Arctic Representation: A Conversation with Nyla Innuksuk

A conversation with filmmaker, producer, and writer Nyla Innuksuk. Learn more about her work here: https://imaginenative.org/artists/nyla-innuksuk/

Read “On-Screen Protocols + Pathways: A Media Production Guide to Working with First Nations, Métis and Inuit Communities, Cultures, Concepts and Stories” and related publications here: https://imaginenative.org/year-round/publications/

This is Episode 3 of the mini-series "Arctic Representation: Conversations with Inuit Artists," produced by Clara Wilch, a Postdoctoral Fellow at Vanderbilt University and LENS scholar who earned a PhD in Theater and Performance Studies at UCLA. 

Episode cover image: photograph by Clara Wilch. 

Sound credits: BCO - tram ride on a sunny day - 2022-08-12 by brylie -- https://freesound.org/s/646626/-- License: Attribution 4.0

“Between Moments” by Amber Glow from Epidemic Sound

“Stargazing” by Shuta Yasukochi - from Epidemic Sound 

Parallel Universe by Andrewkn -- https://freesound.org/s/404458/-- License: Creative Commons 0

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:06

Hello and welcome to Lens Cast. My name is Clara Wilch, and this is the third and final episode in a short series of podcasts about Arctic representation. We're reimagining dominant Arctic narratives from the perspectives of artists from the far north who identify as Inuit or multiracial with indigenous ancestry. There's an introduction and context for this series at the beginning of the first episode, so have a listen to that conversation if you haven't yet. But broadly, we're hearing from artists who are from the far north of Canada about how they're complicating preconceived notions about the places that they're from, especially in the context of colonialism, globalization, and global climate change, and about the art they're making more generally. This theme is one that I became interested in through my conversation with Naila Anookshuk, which you are about to listen to. She's consciously and powerfully involved in efforts towards indigenous self-representation throughout the film industry, and was a contributor to the Pathways and Protocols document that she describes, which will be linked in the podcast description. Naila is a super talented and multifaceted filmmaker on the rise. She's a director, a writer, a producer, has done work in VR, in music videos, and also happens to be part of a groundbreaking legacy of theater and film in Nunavut. Her parents were founding members of an early and influential theater troupe in the territory, and her father is one of the lead actors in the much-acclaimed 2001 Zacharias Canook directed film Adanarjuat The Fast Runner, which won the Camero Award at Cannes Film Festival. Since this conversation, Nyla's undertaken a new project. She is the director and co-writer for an upcoming film called In the Heart of the South. It's a psychological thriller that features two of the star actors of the Inuit-created television series North of North, which was a huge hit on Netflix. Nyla is helping to shape the present and future of international Indigenous filmmaking in thoughtful, wonderful, vibrant ways. I was delighted for an opportunity to speak with her, and I'm delighted to share part of that conversation with you.

SPEAKER_00 2:38

My name is Naila Nookshuk, and I am a filmmaker and comic book writer and just professional nerd.

SPEAKER_01 2:48

You have a new movie, relatively new movie called Slashback, which was recently released in Canada, premiered at South by Southwest in the US, and has an upcoming release on the US channel Shudder. Is that correct? So how would how would you summarize your movie?

SPEAKER_00 3:04

Yeah, so Slashback, I guess, is for me just a kind of a coming-of-age action-adventure horror movie about this group of teenage girls in this remote Arctic community that take on an alien invasion. That'll chestnut.

SPEAKER_01 3:22

Here is some of the audio from Slashback's official trailer to give you a taste of this uniquely fun and thrilling movie.

SPEAKER_02 4:37

Let's go hunting.

SPEAKER_01 4:41

Back now to the conversation with Nyla, where she discusses the significance of setting to her sensibilities as a filmmaker.

