Canadaland

Michelle Latimer was the buzziest Canadian director and showrunner of 2020. Her documentary Inconvenient Indian premiered at TIFF and reaped plaudits and awards. Her series Trickster, based on a novel by Eden Robinson, debuted on the CBC and was slated for a second season. But it all came crashing down in December when a CBC investigation called into question Latimer's Indigenous identity claims.Why does the Canadian cultural establishment make darlings of figures like Latimer? Ryan McMahon joins Jesse to discuss. Then documentary filmmaker Alethea Arnaquq-Baril, who is featured in Inconvenient Indian, considers the ethics and responsibility of storytelling, and why this controversy has been hurtful to so many Indigenous people.And Steven Lonsdale, whose seal hunt Latimer filmed for Inconvenient Indian, explains what he'd like to see done with that footage now that the documentary has been pulled from distribution. Correction: In this episode, Jesse says that author Eden Robinson has promised to don