How her job as a community counsellor taught this filmmaker to be a better storyteller

For Jules Arita Koostachin, filmmaking is a way for her to bring together all aspects of who she is: as a writer, a community worker, and an InNiNew IsKwew (Cree woman). That mix of identities, as well as a career shaped by years of listening, teaching, and healing, comes together in her new film,

Born in Moose Factory, Ont., and raised between the Cree-speaking Northern Ontario community of Moosonee and Ottawa, Koostachin grew up surrounded by stories — ones passed down by her Cree grandparents and her mother, a residential school survivor. A member of Attawapiskat First Nation, on the ancestral lands of the MoshKeKo, Koostachin carries those histories forward, not just for her community, but through film, sharing them with the nation and the world. That grounding in lived experience and