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Willie Dunn (3)
Willie Dunn
A Mohawk chief once called him Roha’tiio—which means “his voice is beautiful.” Willie Dunn left the Canadian army with a UN Medal and quickly established himself on the sixties folk scene, drawing from his Mi’kmaq/Scottish heritage to craft protest songs about the Indigenous experience. In 1968, as a member of the Indian Film Crew, he directed The Ballad of Crowfoot,the first NFB film to be directed by an Indigenous filmmaker. A powerful homage to the Blackfoot/Siksiká leader featuring Dunn’s own ballad, it’s considered Canada’s first music video. Dunn collaborated on several other IFC titles and recorded many albums. He died in 2013 and is remembered as a trailblazing artist, activist and community leader.
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The Ballad of CrowfootWillie Dunn 1968 10 minReleased in 1968 and often referred to as Canada’s first music video, The Ballad of Crowfoot was directed by Willie Dunn, a Mi’kmaq/Scottish folk singer and activist who was part of the historic Indian Film Crew, the first all-Indigenous production unit at the NFB. The film is a powerful look at colonial betrayals, told through a striking montage of archival images and a ballad composed by Dunn himself about the legendary 19th-century Siksika (Blackfoot) chief who negotiated Treaty 7 on behalf of the Blackfoot Confederacy. The IFC’s inaugural release, Crowfoot was the first Indigenous-directed film to be made at the NFB. -
The Other Side of the Ledger: An Indian View of the Hudson's Bay CompanyMartin Defalco & Willie Dunn 1972 42 minThe Hudson’s Bay Company’s 300th-anniversary celebration in 1970 was no occasion for joy among the people whose lives were tied to the trading stores. Narrated by George Manuel, then president of the National Indian Brotherhood, this landmark film presents Indigenous perspectives on the company whose fur-trading empire drove colonization across vast tracts of land in central, western and northern Canada. There is a sharp contrast between the official celebrations, with Queen Elizabeth II among the guests, and what Indigenous people have to say about their lot in the Company’s operations. Released in 1972, the film was co-directed by Martin Defalco and Willie Dunn—a member of the historic Indian Film Crew, an all-Indigenous production unit established at the NFB in 1968.
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These Are My People...Michael Kanentakeron Mitchell , Willie Dunn , … 1969 13 minReleased in 1969, These Are My People… was the first NFB film made entirely by an Indigenous crew. It was co-directed by Roy Daniels, Willie Dunn, Michael Kanentakeron Mitchell and Barbara Wilson—members of the Indian Film Crew (IFC), an all-Indigenous unit established in 1968 as part of Challenge for Change, a broader organizational initiative to use media to effect social change. One of the first Canadian documentaries to foreground an Indigenous perspective on the history of Indigenous–settler relations, it features Standing Arrow and Tom Porter, from the Kanien’kéhaka (Mohawk) community of Akwesasne, who discuss longhouse religion, culture, government and the impacts of settler arrival on their way of life.
