ISO Announces Four Indigenous Storytellers for WORLDING Program at MIT - ISO-BEA

Toronto (Tkaronto), January 17, 2025 – The Indigenous Screen Office (ISO) in collaboration with Co-Creation Studio at the MIT Open Documentary Lab have selected four screen-based Indigenous artists from different regions in Canada for the WORLDING taking place at the MIT campus in collaboration with MIT Media Lab from January 26 to January 30, 2025.

“ISO is pleased to continue its collaboration with MIT’s Co-Creation Studio to foster the development of Digital Interactive and Immersive content of four Indigenous storytellers from Canada,” said Kerry Swanson, ISO’s CEO. “This is an exciting opportunity for Indigenous storytellers to collaborate and build their network in an international context,” added Swanson.

The four selected participants are asinnajaq (Inuk)/Montreal), Lisa Jackson (Anishinaabe (Aamjiwnaang)/Toronto), Dr. Tasha Hubbard (Peepeekisis First Nation)/Edmonton) and Jason Ryle (Anishinaabe (Lake St. Martin)/Winnipeg), who will be working on one project as a team.

WORLDING ignites the co-creation of climate future stories that lead to real-world impact. Founded in 2021, this groundbreaking research and incubation initiative bridges storytelling in virtual environments with community wisdom and land-based placemaking. WORLDING supports an emerging interdisciplinary field drawing on documentary, social XR, game engine technology, community-based design, land-use planning, data visualization, and climate science. WORLDING acknowledges Indigenous ways of knowing as vital to motivating the co-creation of our collective, just and thriving climate future.

“We are very excited to welcome ISO and all the artists on campus for this first ever in-person cohort for WORLDING, our commitment to Indigenous-led projects and perspectives is at the core of the project,” explained Katerina Cizek, Artistic Director and Co-Principal Investigator at Co-Creation Studio.

“Beyond inclusion, Indigenous storytellers are foundational and guide the work that must be done when imagining a just and thriving climate future,” said Isabelle Ruiz, Program Manager, Sector Development, ISO and lead on WORLDING ISO delegation.

Co-Creation Studio is additionally welcoming two Indigenous delegates residing in the US, Amelia Winger-Bearskin (Seneca-Cayuga) and Kalena Lee-Agcaoili (Hawaii), along with six non-Indigenous participants with funding from Agog Immersive Institute. The Studio is supported by the MacArthur Foundation and Just Films Ford Foundation.

This partnership is the third iteration of an ongoing collaboration between ISO and Co-Creation Studio, which was inaugurated with a one-year Fellowship Program in 2020.

Bios
Dr. Tash Hubbard (she/her)
Dr. Tasha Hubbard is an award-winning filmmaker and an associate professor in the Faculty of Native Studies/Department of English and Film at the University of Alberta. She is from Peepeekisis First Nation and is the mother of a fourteen-year-old son. Her film nîpawistamâsowin: We Will Stand Up, was the first Indigenous film to open the Hot Docs Canadian International Film Festival and won the top Canadian film prize and the Canadian Screen Award for Best Feature Documentary. Her latest film is Singing Back the Buffalo. She researches Indigenous efforts to return buffalo to the land and Indigenous film in North America.

Lisa Jackson (she/her)
Lisa Jackson is an award-winning creator of film and television, VR and multimedia installation work. Her projects have screened at Sundance, Tribeca, SXSW, CPH:DOX and Hot Docs, won two Canadian Screen Awards, and been nominated for a Webby. Her feature WILFRED BUCK premiered at CPH:DOX, was a top 5 audience choice at Hot Docs 2024, and she’s received the Chicken & Egg Award and the Documentary Organization of Canada’s Vanguard Award. She’s Anishinaabe (Aamjiwnaang), lives in Toronto, has an MFA from York University and attended the CFC Director’s Lab as well as the TIFF Talent Lab and Writers Studio.

Jason Ryle (he/him)
Jason Ryle is a producer, programmer, curator, story editor, and arts consultant based in Toronto. Through his mother, he is Anishinaabe and a member of Lake St. Martin First Nation, Manitoba. Jason was the Executive Director of imagineNATIVE from July 2010 to June 2020. In addition to SINGING BACK THE BUFFALO, Jason has produced the docuseries AMPLIFY for APTN and several award-winning shorts. In February 2021, Jason received the Clyde Gilmour Award from the Toronto Film Critics Association. The award is bestowed to Canadians whose work has in some way enriched the understanding and appreciation of film in their native country. Jason is also the International Programmer, Indigenous Cinema for TIFF.

asinnajaq (they/she)
The Inuk artist, film director and curator asinnajaq practices video, digital illustration, photography and installation, and sees collaboration and collective research with her family and other artists as crucial to her creative process. Through her work she retraces historical representations of the polar circle region, deconstructing the standard, erroneous perception of the Arctic landscape as frozen and sterile. Delving into indigenous knowledge and giving a voice to those who had been silenced, she presents a land full of life. She is most noted for her 2017 film Three Thousand, which received a Canadian Screen Award nomination for Best Short Documentary Film at the 6th Canadian Screen Awards.

The full WORLDING cohort also includes Emilia Sánchez Chiquetti (Brazil), Jamie Perera (UK), Zoe Lee (USA), Em Joseph (Lebanon/USA), Ryan Wyatt (USA), Dani LeBlanc (USA), Caity Sullivan (USA), Jeremy Frusco (USA), Adam Ruege (USA), David Schmidt (Canada) and Emma Hamilton (UK).

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For more information or to book an interview please contact:
Jean-François D. O’Bomsawin
Director of Communications and Francophone Initiatives
jfobomsawin@iso-bea.ca

About the Indigenous Screen Office
The Indigenous Screen Office (ISO) is an independent national advocacy and funding organization serving First Nations, Inuit and Métis creators of screen content in Canada. The ISO’s mandate is to foster and support narrative sovereignty and cultural revitalization by increasing Indigenous storytelling on screens and promoting Indigenous values and participation across the sector.

About Co-Creation Studio at MIT Open Documentary Lab
Founded in 2016, the Co-creation Studio is an initiative at MIT Open Documentary Lab. The studio researches and incubates collective creation, through a constellation of media methods. For us, co-creation can occur within communities, across disciplines and with non-human systems such as Artificial Intelligence, as outlined in our book, Collective Wisdom: Co-Creation Media for Equity and Justice. We work within the context of the MIT Open Documentary Lab, where we bring together storytellers, technologists, and scholars to explore new documentary forms with a particular focus on collaborative and immersive storytelling. A center for documentary research, the lab offers courses, workshops, a fellows program, public lectures, and conferences; it incubates projects; and it develops resources and critical discourse. Projects incubated at our lab have premiered at Sundance, Venice, Tribeca festivals and have won Emmys and Webbys, Ars Electronica along with many other global awards. In the spirit of MIT’s open courseware and open source software movements, the Open Documentary Lab is inclusive, collaborative and committed to sharing knowledge, networks, and tools.