Biography
Jeff Barnaby is Mi’kmaq First Nation, and he was born on August 2nd, 1976. He grew up in Listuguj, Quebec located on the east coast of Quebec which is neighbouring New Brunswick. He loved his family and his community. During his childhood, Jeff knew he wanted to create something, he was known for his imagination and artistic abilities. Growing up it became clearer that he wanted to study filmmaking, so he moved to Montreal to start his post-secondary education. He began at Dawson College and enrolled in their film program so he can get a better understanding of what knowledge and skills it took to create movies. Jeff then continued his education at Concordia University and graduated from both educational institutions. He married Navajo film director Sarah Del Seronde and they had a son together named Miles (Wikipedia contributors, 2023). Jeff was a filmmaker for Indigenous Futurism films, and he really enjoyed his work. Jeff started winning awards for his short films in 2004 and has continued getting recognized for his work since 2019. Jeff got diagnosed with cancer and spent his last years with family and friends in Montreal, he then died on October 13, 2022.
Business Story
Indigenous culture is beautiful and the history of what’s happened should be talked about. I believe this is what influenced Jeff’s work greatly. His first short film, From Cherry English, won two awards and this film was about a Mi’kmaq man who was struggling with his Indigenous identity. The short film The Colony was released in 2007 and was nominated for many awards. This short film was about a Mi’kmaq man who has fallen out of a love triangle and gets really emotional. Another short film File Under Miscellaneous was shown at the Toronto International Film Festival (Wikipedia contributors, 2022). This film was about a Mi’kmaq man facing racism.
My first favourite film of Jeff’s was Rhymes for Young Ghouls which was released in 2013. This movie also starred my favourite Indigenous women actress, Kawennáhere Devery Jacobs, Jeff was the one who helped get her career as an actress started. This movie is in my top two because of how accurate it is to live on the reservation. It also revolves around the history and abuse of residential schools. How government agents came into communities and took children which affected families.
Another movie he created that I absolutely love is Blood Quantum which was released in 2019. Some of the actors and actresses visited Listuguj and did a Q & A at the Alaqsite’w Gitpu School. This movie was also filmed in the Quebec reserves of Listuguj and Kahnawake. This film is about an infection that turns people that aren’t of Indigenous heritage into zombies. Blood Quantum was influenced by the 1981 raids in Listuguj by DFO, QPP, and RCMP, and colonialism. Before they started shooting the movie, Jeff made sure the cast watched the Incident at Restigouche documentary about the raids so they understood why his homeland was so important and why it connects to the movie. The title blood quantum is another representation of colonialism considering non-Indigenous peoples used this to determine indigeneity based on percentage. This movie holds so many references to Indigenous history and it was well made, one of his best in my opinion. In honour of Jeff, Netflix and imagineNATIVE partnered to give 5 Indigenous film and television makers funds who work in the same genres as Jeff did (Francis, 2023).
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Wikipedia contributors. (2022, October 14). File Under Miscellaneous. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Under_Miscellaneous
Francis, J. (2023, January 30). Netflix, imagineNATIVE honour late filmmaker Jeff Barnaby with grant for Indigenous horror projects. CBC. https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/indigenous-netflix-imaginenative-grant-jeff-barnaby-1.6731133
Wikipedia contributors. (2023, March 9). Jeff Barnaby. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Barnaby
Pathways to Indigenous Empowerment 