100 Mtis project asks youth what their identity means

Two Winnipeg filmmakers are asking 100 Mtis youth to contribute 100 stories over the next 100 days about what their identity means to them and their families.

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Siblings Janelle and JrmieWookey are asking Mtis people ages 15 to 40 to record videos and upload them on a new website.

The filmmakers are creating a documentary about the processand the crowdsourced online videos are meant to serve as an archive for the Mtis people as a whole, saidJanelleWookey.

"Hopefully it can serve as a portrait of who we are as Mtis people today," said Wookey on Tuesday.

She found out about her own Mtis heritage 10 years ago, until then her indigenous ancestry had been kept a secret in her family, she said.

"The whole idea of the project is really to get us all in one place and really hear each other out and try to get a better understanding of who we are," she said.

Janellehopes the project will both define what being Mtis means in 2016 and also shed some light on where the Mtis people may be headed in the future.

"For us, there's a lot of potential in terms of what theMtiscommunity has to offer the indigenous community as a whole [and]the Canadian community," saidJanelle.

The idea for the project came fromlate Mtis elder, Augustine Abraham, who the Wookeys interviewed. Abraham is the great niece of Louis Riel.

"After she passed we went through some of our archives with her ...we had asked her a question about what was her wish for the future of the Mtis people," said Janelle.

"Her answer calls on a unity amongst Mtis youth," she said.

Janelle and her brother designed their online project to give Mtis young people a place to talk about their heritage in a way that's relevant, saidJanelle.They hope it helps fulfil one of Abraham's last wishes for her people.