Exhibition walkthroughs with Alanis Obomsawin and the curators of the exhibition

One of the most acclaimed Indigenous directors in the world, Alanis Obomsawin came to cinema from performance and storytelling. Hired by the NFB as a consultant in 1967, she has created an extraordinary body of work—56 films and counting—including landmark documentaries like Incident at Restigouche and Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance. The Abenaki director has received numerous international honours, and her work was showcased in a 2008 retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Alanis Obomsawin has consistently succeeded in using public platforms to advance Indigenous concerns and tell Indigenous stories. She has done this so effectively and with such integrity as a documentary filmmaker working at the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) that she has become a revered and beloved figure among Indigenous communities and is celebrated both in Canada and abroad. Obomsawin has created a model of Indigenous cinema that privileges the voices of her subjects while challenging the core assumptions (economic, environmental, political, epistemic, ontological) of a world system created by colonialism that still exists and with which we must contend today.

Richard William Hill, Smith Jarislowsky Senior Curator of Canadian Art at the Vancouver Art Gallery, has worked as a curator, critic and art historian for three decades. He was Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Studies at Emily Carr University of Art and Design from 2015 until December 2021. Prior to this, he was Associate Professor at York University, teaching courses in art history, curatorial practice and graduate research methods. Hill also worked at the Art Gallery of Ontario, where, with Dr. Anna Hudson, he oversaw the museum’s first substantial efforts to collect historic Indigenous North American art and display it in the permanent collection galleries. Hill’s essays on art have appeared internationally in numerous books, exhibition catalogues and periodicals.

Lesley Johnstone joined the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal in 2007 as a curator, where she organised over forty solo and group exhibitions. She recently retired from her position as Director, Curatorial affairs, a position she occupied from 2014 to 2024. At the MAC Johnstone co-curated with Monika Kin Gagnon of In Search of Expo 67, and was co-curator of the 2014 Montreal Biennale L’Avenir (looking forward), and the 2011 Québec Triennial. She has curated many solo exhibitions including Mika Rottenberg, Julian Rosefeldt, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Valérie Blass, Luanne Martineau, Patrick Bernatchez, Lynne Marsh, Francine Savard, Tino Sehgal, Eve Sussman and Liz Magor. Johnstone was Artistic Director of the International Garden Festival at the Jardins de Métis from 2003 to 2007, and Head of Publications at the Canadian Centre for Architecture from 1998 to 2003. Long time associated with Artexte information centre, Lesley Johnstone has written many catalogue texts and has edited of a number of anthologies, exhibition catalogues and monographs on contemporary Canadian art. She is currently working as an independent curator and consultant, and is the president of the Board of Administration of Momenta Biennale de l’image.