Adam Garnet Jones

Adam Garnet Jones (Cree/Métis) is an Indigiqueer filmmaker, bead-worker, TV Excecutive, and novelist from Edmonton Alberta. (more in note on ancestry below.) He currently works as the Director of TV Content for APTN.

Adam came into his own as a filmmaker with the release of his first feature, Fire Song, at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2015. Fire Song went on to win the Audience Choice Award at ImagineNATIVE, before picking up three more audience choice awards and two jury prizes for best film at other festivals. Adam followed up with the CSA-nominated feature Great Great Great two years later, in 2017.

In 2018, Adam shifted toward content development and advocacy for Indigenous creators, founding the role of Indigenous Initiatives Lead at Telefilm Canada and the Canada Media Fund (CMF.) In that role, Adam helped Telefilm and the CMF implement Indigenous Pathways and Protocols into their funding systems, and guided the creation and implementation of a historic new fund for Indigenous feature filmmakers.

Now, Adam is delighted to lead his team as Director of TV Content and Special Events at APTN. In his role, Adam is responsible for setting the direction of the network’s programming, and helping to nurture Indigenous TV series and feature films. This year, he has been proud of his work on Little Bird (winner of the audience award at Series Mania in Cannes) Bones of Crows and the live National broadcast commemorating the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.

A Note on ancestry & connections

Like many urban Indigenous people, I grew up away from my family’s home community of Michel (sometimes called Callihoo, although Callihoo is the name of the neighboring off-reserve community.) The people of Michel/Callihoo are Cree/Métis people, with deeper ancestral connections linking us to Kahnawake via Louis Kwarakwante Callihoo. My family line includes Callihoos, Bruyeres, Belcourts and Collinses. Some in the community refer to themselves as Mohawk, but without Mohawk language, systems of governance, clan systems, or recognition by the Haudenosaunee confederacy, that has never felt comfortable for me.

Unlike most other urban Indigenous people, my family’s home reserve no longer exists. The land and community were forcibly enfranchised by the Canadian government in 1958, in what remains the only deception of its kind in Canadian histoty. That means the Canadian government stripped everyone in the community of their status and their land. We were Indians one day, signatory on Treaty 6, and then we weren’t. We had land and rights as Indigenous people, and then we didn’t. People from our community scattered to the city, to neighboring reserves. A handful were able to remain, although it was no longer “Indian land.”

Members of my family, including my grandmother, Shirley Jones (nee Callihoo) and my father, James Jones, regained their status with the passing of Bill C-31 in the 80’s. My uncles did the same. But wait - what happens when people have staus when their home community was taken away by the fedferal governement, and not everyone from that community is able to regain their status because they aren’t captured by Bill C-31? Answer: it’s a goddamn mess that bitterly divides the community between status members and “descendants.” There are people working for unity, but it’s hard. I am currently eligible for status, but after a couple of feeble attempts to start the process, I still have yet to enter the full bureaucratic nightmare of it all. Part of my block is wondering why I really want Status. It feels like begging the government for affirmation, or playing into a colonial trap, so I’ve never pushed that ball of paperwork very far. Who knows, maybe one day I’ll hold my nose and just do it.

My dad and sister and I moved away from Edmonton when I was a kid so my dad could go back to school (go, dad!) We lived in the interior of BC for a bit and then went to Victoria so my dad could continue his education. He eventually completed High School, College, a Bachelor’s degree, and a Master’s, all after the age of 40. From the beginning of his re-entry to school, my dad was proud to try to do all of his assignments from a perspective that actively incorporated Indigenous knowledges and perspectives, giving weight to oral histories and treating Indigenous knowledge as quantifiable data. That’s pretty standard now, but there weren’t a lot of people doing that in the sciences in the early 90’s.

In Victoria, we were welcomed into the community, into friendship centres and the Longhouse to gather and celebrate. Part of me feels like my home is there, with my sister and her husband and kids. The teachings I received as a child about the importance of paying respect, of feeding elders first, of doing everything we can for one another, are ones I hold close, although I am certainly not Lkwungen. As a kid, I saw my dad working with the Native Students’ Union; I stayed at home with my sister while he and other Native students camped inside the University and went on a hunger strike for Indigenous education. There were protests and meetings and wild foraging, and politics. We had visiting elders/academics/activists stay with us, shaping my understanding of my role and responsibility as a land-loving urban Indigenous person, connected to a larger International network of Indigenous people. A global network of people working for our families, lands, and histories.

When I moved to Toronto, I immediately sought community with the Indigenous group on Campus (Ryerson Aboriginal Student Services) and 2 Spirited People of the 1st Nations. I found more community in the burgeoning ImagineNATIVE Film and Media Arts Festival, and the Native Canadian Centre, and buit my adult life in and around urban Indigenous and Queer communities. So where is my home? My home is in Edmonton, sitting under the dining room table listening to my grandma and the aunties trace family histories. My home is in Victoria, fishing with my dad, snuggling my niece and nephew. Who claims me? Well, moving away from Edmonton and some complicated legal issues (a result of Mohawk cigarette “smuggling” crackdowns in the 90’s) put a lot of strain on our family. But yes, my family claims me. I hope to make them proud.

Toronto has been home for many years, but it’s not where I’m from. The teachings that came from (mostly) Anishinaabe people in my young adult life were critical to shaping my understanding of my relationship to the world and community, of living in balance. I have roots and community here, although like many of us, I’m not from here. Still, I hope that members of this urban community would claim me as I claim them. So that’s it. that’s where I’m from. I’m an urban Cree Métis whose family history is well documented, but not at all simple, who feels at home out on the land or with close friends, who is doing my best to make my way in this world and lift up the Indigenous people and Queers* in my orbit.

Through the fur trade, the signing of Treaty, through forced enfranchisement, residential school, gender-based discrimination in Bill C-31, race-based dicrimination from law enforcement, my family has been and continues to be shaped by the colonial history of Canada. Like my ancestors before me, I have travelled with my work, finding connection and community with Indigenous people wherever I am.

kinanâskomitin,

Adam.

* It’s not directly related to the above, but as you might imagine, Queerness adds a whole other dimension to conversations about family, identity, and making a place in community.