In March 2008, the Our World team visited Hazelton BC, (click here to view map) a community home to Gitxsan and Wet'suwet'en First Nations. We were fortunate enough to base ourselves at the Gitxsan Wet'suwet'en Education Society (otherwise known as GWES) which is a very special school for aboriginal students (teenagers and adults) in Old Hazelton.
After an introductory session with Lisa Jackson in February, the rest of our team Lisa Nielsen (Tech Manager, and also Outreach Officer for CitizenShift), Elisa Chee (Animator-Mentor), Steve Sanderson (illustrator of an anti-suicide comic book called "Darkness Calls") and I (Catrina Longmuir, Associate Producer) went up for our 6-day intensive media session.
We had seven participants total, and in the end they made six amazing and diverse short films. These were all crafted with digital still images and animation. The GWES media lab does a lot of work around First Language education so were lucky to also have access to professional translator, Fidelia O’Brien, to help interpret the participants' pieces into the Gitxsan language. This has been a challenging (but integral) part of the process, as often the youth do not speak the language of their grandparents. It is part of the goal of this program to encourage youth to celebrate their culture and language even if they are not fluent.