Lyn Trudeau (BA ’08, MEd ’13, PhD ’24) has been thinking of teaching a course on Indigenous film and filmmakers since she was an undergraduate student. With that dream class now underway, she is collaborating with The Film House to bring Indigenous film to the big screen in Niagara.

The Assistant Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies and Sociology launched “Dibaajimo/Tells A Story Film Series” on Saturday, Jan. 19 with the acclaimed documentary Reel Injun. The series continues to run monthly until Saturday, April 5.

“Good things are happening with Indigenous filmmakers and Indigenous film all around,” says Trudeau. “These stories are told in such a way that it makes sense to our community.”

February’s screening follows on events hosted by Brock University and Niagara College connected to the REDress project. Abducted, a film by Métis filmmaker Daniel Foreman, screens Saturday, Feb. 15 at 3 p.m. and tells the story of a young man whose sister goes missing.

“We’re used to documentaries on missing and murdered women that are very factual,” Trudeau says. “Now that Indigenous filmmakers have new pathways to make films, a drama like Abducted, which is still loosely based on real-life events, can bring in other elements like racism in our judicial systems and legal systems.”

Assistant Professor Lyn Trudeau created the buffalo artwork included on the Dibaajimo/Tells a Story Film Series poster to reflect that Indigenous storytelling sustains Indigenous people in the same way that the buffalo sustained Indigenous communities.

Ahead of National Indigenous Languages Day on Monday, March 31, Trudeau has selected SGaawaay K’uuna (Edge of the Knife) to play Saturday, March 15. The award-winning film, co-directed by Gwaai Edenshaw and Helen Haig-Brown, is set in the 19th century and told entirely in the Haida language with English subtitles.

Trudeau says the film “takes an old story and breathes life into it in a different way.”

“There are good reasons these films are made, culturally appropriate reasons,” she says. “Sometimes these stories get passed down and maybe even put on the internet somewhere, but they’re not coming from the original storytellers. If you’re going to bring a story to the screen in nuanced ways, it should come from Indigenous people.”

The series closes out on Saturday, April 5 with the internationally acclaimed film Boy, directed by Taika Waititi, which tells the story of two brothers in the Tairawhiti region of New Zealand who reconnect unexpectedly with their father.

Trudeau says she wanted to be sure to “acknowledge Indigenous communities not only from Turtle Island because they too have experiences with colonialism in various capacities.”

“I really like how Boy can focus in on a bit of humour, a bit of wit to end the series, after we started off with Reel Injun and the film industry’s impact on Indigenous people, and then honouring missing and murdered Indigenous women with Abducted and then talking about that deep-seated need for reclamation of languages with SGaawaay K’uuna,” she says. “It’s good to end with a film with the humour and joy of our cultures that still talks about complexities and family relationships. There’s more to us than our trauma.”

All tickets are $10 for general admission or $8 for Film House members, plus tax and available from the box office of The Film House in downtown St. Catharines.