Welcome to our blog!
TheJamesBayProject.com will serve as the online home for everything relating to the production and promotion of our documentary film The James Bay Project (working title).
In January we will pay a visit to the Cree communities of the James Bay Area in northern Quebec to learn more about how life has changed in the decades since the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement (1975).
If you need to catch up on the story, here’s a good start from our friends at the CBC.
Despite the fact that there are over a million native people in Canada, my childhood in Toronto offered precious little opportunity to interact with our country’s Native communities. It was only through the guidance of my grandmother and great-aunt in Manitoba that I started to learn more about the Cree and Métis families of our ancestors.
My desire to learn more about the Cree way of life is a chief motivation for this project; and one of my main goals for this film is to open up the lines of communication between Canada’s urban centres to the South and our more remote neighbours to the North.
Our film’s narrative will weave us through a complex web of issues pertaining to the ethics of economic development, the desire to maintain the traditions of an ancient culture and the inescapability of our global economic society.
But more than being a film about political issues, this is the story of a people.
The story of our fellow Canadians who, when threatened by the Bourassa government of the 1970’s, stood up to the provincial leader with remarkable authority and achieved a landmark agreement that has enabled them to pursue their culture.
Thank you for joining us on this journey. We will strive to do justice to the compelling story of the James Bay Cree as work with the communities to produce the film in the coming months.
Sincerely,
Max Bell
Director
The James Bay Project 