Darlene Naponse is an

Anishinaabe The Anishinaabeg (adjectival: Anishinaabe) are a group of culturally related Indigenous peoples present in the Great Lakes region of Canada and the United States. They include the Ojibwe (including Saulteaux and Oji-Cree), Odawa, Potawatomi, ...

filmmaker, writer, director, and community activist from

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

. She is most noted for her 2018 film ''

Falls Around Her ''Falls Around Her'' is a 2018 Canadian drama film, directed by Darlene Naponse.

'', which premiered at the

2018 Toronto International Film Festival The 43rd annual Toronto International Film Festival was held from September 6 to 16, 2018. In June 2018, the TIFF organizers announced a program to ensure that at least 20 percent of all film critics and journalists given press accreditation to ...

in September 2018 and subsequently won the Air Canada Audience Choice Award at the

imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival The imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival is the world's largest Indigenous film and media arts festival, held annually in Toronto in the month of October. The festival focuses on the film, video, radio, and new media work of Indigenous, Abori ...

in October."Darlene Naponse's Falls Around Her wins imagineNATIVE audience choice award"

National Screen Institute The National Screen Institute - Canada (NSI; originally Canadian Screen Institute, CSI) is a non-profit organization headquartered in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. The organization describes itself as "Serving content creators across Canada to te ...

, October 26, 2018. A member of the

Atikameksheng Anishnawbek First Nation Atikameksheng Anishnawbek (Anishinaabe language: ''Adikamegosheng Anishinaabeg'', syncoped as ''Dikmegsheng Nishnaabeg''), formerly known as the Whitefish Lake First Nation, is an Ojibway First Nation in northern Ontario, Canada. Its reserve i ...

near Sudbury,

Ontario Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central Ca ...

, she previously directed the short films ''Retrace'' (2002) and ''She Is Water'' (2010), and the feature films ''Cradlesong'' (2003) and ''Every Emotion Costs'' (2010)."TIFF 2018: CBC Indigenous lists 6 films to watch"
CBC Indigenous, August 29, 2018. In 2017, she was a shortlisted

Journey Prize The Journey Prize (officially called The Writers' Trust of Canada McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize) is a Canadian literary award, presented annually by McClelland and Stewart and the Writers' Trust of Canada for the best short story published by a ...

finalist for her short story adaptation of "She Is Water"."Sharon Bala, Richard Kelly Kemick, Darlene Naponse make Journey Prize shortlist"
''

Quill & Quire ''Quill & Quire'' is a Canadian magazine about the book and publishing industry. The magazine was launched in 1935 and has an average circulation of 5,000 copies per issue, with a publisher-claimed readership of 25,000. ''Quill & Quire'' reviews ...

'', September 13, 2017. She serves as a part-time faculty member in the Department of English at

Laurentian University Laurentian University (french: Université Laurentienne), officially the Laurentian University of Sudbury, is a mid-sized Bilingualism in Canada, bilingual public university in Greater Sudbury, Ontario, Canada, incorporated on March 28, 1960. Lau ...

. Her film '' Stellar'' went into production in 2021, and premiered at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival.

Personal life and activism

Naponse was born and raised in the

, northern

. Her upbringing of fishing, gathering, hunting, and connecting with the land and her community largely informs her art. She earned her Bachelor of Arts in English with a focus on film from

, and received a First Nations Creative Writing Certificate from the En’owkin International School for Writing (University of Victoria). In 2015, she received a

Master of Fine Arts A Master of Fine Arts (MFA or M.F.A.) is a terminal degree in fine arts, including visual arts, creative writing, graphic design, photography, filmmaking, dance, theatre, other performing arts and in some cases, theatre management or arts admini ...

in creative writing at the

Institute of American Indian Arts The Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) is a public tribal land-grant college in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The college focuses on Native American art. It operates the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (MoCNA), which is housed in the historic S ...

Santa Fe, New Mexico Santa Fe ( ; , Spanish for 'Holy Faith'; tew, Oghá P'o'oge, Tewa for 'white shell water place'; tiw, Hulp'ó'ona, label=Tiwa language, Northern Tiwa; nv, Yootó, Navajo for 'bead + water place') is the capital of the U.S. state of New Mexico. ...

. Within her community, she has worked to improve and develop governance strategies. She served as chair of a committee to work with community leaders and elders to write the Atikameksheng Anishnawbek First Nation Gchi-Naaknigewin (Constitution), which was ratified by the community in 2015. She continues to participate in First Nations governance and engage in environmental and human rights activism. She owns Pine Needle Productions, which is a multi-media studio located in Atikameksheng Anishnawbek.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Naponse, Darlene 21st-century Canadian short story writers 21st-century Canadian screenwriters 21st-century Canadian women writers 21st-century First Nations writers Film directors from Ontario Canadian women short story writers Canadian women film directors Canadian women screenwriters First Nations filmmakers First Nations women writers First Nations screenwriters People from Sudbury District Living people Ojibwe people Writers from Ontario Year of birth missing (living people) Academic staff of Laurentian University