NEW DVD RELEASED IN 2009

A Teachers' Guide accompanies the DVD.

Who owns Canada today?

Five centuries ago, First Nations people owned and controlled all the land in North America. Today, First Nations groups are left with only a few scattered parcels of land. How did such a massive transfer of land take place?

Was the process legal? Were the terms honoured? This program should provide some answers.

It is a story that has left a bitter legacy among many First Nations people, and one which Canadian courts now agree is unfinished business.

This DVD is divided into chapters that teachers can use as stand-alone units, or they can play the DVD from end to end to tell the overall story.

The DVD tells the story of treaty agreements between First Nations and the Government of Canada, which led to the transfer of most land once occupied by Aboriginal people to the Government of Canada.

Under British, and later, Canadian law, land could not be transferred from First Nations to the Government without a treaty.

But the Government of Canada failed to live up to many of its treaty promises.

In 1982, the terms of the historic treaties were re-affirmed under Canada's revised Constitution.

As a result, the courts have allowed many First Nations today to legally initiate or re-open land claims, or to take the Government to court because of broken treaty promises of the past.

The program will give students insight into some of the First Nations demonstrations and public protests that we regularly hear about in the news, and the history behind these.

In 1995, during a Native occupation of Ipperwash Provincial Park, Dudley George became the only Canadian Aboriginal person killed by police in the twentieth century during a land claims dispute.

The police insisted the Native protestors had shot first. The protestors insisted that they had no guns, that this was a peaceful protest. . A dozen years later, a very long and costly public inquiry determined that the police were lying, and had deliberately covered up the true story of events, and that the Native protestors were in the right.

This program tells the story surrounding the tragedy, the events that led up to it, and its aftermath, through the eyes and voices of the First Nations people who were on the front lines as the drama unfolded.

It gives viewers a close-up insight into the discrimination and systemic racism that many Canadian First Nations people experience daily across Canada.

Awards & Recognition:

• The season opener on CBC’s “The Passionate Eye.”
• Platinum Medal, Houston Worldfest, Houston Texas, the world’s largest Film Festival.
• Bronze Medal, Columbus International Film & Video Festival, in Columbus Ohio. ·
• Finalist, History & Society category, New York Television Programming Festival
• Finalist, Documentary Feature, American Indian Film Festival, San Francisco, CA.

This beautifully filmed, and widely praised documentary follows northern Canadian First Nations families on the land during all four seasons, showing that traditional hunting, fishing, and trapping are still an important part of family life among the Dene peoples of Canada's north.

It includes:

• A drum dance in a village community hall
• Spring fish camp & drying the fish
• Fall caribou hunt on the barren lands to supply the community's meat for the winter
• Drying meat
• Tanning a moosehide to make moccasins
• Dying porcupine quills to decorate birch bark baskets
• Winter camp

Awards and Recognition:·

• Golden Sheaf Award - Yorkton Short Film & Video Festival, Yorkton, SK
• Bronze Plaque - (behind National Geographic Silver & PBS Hawaii Gold) Worldfest Houston (TX) International Film And Video Festival
• ·Finalist - International Film & Television Festival of New York
• Selected For Show - Arctic Film Festival, Fermo, Italy
• Premiered - Parliament Hill, the West Block, Ottawa, ON & the European Parliament, Luxembourg