Meet KPU’s new Indigenous writer and filmmaker in residence
From wrestling to Sesame Street, Sonya Ballantyne has done it all
Sonya Ballantyne is an award-winning filmmaker and writer. (Submitted)
The Death Tour sounds like an ‘80s rock band touring across the country, leaving behind a trail of rebellion and violence. But for Sonya Ballantyne, the film is an homage to their love of professional wrestling that’s been growing since she was a child.
Ballantyne is a Swampy Cree writer and filmmaker from the Misipawistik Cree Nation in present-day northern Manitoba. She grew up on the reserve in Grand Rapids and their grandma’s reserve in Easterville, later moving to Winnipeg at 17 years old. They joined Kwantlen Polytechnic University as the new Indigenous writer and filmmaker in residence for the spring semester.
Ballantyne grew up watching what wrestling insiders call the Death Tour because of its grueling journey across the icy roads of northern Canadian winters.
“Wrestling was super popular when I was a kid,” Ballantyne says. “Even now in Winnipeg, if you go to a WWE event, 90 per cent of the audience is Indigenous, mostly from up north.”
The Death Tour is a documentary about a wrestling trip that toured throughout remote Indigenous communities in northern Manitoba during the winter. The tour has been going on for more than 50 years. The film delves into wrestlers’ minds as they battle the elements, each other, and the impacts of Canada’s colonial past.
Ballantyne co-directed the film with Stephan Peterson who “wanted to do a documentary on this tour … but he started to see how much the Indigenous populations of the communities he went to impacted the tour itself,” they say, adding this made him want to bring on an Indigenous filmmaker.
The Death Tour didn’t stop for a show in her hometown, but young Ballantyne still got the chance to meet some of their wrestling idols, due to some car trouble that stranded the wrestlers in Grand Rapids.
“I had always been made fun of for my love of wrestling, and I’d always been made fun of for being Indigenous, and so to be able to combine these two things that I always got hate for but present them in a way that makes them both shine was something that I was really happy to do,” she says.
“There was this one big, scary wrestler with the bluest eyes I’d ever seen, and he was like eight-feet tall. I remember my dad told him, ‘My little girl wants to be a wrestler,’ and so I was really compelled because I didn’t know wrestlers for real.
After that moment, they thought they’ve “always been fated to do something with the Death Tour.”
The Death Tour is Ballantyne’s feature directorial debut and the most meaningful project she’s worked on.
“Wrestling is still a very big boys and whites-only club, so to contribute to having a bit more visibility of people who aren’t the standard was something I was really happy to take part in,” they say.
Ballantyne is also the founder and creative director of the film production company Code Breaker Films, and beyond The Death Tour, she has worked on many other films and books. Ever since they could hold a pencil, Ballantyne has been a writer.
“I saw a Stephen King book on my teacher’s desk when I was a little kid, and she told me that he got paid to write something like that. I was like, ‘Wow, that’s my sort of scam.’”
They’ve written for T.V. shows including the Builder Brothers Dream Factory animated series and Acting Good, a CTV comedy starring a First Nations man who moves back home to his small reserve community in northern Manitoba.
Ballantyne has also done social media and commercial work for Sesame Street, along with sensitivity consulting for the video game God of War Ragnarök.
Next year, Ballantyne’s graphic novel memoir tackling the “conflicting and melting forces of racism and sexism,” will be published.
“Right before I hit puberty, racism was always that ‘dirty little Indian kid.’ The second I developed as a woman, the racism changed to that ‘dirty little Indian [slut],’” Ballantyne says.
The memoir is drawn by Rhael McGregor, and Ballantyne knew she wanted their art style for her memoir because it was bright and colourful.
“I always hated how the reserve was portrayed in any book I read or T.V. show I saw. It was always the saddest thing I’d ever seen, and I wanted to ensure that when I portrayed my reserve, or what it was like to be Indigenous, it was in colour the way I remember it.”
To schedule an appointment with Ballantyne, email indigenousresident@kpu.ca.