SPEAKER_00 4:51

The Arctic being just such a like it's such a beautiful but dangerous place. So isolated and the weather is so dramatic that it's just a very dangerous place to live. So our our children's stories, our cautionary tales are equally dramatic. And I think children's stories the world over are, you know, cautionary tales often. It's like really common for people to come up and ask us like are these encyclopedias of our of our culture, then we just know all of these things. Oftentimes we do know Steph and we will share. My friend Carly, who's First Nations, where she's from, the northern lights are seen as representing spirits that have passed. And that it's actually quite calming to see them, that it's that because it shows their presence. Whereas where I'm from, we're told that if we're out and we see the northern lights or whistle at the northern lights, that they could chop off our heads and then the spirits will play soccer with our skulls and create the sound of thunder. And it's just this very like dark and dramatic thing that's so different than the way my my friend was describing it. Then we were just like laughing so much because, of course, like being out outside in the in the cold is dangerous. So there's stories associated with that. This man versus nature thing is always really fun to kind of explore. And even when I was up in Pang at the end, when I when I was climbing up this mountain at one point, I stopped halfway through, and I just kind of was like, you know, stopping to think like the mountains and stuff are allowing us to be filming in this beautiful place, and then this crazy thing happened at the shop. I almost lost my my camera operator who I was hiking with, and it was this dramatic thing. It was almost like the mountains were being like, You think I care about you and your silly movie? And it's just like even within like so much of Inuit mythology like this, like the idea of like the environment kind of you know taking its revenge, I think, is kind of just I don't draw directly from Inuit myth in that way. I think it just adds an interesting layer to just storytelling in the Arctic, I think, is is these kind of this this mythological kind of underlayer. When we're talking about mythology, Inuit mythology, it's spoken about as something that's very real. It's not told like Hansel and Gretel. It's these are mythologies that that exist. So when we were working on the script and and working with the girls and the kids, these kinds of stories just are in embedded in everyday life. You talk about shape shifters, people that take over the bodies or look like a loved one that that is close to you. Actually, one of the very first short films that I that I wrote and produced called Cayute, it was based on this Inuit mythology. That's actually the closest I've gotten to telling an Inuit myth story. It was about a kind of a modern-day hunter who kind of goes out on the land. He actually told us specifically about something that he still practices, which is when you hunt a seal to melt some snow in your mouth and put it in the mouth of the seal so that it has water when it passes on. I thought that was so interesting and beautiful. There's this idea that everything has a spirit, and that spirit is giving back to you and your family and your community, and so you want to give thanks. Having grown up with these Hitchcock movies where someone, you know, this normal person makes a mistake and then things start to happen. I was really trying to find a little taboo or rule that you could break, and then you have to kind of suffer the consequences. And so in this case, it was, you know, he was distracted and was unable to pay respect to this seal. And then this one creature from mythology, the Cayutayuk, we interpreted as if it was the Cayutayuk getting his revenge. And that's what I wanted with those with the girls, and that they would be talking about the Iq or Khalpilui, that those would be things that they would, you know, it's like, well, maybe this is really bad. And a lot of that stuff really came from working with the girls and in our conversations, those things would just come up.

SPEAKER_01 9:03

A climate scientist is like a first victim in the film. You could say anything about that choice and that character.

SPEAKER_00 9:09

Yeah, well, that was kind of one of these reverse-engineered things. I knew that we were gonna be going to shoot um the flashback scenes for in winter time. And uh growing up loving Spielberg and Amblin movies that always had this opening death. I specifically Jurassic Park as a reference. I basically put in a request to my producers that as asking if I could write an opening death scene to just kind of give that sense of genre right up front. We've kind of explored a bit like when when we're developing ideas of aliens and stuff, the the idea of you know, there's like seismic testing and all of these things that go on that you know can impact the environment and that sort of thing. But he's clearly an outsider.

SPEAKER_01 9:52

How did you become interested in film?

SPEAKER_00 9:54

I've always loved movies ever since I was a kid. I was uh I think almost too young to be watching hitchcraft movies. My mom was a big horror fan, and I remember at one of my first sleepovers when I was eight years old, she had us watch the movie The Birds, which is great, but it's it's actually a really scary movie, but it was also so exciting to watch because I think me and my friend, we couldn't believe that we were almost able to watch this. Do you get scared watching horror movies? Or is it more about the like triumph over that? No, I love getting scared. I get scared by scary movies, I think, probably more than most people. And I love like when the the weather's strange outside and it's a bit spooky. I just like I kind of like looking for mystery, I guess. And so I can even just like freak myself out when I when I just like going for a walk or something.

SPEAKER_01 10:48

Definitely makes things more interesting, like dramatic.

SPEAKER_00 11:09

When I was younger, I think I really did like the movies because they were fun and exciting. And now that I'm older and actually making movies, working on these scripts and exploring the themes that you can dig into with genre in a way that you can't with drama, or you get to just play with metaphor in a way that can be really creative. And even I'll re-watch a movie like The Birds, which I, when I was eight years old, the scenes that really stuck in my head, of course, are like the mother coming across the the neighbor who's either poked out, or the the school children having to like race home and get chased by birds. But now that I'm watching it back and like seeing these other storylines about gender roles and the controlling mother and family dynamics and and the roles that they play, it's so interesting to be able to kind of see these other levels within the movie and relate to them on a totally different level than I would have ever been able to when I was a kid.

