KPU welcomes new Indigenous filmmaker in residence
The award-winning Leena Minifie has joined the KPU community for the spring semester
Filmmaker and producer Leena Minifie joined KPU as an Indigenous filmmaker in residence early last month. (Submitted/Diego Minor Martínez)
Filmmaker and producer Leena Minifie was announced as Kwantlen Polytechnic University’s Indigenous filmmaker in residence early last month.
Minifie says her friend and former KPU Indigenous Journalist-in-Residence Robert Jago recommended her to apply for the position.
“It’s a really amazing opportunity to be able to focus on your own work, while also working and workshopping with students as well.”
During her residency, Minifie will be sharing her filmmaking experience with students and organizing speeches and workshops.
In addition to being a filmmaker, Minifie is also a journalist, having worked for CBC Radio One, CTV First Story, Native American Calling, and APTN National News. She also taught trauma-informed journalism and reporting in Indigenous communities at the University of British Columbia.
“I’ve been in the front lines,” she says. “I reported from Standing Rock when the cannons were there…. I’ve been around when Philando Castile got shot and Black Lives Matter before George Floyd.”
Minife, who is from the Gitxaala Nation near present-day Prince Rupert, says a lot of movies she watched growing up were based on “cowboys and Indians” from the U.S.
“There was never anybody really on television that was representative of my family at all — and that really pushed me towards media.”
After dabbling in psychology, sociology, music administration, and entertainment in university when she was just 17-years-old, Minifie soon realised her interest in storytelling.
“Film and media, to me, is a visceral experience of where audio — oral language, oral storytelling — visual, and sensory all meet together to tell a story.”
Minifie’s recent project The Good Canadian — an investigative documentary that unravels the atrocities of Canada’s colonial past, starting from the Indian Act of 1876 up to the modern day persecutions of Indigenous people — became the third-most viewed program on CBC Gem a month after its launch.
“The generation before me [of Indigenous Peoples] were the ones that carved the path for documentary-making, storytelling, and news,” Minifie says. “We’re now producing Hollywood-level films, television, and pretty high-caliber projects…. We’re in all realms of storytelling now.”
Minifie says her motivation to work with the KPU community stems from her curiosity to learn the needs of the current generation.
“The population and way students interact with each other socially has changed a lot since I’ve been in school. So I would like to take a look at that and understand where college and university-level students are getting their information from,” she says.
“It’s pretty amazing. It’s a prestigious caliber to be here and to be able to work at this level.”
Students interested in reaching out can email assistant@storiesfirst.ca to set up an appointment with Minifie.
