn't just a matter of politics; it is a fundamental but somewhat taboo issue. People say she is brave indeed to take on such a subject. Tracey doesn't like the idea of backing off from taking action out of fear. It is no way to live.

She is proud of what she has accomplished up until now. She thinks determination is essential, but that the sky is her only limit.