SPEAKER_01 12:14

You mentioned that your your parents were involved in theater maybe. And then was this suma? Was were you aware of the moment?

SPEAKER_00 12:23

Astro played a big role in that and and showed people that audiences were interested in international cinema and indigenous cinema. But it's not like in Canada we all of a sudden started seeing a bunch of$10 million movies getting made by indigenous people. It really wasn't, I don't think, until summer of 2020 when things really had this big shift on the on a global scale when everybody started talking about uh acknowledging race. And I know the indigenous execs at Paramount and Netflix and Amazon, but we don't have those in Canada. It's it's really interesting that in in the states, with this shift, it has really started a shift in the conversation. You are seeing, like with reservation dogs, that was Sterling's show. That was when I was pitching series a couple of years ago, everyone was saying, okay, if you're indigenous, you've got to show you to find a co-showrunner who is experienced to be your partner on it. And that was just the rule. And then Sterling came out with a high-budget show on FX, reservation dogs, with all Indigenous writers, all Indigenous directors, and he was the showrunner. And he had Tyka as support, who's indigenous, and that was how he this show, this totally unprecedented show, was able to get made. And and all of a sudden now we can point to that and see, see, we can do it. And because of that, people have switched, and now it's it isn't the same kind of thing anymore. And I think what's been great about the indigenous community in Canada and and us working together through institutions like the Imaginated Film Festival and the Aboriginal People's Television Network, we've been working and making our own staff on tiny budgets for a long time. And we're we basically are ready to take on this moment and this now that we're finally being given access to funds and our projects are being supported on in the same way that non-Indigenous projects are supported, or Indigenous projects by non-Indigenous people were supported, we're really starting to grow as an industry. When I was younger, I really just loved scary movies for the fun and the thrill. And when you're a young person, a teenager, and you're trying to figure out who you are and how you fit in. I just like I loved reading, I loved watching movies and and writing, and it was, I think for me, I started to build a bit of my identity around movies and scary movies in particular. For myself, I'm mixed race, I'm half an half white, and all of that kind of got tied up in trying to figure out who I was. And I liked school, I I did well in school, so I kind of put a lot of pressure on myself. And I think as an as a young indigenous person, there's this idea that if you're doing well, then you're some you're a role model to other young people. And that's something that I really try and discourage when I'm talking with my my teenagers, the the kids I work with, because I think that does put a lot of pressure on someone. And and for me, when I knew I loved movies, but I thought maybe I should be doing something more important. And then when I started making movies, and it was like I liked horror and and sci-fi, and I kind of felt like maybe I should be doing something like more activism work or documentary or heavy dramas that told stories that needed to be told. But I think really it's been great actually working with someone like Alethea Arnold Burrell, my producer on Slashback, who herself, she is one of the people I look up to as filmmakers from my community that are really making an impact. And her work really did focus on activism and Indigenous empowerment. And having spent time now with Alethea working together, I think we both like are able to kind of understand that the work we're doing is in part for ourselves. And if we're doing things that are helping us feel empowered, then that can help our communities as well. And she's really helped me feel like uh stories that are fun and silly, that those are just as important to have as stories of trauma or survival and struggle. And I think it is important to have because, you know, for me, I I think that it's so special this place that we're from. And when I was a kid growing up loving movies like The Goonies and E.T., I could relate to those kids, even though they were, you know, white kids from Southern California. I was like, we were having adventures with our friends out on the land, and and it had that same kind of feeling. When I was having the opportunity to make my first feature, I really loved the idea of being able to make something that was something that I would have watched when I was a kid, but also reflective of this place I knew. People sometimes want to ask me, oh, is it because you were Inuit that you come from a culture that has these mythologies that you're curious about this stuff? I don't necessarily think it was this kind of linear thing, because there's also things about mythology and stuff that I've really discovered afterwards. And traditional stories within Inuit culture often followed a kind of a similar format as Hitchcock's movies of someone who makes a mistake and then has to pay the consequences for that mistake. It's a cautionary tale essentially. When I hear about different stories of Inuit mythology and these cautionary tales, I think it's so interesting that they do kind of follow these similar kind of story patterns.

SPEAKER_01 18:52

The guy asks if they're allowed to take the boat, and then he ends up sort of getting for it. Which is maybe I want I'm just sort of realizing that maybe that's a difference between Hollywood storytelling a little bit, is that it's more an emphasis on like if I do something wrong, something bad happens to me. And what I've heard of some Inuit stories and things, it seems like it's just as important if there are consequences to your community or to people that you love.

