The Last Mooseskin Boat

François Paulette has devoted more than 25 years of his life to resolving a battle that is more than a century old. Senior negotiator for the Smith's Landing First Nation, Paulette is determined to see the Canadian government honour promises made to the Thebatthi (Chipewyan) people in an 1899 treaty. Shot in northern Alberta and Ottawa, Honour of the Crown is a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at the turbulent final years of this fight. Plunged into seemingly endless negotiations, Paulette and his brother, Chief Jerry Paulette, struggle to reclaim nine tracts of land and $33 million in compensation. Featuring interviews with tribal, provincial and federal government representatives, this documentary provides a rare glimpse into one community's success in settling a one-hundred-year-old treaty obligation of the Crown.

Building a canoe solely from the materials that the forest provides may become a lost art, even among the Indigenous Peoples whose traditional craft it is. In this film, Cesar Newashish, a sixty-seven-year-old Atikamekw of the Manowan Reserve north of Montreal, builds a canoe in the old way, using only birch bark, cedar splints, spruce roots and gum. With a sure hand he works methodically to fashion a craft unsurpassed in function or beauty of design. The film is without commentary but text frames appear on the screen in Cree, French and English. Film without words.

The Copper Inuit of the Coronation Gulf region of Canada's Northwest Territories were among the last Indigenous groups to be contacted by people from outside, mainly during the early years of the 20th century. When Doctor R.D. Martin arrived in Coppermine in 1929, he had to deal with one of the consequences of that contact, a tuberculosis epidemic.