This Monday night (November 30), St. Stephen’s University in unceded Peskotomuhkatik and the faculties of Arts at UNB and UNBSJ in unceded Wolastokuk will be co-hosting an online screening and discussion panel for the feature documentary film Voices from the Barrens: Native People, Blueberries, and Sovereignty. This event is free, open to the public, and requires no advance registration.

The screening of the film will begin at 7pm Atlantic Standard Time. You can attend from anywhere in the world via this link. When prompted to login to the Teams software, you can instead elect to join anonymously via any web browser. Heidi Harding from UNB will be digitally producing this event.

The discussion will begin after the screening at approximately 8pm and will feature a remarkable panel of respondents:

Donald Soctomah is from the community of Motahkomikuk (Indian Township). He is an author, editor, filmmaker, and researcher, and the Historic Preservation Officer for the Passamaquoddy nation. He is the author of Remember Me, a book about Tomah Joseph’s influence on Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and just last year he published The Canoe Maker, a book about David Moses Bridges. He has compiled three invaluable collections of Passamaquoddy research material, and he was the Passamaquoddy community editor for the Dawnland Voices anthology of literature.

Brian Altvater, Sr. is from the community of Sipayik (Pleasant Point). He is the President of the Passamaquoddy Wild Blueberry Company. He is also the chair of the Schoodic River Keepers, an organization dedicated to protecting the waterways of Peskotomuhkatik, including the Schoodic (St. Croix) River. He is the Wabanaki Wellness Co-Ordinator with Maine-Wabanaki REACH (Restoration, Engagement, Advocacy, Change, and Healing), and he has been working in the Maine State Prison system for 14 years, providing sweat ceremonies for Indigenous inmates.

Brian J. Francis is a Mi’kmaw filmmaker, author, painter, and photographer from the community of Elsipogtog. For this film, he was Director of the Canadian Unit. In 2008, he created a feature-length documentary film called The Sacred Sundance: The Transfer of a Ceremony for the National Film Board. And he led the development of the acclaimed APTN series Eastern Tide. He is the author and photographer behind a new book, Between Two Worlds: Spiritual Writings and Photographs. He assists the Canadian parliament in Mi’kmaq interpretation, and in September of this year he was awarded the Lieutenant Governor’s Dialogue Award for his dedication to protecting the Mi’kmaq language.

Nancy Ghertner is a visual artist and filmmaker, and the Director and Producer of Voices from the Barrens. She is a former faculty member of Rochester Institute of Technology’s School of Film and Animation. She has directed and produced numerous feature documentaries, including the award-winning After I Pick the Fruit: The Lives of Migrant Women, and In Our Own Backyard: The Hidden Realities of Women Farmworkers. She is an active member of numerous human rights organizations in New York State where she lives and advocates for the rights of immigrants, farm workers, and women. More specifically, she is from the community of Sodus, which is on the Great Lakes in New York’s apple growing region.

A Facebook page for this event can be found here.

More information about the film can be found here.