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Cinéfest 2018: 'North of 60' actress dishes on why she turned a Joseph Boyden novel into a film

Regarding the Boyden ancestry controversy, Tina Keeper says 'if he says he is, I believe him'
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“Through Black Spruce” screens at Cinéfest Sudbury International Film Festival Sept. 21. (Supplied)

When Cree actress and producer Tina Keeper was 23 years old, Connie Cameron, a young woman she'd grown up with in Winnipeg, was murdered. 

Her death remains unsolved, and it haunts Keeper to this day.

“I remember so well the death was on the front page of the newspaper that called her a prostitute,” Keeper said, speaking to Sudbury.com in a recent phone interview.

“I'll never forget it. I'll never forget how hurtful that was. We were just young women.”

Keeper, now 56 years old, said at the time, her parents were part of a vibrant aboriginal community in Winnipeg that started the city's native friendship centre.

“You felt like you were part of a community that was building something,” she said.

“You didn't know that you were going to be targeted, and you didn't know that this was going to go on for decades, and you didn't know it was going to get worse.” 

Keeper, who's a former Liberal MP but is probably best known for her role as RCMP officer Michelle Kenidi in the CBC Television series North of 60, has done several film and TV projects on missing and murdered aboriginal women.

Joined by well-known Canadian director Don McKellar, Keeper will be at Cinéfest Sudbury International Film Festival Sept. 21 for the gala screening of their film, Through Black Spruce.

McKellar, the film's director, and Keeper, the producer, will answer audience questions afterwards.

Based on Canadian author Joseph Boyden's 2008 novel of the same name, Through Black Spruce deals with the issue of missing and murdered aboriginal women.

It stars Tanaya Beatty, Brandon Oakes, Kiowa Gordon, Graham Greene and Tantoo Cardinal, as well as Keeper herself.

In the film, the disappearance of a young Cree woman triggers events in two worlds: in Moosonee, the remote Northern Ontario community she fled years ago, and Toronto, where she modelled for a while before vanishing into the ether. 

Her family is desperate, so her sister Annie Bird  — a fiercely-independent hunter who always resented her weaker twin — reluctantly heads south to retrace Suzanne’s steps. She soon finds herself drawn into the glittering “artists and models” scene her sister left behind. 

Back in Moosonee, her uncle Will is left to cope with the consequences of Suzanne’s disappearance and comes up against the ghosts of his own private tragedy. 

The two worlds finally collide when the fallout from the missing woman’s troubled life comes to a head.

Keeper said when she read the Boyden book six years ago, it resonated with her so deeply that she secured the film option from the author.

“It just spoke to me and my life,” she said, adding her mother — a residential school survivor — comes from the Northern Ontario territory depicted in the story.

Keeper started working on the film project long before the 2016 controversy about Joseph Boyden's claims of indigenous heritage.

“If he says he is, I believe him,” Keeper says of Boyden, who was not involved in adapting the film for the big screen.

She adds that she wishes journalists would pay as much attention to the third-world conditions in First Nations communities as they have to this issue.

McKellar said when the Boyden controversy came up, he let Keeper be the “guiding voice,” asking indigenous people involved in the project for their thoughts.

“I felt that if they were committed to continuing, it would be weak of me to back down,” he said, adding he was concerned the controversy could cloud how people view the film.

McKellar isn't aboriginal, but both he and Keeper said they see their collaboration on Through Black Spruce as a way to live out reconciliation between two nations. 

Aboriginal directors were relatively rare in the recent past, and they're only now coming into their own, Keeper said, adding she deeply respects McKellar's work.

Through Black Spruce was shot in Greater Sudbury and at Atikameksheng Anishnawbek, as well as in Toronto and Moosonee.

McKellar said it was somewhat “illogical” to film in Moosonee due to the remoteness of the location, but it lent the movie authenticity. “It gives it a unique look and feel,” he said.

Cinéfest continues until Sunday, Sept. 23. For a full schedule and tickets, visit here.

– Sudbury.com



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