SPEAKER_00 19:20

Yeah. And I think that that's and I mean I think that that directly relates to these issues of screen sovereignty because we as filmmakers, we recognize that in Indigenous filmmakers, that we are representing our communities in a way. And yeah, that doesn't seem fair in some respects, but it is something that we're doing. So for me, I don't need like a big fancy move, like a Hollywood movie or a TV series. Like I don't need those things. I need my community. I I so I might want to do to make a movie, but if it's gonna be made in a way that will hurt my community, then it's not worth it to me. And I think that's at the crux of it. It's like, you know, I come back here. This is where my community is. Of course, I I never I don't think I could ever represent all Enumid. I can only really represent myself, but how can I be making sure that you know I am benefiting from my indigenity? How do you give back? But then even more than that, movies for me are also a way just to process things. And I've I've been in positions where with film and TV and video games and new technologies, there can be this, it's very a fast-paced environment, and I just definitely am someone that puts a lot of pressure on myself. And you know, you can get into this habit of feeling like you know, that you're almost like proud of how hard you're working or how little you're sleeping. And for me, I was I was really grateful when I when I got sick, I got very sick in a couple years before I made slashback, and it was just this kind of reminder that oh, all of those things that you're kind of racing towards, or these things that seem so important, that that actually is not important at all. And just and then it was like, oh yeah, what what is important? And for me, making slashback, this movie about teenage girls and specifically processing shame and their indigeneity, and deciding that you know that their community was something that was worth fighting for, that they were uniquely capable to take that on. It was a very emotional process, and then it continued into work with these young actors and these teenagers using shameful language in their everyday. And that was we put that in the script for a reason because that's how they spoke. Their shame would come through in the way they they would say, Oh, that's so ghetto. And then I'd be, what do you mean by that? Well, that's so inuk. What do you mean by that? And it was just like they would use Inuk as like interchangeable with anything that was negative. And then it was it really important in before we we got to filming that we be talking about that this language existed, that we should be working to not be using that kind of language, and that when we're talking about our indigenity, that we're only using prideful words. Because if we're not there yet, then that's what we're hoping to get towards is being proud indigenous women. And I think for all of us in the in the process of making this movie, and even just having, you know, this this story about indigenous girls and people coming and supporting it and saying, Oh yeah, this is something that's worthy of being told, and then having all the crew up there. I think that for all of us it really was just a very important time of growth. It's been so great, and and we continue to stay connected and work together because, well, we've hit for for me, we've invested in these kids and and they've invested in me. And it's so exciting to see now what they can be. They're all just leaders, even if they they never want to act again, even just working together to share the movie and talk about our experience, I think, is really valuable.

SPEAKER_01 23:23

I love the yeah, focus on process and on just yeah, giving people the opportunity to actually do these things is really it's just it.

SPEAKER_00 23:33

Yeah, and that focus on process. I mean, that's what's so great about the Pathways and Protocols document, is it really talks about the importance of capacity building within this work. When we're making these movies within our communities, these are multi-million dollar projects. They can serve as more than just as work or as uh this product at the end. It's even in the process of making them, we can be empowering our communities and building capacity. And with Slashback, that was really kind of my first attempt. I really am wanting to just continue to see how we can be producers and directors and creators, continue to make stuff in Nunavut and the film and TV scene begins to grow, then then we're able to get to the point where we can be hiring crews full of indigenous people. And it really is about finding those opportunities within the work to be doing paid training and mentorship. And that's obviously difficult because movies are already expensive. And so when you're saying that, you know, in order to do it properly, it will take time and money, those are the two things that we basically don't have enough of on set. So there's Canada the Indigenous Screen Office and also the Black Screen Office. And the ISO was created first, the Black Screen Office was is was modeled after, and it will have a similar kind of funding model. They'll also fund community capacity building initiatives. So you could apply for a movie and get$400,000 that's just dedicated to training and mentoring crew that will be working alongside production. I mean, it takes time. In the next 10 years, it will really make such a huge difference on our ability to tell stories. And as we have more producers and more creators then able to access it, it just is, I think it's a really exciting time for Indigenous screen communities. We did it, you know. We somehow made this crazy ambitious movie on an indie-Canadian budget and with a first-time director and actors who hadn't acted before. And so now I've as I'm preparing to make a second movie or or next projects, and it can kind of sometimes feel overwhelming. I just have to remind myself, like, I'm in a much better position now than I was when I tried to make that first thing, you know, that it's just trying to get better. How can we, as we're engaging in the work, as we're producing the work, be trying to do it in a way that almost can feel healing instead of something that's going to tear us apart? Because it is such hard work and so stressful. And I expect that to be the case. I mean, these are high, this is high-intensity environments, and uh that's also part of why I like it. They say directing movies is like the white water rafting. But it's how can I be just more that just mindful of the fact that this is emotional work too, especially when it's personal, that it can take a toll, and how can we be planning to make it in a way that's potentially less damaging. And I think working with with these kids has been a really helpful process to to kind of clarify how how we best do that because obviously I care a lot about them. It's so important for me to have this be a great experience for them, a learning opportunity, maybe an opportunity to open doors in the future, and how do we support them in that process. And so just being like protective of the kids and their mental health and well-being has also just been good for me to remember. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 27:16

