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By Brittney Pastion
Windspeaker.com Contributor
“I started to kind of find my power later in life,” said Jennifer Podemski, actress, director, producer and, tonight, the recipient of the Award of Excellence from the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists (ACTRA).
The award will be presented in Toronto.
“It feels great to be honored by ACTRA,” said Podemski, a member of the union organization for the past three decades. “I feel really grateful and really honored.”
Podemski strives to harness the ferocity and fierceness that has grown inside her as she’s matured as an artist, from her first works as an actress to her efforts to transform the industry for the benefit of Indigenous peoples who have come after her.
“Growing up, I didn’t feel very powerful,” she said. “I felt quite the opposite.”
But, a fire built in her to become someone who stood up for Indigenous people, speaking out against those things that were working against the Indigenous community.
“A lot of my sense of power comes from my community, and comes from my immediate group of women that I work with, that I communicate with, mentors and the support system...
“It’s not easy being a business owner, being a producer, being a mom with young kids and trying to keep it all together. Finding the balance and trying to achieve all of your goals.”
In the early 1990s, Podemski was cast in the movie “Dance Me Outside” released in 1994. Podemski said it was a formative experience and a film that resonated with people.
The film inspired her to make content that was both relevant to Indigenous communities and was made by Indigenous people.
“I really started to look at, to become cognoscente of, how many people were sort of working with Indigenous stories that were non-Indigenous themselves.”
For a long time she felt frustrated and invisible within the film and television industry, with the lack of Indigenous representation both in front of the camera and behind it, from the executive levels to writers.
So, Podemski decided to shift her focus to producing.
“I think that my job here—my job in life—is to take what I have learned through my work in front of the camera and keep telling stories, but just shift my focus to telling them from a writer’s perspective, or a producer’s perspective and make shows that are about our communities and try to get them on TV,” she told Brittney Pastion of CFWE-FM.
The switch to producing came at a perfect moment in time. The Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (APTN) was launched and the television platform and her talent, as well as the talents of many other young producers, converged.
And she was ready and prepared to stand up against unfairness.
Today, there’s a huge industry for Indigenous people, said Podemski. But, there is still an opportunity deficit. It’s a big issue that the industry machine has to address and be accountable for, she believes.
“It’s really important, I think, that content creators, producers, directors, writers all over have to understand it’s okay to have a Native character and not have a Native storyline. I think that the two don’t have to go hand in hand.”
The industry limits actors and actresses because it only calls on Indigenous actors when there’s an Indigenous storyline.
Podemski recently finished work on season 1 of “Future History,” a series that will air on APTN sometime this year. She also finished the third season of the CTV series “Cardinal,” playing the role of Devery Jacob’s mother.
As for the future, you can expect Podemski to take on more of the director’s role.
“I don’t know where I want to go; I just know how I want to feel about where I go,” she said.