Biography

A member of the Abenaki Nation, Obomsawin was born near Lebanon, New Hampshire. In 1960, Obomsawin made her debut as a singer in New York. She went on to perform at venues including reserves, schools, prisons, museums, festivals, and on television. In concert she sang traditional aboriginal songs and other repertoire to her own accompaniment on hand-drum or rattle, and told stories in several languages. Her 1988 album Bush Lady, comprising traditional Abenaki songs and original compositions, offers an introduction to her musical style. Even as her filmmaking career took off, she continued to sing around North America and Europe. By 1966, Obomsawin was already well-enough known as an activist to warrant a profile in the CBC television series Telescope, on the basis of which she was hired by the National Film Board (NFB) to be a consultant on projects relating to Aboriginal peoples. In 1971, she directed her first film, Christmas at Moose Factory, and in 1977 she became a permanent NFB staff member and made her first feature-length film, Mother of Many Children, about the central place of women and mothers within indigenous cultures. To date she has directed more than fifty films (mostly documentaries) for the NFB, usually serving as producer and writer, and she has earned national and international recognition.

Obomsawin is also a prolific visual artist, known especially for engravings and prints, which she has exhibited internationally, including in retrospectives at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (2008) and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (2019). Images of mothers and children are prominent in this work, which also draws on animal spirits, historical events, and her own dreams.

Obomsawin has served on the boards of many organizations, some devoted to film and broadcasting, including the NFB, the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network, and PBS, others including the Canada Council and the Native Women’s Shelter of Montreal.

I was very honoured to receive the Glenn Gould Prize in 2021… The Foundation was extremely generous with me, not only with the prize itself, but also in publishing an incredible book of my etchings in the highest quality I could never imagine… There was also the production of SEEDS, a large-scale outdoor projection of an animation film set to one of my chants, a very spiritual sound of the river where I come from. Once again, it was unimaginable that this could be produced. I know that the future of the Glenn Gould Prize will be changing some incredible artists lives with deep recognition and respect, as it did mine.

— Alanis Obomsawin