MONTREAL – The National Film Board of Canada has unveiled a new three-year plan that seeks to address Indigenous creators’ longstanding concerns about systemic inequities in the existing Canadian production landscape.
The Indigenous Action Plan, developed in collaboration with an Indigenous advisory group, contains 33 commitments grouped under the main areas of Institutional Transformation, Industry Leadership, Production, and Distribution, Collection Management and Education.
Highlights include a commitment to achieving representational parity in the NFB workforce by 2025; an immediate commitment to ensuring 15% of production spending is on Indigenous-directed projects; and a commitment to working with Indigenous partners to develop protocols/guidelines for the production and distribution of works on Indigenous content/themes as well as protocols for access to and reuse of archives.
In this first year of the plan, the NFB said that it’s key priorities will include:
– developing a strategic hiring plan to lay the groundwork for the NFB’s commitment to workforce equity;
– providing cultural-competency training for all staff;
– ensuring that Indigenous-directed projects at the NFB represent a minimum of 15% of overall production spending;
– developing learning resources around titles in the NFB’s Indigenous collection (to be released in 2018);
– developing production, distribution and archival protocols/guidelines;
– further developing community-based audience-engagement strategies for connecting new and collection works to Indigenous and non-Indigenous audiences; and
– making the NFB’s Indigenous collection more accessible via a new destination on NFB.ca.
“Delivering on the full range of commitments included in this plan is a structured starting point that will lead to long-term and sustained transformation”, said Government Film Commissioner and NFB chair Claude Joli-Coeur, in Tuesday’s announcement. “Most of the actions will be implemented within three years, others will take more time, but we commit to sharing this strategy and key priorities publically – making the processes and results transparent. We will meet with our advisory group on an annual basis over the next three years to discuss progress and establish annual goals and priorities.”
Images provided by the NFB – from left to right: Angry Inuk (Alethea Arnaquq-Baril); Reel Injun (Catherine Bainbridge, Neil Diamond & Jeremiah Hayes); Lumaajuuq (Alethea Arnaquq-Baril); Trick or Treaty? (Alanis Obomsawin); Hi-Ho Mistahey! (Alanis Obomsawin); The Mountain of SGaana (Christopher Auchter); Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance (Alanis Obomsawin)