And there's no way not to bring like your whole self to it. I mean, it's so physically demanding, and then like these actors are being asked to sort of like plumb some of well, all of you, like these emotional things and things like that. That's really inspiring, and I think the film industry at large could definitely learn from that.

SPEAKER_00 27:35

We're really starting to grow as a as an industry, and it's gonna take a minute, and for me, it's been an uncomfortable process. I just had never even been on a set like a movie like that with a real budget. We've been on sets, but not ones with 60 crew members, and all of a sudden I was on one and I was leading it. And so it was every day just being like jumping into ice water and being seeing if I could swim, and then you kind of come out of the end, you're like, holy shit, I did it. Now do again tomorrow. And it's it's so intense, but now I know how to prepare. The second project, I'm sure, will be terrifying again, and then but I'm hoping that each time I'm learning things. How can I be preparing myself? And then, you know, if I'm working with more emerging artists in the future or mentorship, how can I be supporting them so maybe they aren't feeling quite the same way that I was? But I also I also think that that's the best way to learn is is to be uncomfortable and then have to have to grow.

SPEAKER_01 28:37

As an audience, it's really exciting, it seems like people are just being given more room to tell the stories they want to tell. So the end of the film it says slash back, and then it says land back. Yeah. And I wondered if you could just say a little bit about like what the land back movement means to you.

SPEAKER_00 28:53

Sure. I mean, I think for me, it just is an acknowledgement that this is indigenous territory, indigenous land, indigenous people live here, and that some pretty terrible things have happened to indigenous people with through colonization. The impact of colonization is can't be ignored here. There is the the impact of the residential school system, it is this disruption among many generations of innovation, and it's it its effects are still very much felt. My father was taken away from his family when he was a child and made to feel shame in his language, and his his culture was was beaten for speaking in aptitude or telling stories, and these kids that I'm working with, these are their grandparents, their aunts and uncles that have gone to these schools. And so this shame or this idea that whiteness is something to strive for, or that the base standard and that indigenity is somehow less than is just kind of built into everyday life. And the colonization of the Arctic happened so recently. It's only a few generations ago that we are living nomadically enigmu, and by that I mean my grandparents. And so that was just something that, you know, I I felt like it was just a kind of a little acknowledgement of this larger movement that this is this is a fight in a way. But I think it's really important for everyone to be in charge of their own lives, for people to feel like they have control over their lives, families to feel like they have control over their lives. It was really great to hear uh Tessana who plays Micah talk about her process of of finding pride in herself and her indigenity in the making of this movie similar to Micah. She'd spoken about wanting to maybe be an actor and move somewhere, a city, and try and get work acting. I think for her to just have this realization that, oh, I can be doing this kind of work and I don't have to leave my family, I can be doing it here, I can stay in the Arctic. It was this really important shift for her, I think. And I think that we don't even necessarily realize it when how shame and our you know indigenity can kind of poke through. For all of us, we're all dealing with the different levels of shame or different traumas that we're having to figure out. And and the great thing about us all doing this process together is that we be helping each other out.

SPEAKER_01 31:31

I met a man actually yesterday who was from Peng originally and living here, and he wondered what you would want the larger world to know about Pang.

SPEAKER_00 31:41

I hope that they see it as a place of beauty, that it's a wonderful place to grow up. I think that we're so used to seeing stories of struggle that that's how we're used to seeing our communities represented. I worked for a while with an organization called the Glen Gould Foundation, and Glenn Gould is a Canadian pianist, classical musician who has had a fascination with the Arctic, and he really saw it as a place of solitude and isolation. And I think maybe that's the way people see the Arctic as a cold and dark place. But when you're from here, you see it as a blessed community. You actually can't escape it. It's like it's and so it's um this place of love. And I hope that that's something that comes through.