Portions of NFB Aboriginal collection online

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Since it was established in 1939, the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) has amassed a collection of around 12,000 films, including some 700 dealing with Aboriginal themes. Now, getting a sampling of the Aboriginal items in the NFB's vaults is as simple as logging on to the film board's Web site, thanks to the site's new Aboriginal Perspectives feature.

"We have a large collection of films about Aboriginal communities or about Aboriginal people done by non-Aboriginal film-makers, but we have also a large collection of films done by Aboriginal film-makers as well. So what we wanted to do first is put this in front, the riches of the collection of films that we have," explained Marc St-Pierre, a collection analyst with the NFB who helped get Aboriginal Perspectives up and running.

The films and supporting information on the site are divided into seven categories-the arts, film and representation, colonialism and racism, Indigenous knowledge, history and origins, sovereignty and resistance, and youth.

One of the biggest challenges of putting Aboriginal Perspectives together was deciding which of the hundreds of available films should be featured.

"Of course we weren't able to put everything online, so that was a main challenge," he said. "So what we did, we tried to put the most important films and we also tried to cover many periods ... we wanted to have films from the 40s, also from the 50s and the 60s, and also some recent films from year 2000 as well. And we wanted to have films done by white people and also films done by Aboriginal film-makers as well. Some famous ones, like we have some films done by Alanis Obomsawin. We have also films done by Gil Cardinal. And we have some films by Loretta Todd as well ... And we also wanted films done by new film-makers. We have a film on the Inuit community done by Elisapie Isaac. And there is also one called My Village in Nunavut, which was done by Bobby Kenuajuak, and it was his first film. We wanted also to cover the entire country in terms of the origin of the film-makers. So we wanted to have film-makers from the west, and from the Maritimes, also from Quebec and Ontario," he said.

"And sometimes it was also a question of copyright, because some films were very, very important or interesting but we don't have the rights to put them online."

In addition to serving as an introduction to the NFB's Aboriginal collection, Aboriginal Perspectives also includes a number of other features, including photos, interviews with film-makers, biographies and learning activities.

Although anyone can access the site, St-Pierre expects teachers and students will be the biggest audience for Aboriginal Perspectives.

"It's geared for students, I would say, between 12 to 17 ... and there are some lessons plans, also," he said. "Because the way it works ... it's separated between themes. So if you go in a theme, let's say, the arts for example, you will have some excerpts and some films related to this theme. You also have some lessons plans also related to this theme and questions for each excerpt. So teachers can easily use the Web site in their class because everything is already done, ready to be used in class. So they can use all the lesson plans and the questions related to each excerpt in the theme."

To help promote its new Web-based feature, the NFB is running a contest-One Drum, Many Hearts-designed to encourage students to explore Aboriginal Perspectives for themselves. In order to enter the contest, students must answer four questions, the answers to which can be found throughout the Web site. Once they've gone through and found the answers to the questions, the next step is to write a short essay describing what makes their community special.

"What we want to do, actually, is we want to hear their voices and we want to share their voices," St-Pierre said. "So we want to hear about different communities in Canada. We want to hear their stories. And that's also the spirt of the site. What we did with the Web site is we gave the voice to the Aboriginal communities in Canada ... with the text, everything was written by Aboriginal experts on different subjects. So the spirit of the site is giving the voice to Aboriginals. And that's the same spirit for the contest as well. So we want to hear about Aboriginal youth. We want them to share their stories with other Canadians."

The deadline for entering the One Drum, Many Hearts contest is Feb. 22. Details can be found online at www.nfb.ca/aboriginalperspectives.