Colonialism made it almost impossible to make this documentary. Here's how we did it

Aaju Peter is a renowned Inuit lawyer and activist who has spent her life fighting for Inuit rights in Canada, Greenland and Denmark. 

"I was born in Greenland and colonized by the Danes, and then I moved to the Canadian Arctic, then being colonized by Southern Canada. So our history has been written by outsiders and visitors. I want to write our own histories," Peter says in the documentary Twice Colonized, now streaming on CBC Gem.  

The film follows Peter on a journey to reclaim her language and culture after a lifetime of whitewashing and forced assimilation. "If I want to make a difference, I have to meet other Indigenous people to see how colonization has affected us and how it's still affecting us today," she says. 

The production of Twice Colonized itself was affected by colonization. In order to fund the film, financing had to be set up through the co-production treaty between the colonizing nations of Canada and Denmark.  

"[This was] the only way we could engage with each other as fellow Inuit: through the two colonial nations," says Alethea Arnaquq-Baril, one of the film's producers. "The Canadian funding system requires that you have your key creative roles filled by Canadians. It's easier for us to work with a non-native writer, director or producer that lives two, three or 4,000 kilometres away from us — but within Canada — than it is to work with our fellow Inuk, who lives a half-hour flight away from us."      

"It's a long-known colonization tactic to isolate people from each other," says producer Stacey Aglok MacDonald. 

Filmed over five years, the documentary is the first pan-Arctic co-production between Inuit across colonial borders. It's also a collaboration between director Lin Alluna and Aaju Peter herself, who is credited as a writer and executive producer. 

In this interview conducted by Monica Victoria, the head of distribution at EyeSteelFilm, Arnaquq-Baril, Aglok MacDonald, Alluna and Twice Colonized producer Emile Hertling Péronard discuss how they're working to decolonize documentary production, the importance of consent throughout the production process, and the response to the film since its premiere at Hot Docs in 2023.

This conversation has been edited and condensed.

Q: Twice Colonized is being celebrated as a groundbreaking example of decolonization in documentary filmmaking. In addition to challenges accessing funding, what obstacles have prevented Inuit co-productions in the past? 

Emile Hertling Péronard: There has been, historically, very little collaboration and minimal contact between Inuit in Canada and Greenland. Aaju even mentions in the film that when she attended the Inuit Circumpolar Conference in 1981, she didn't know that other Inuit existed. That's because of the colonial borders that were imposed on us many, many years ago. All these things have made it extremely difficult for us to do anything together or even get to know each other appropriately. 

Since social media has become a big thing in the last 10 to 15 years, we've been able to communicate more and learn more about all the similarities and differences between Inuit in Greenland and Inuit in Canada. This was a huge reason why this project was so interesting because Aaju kind of embodies both things.

Q: What needs to change to make co-productions between Indigenous nations easier? 

Alethea Arnaquq-Baril: I hope that Bill C-11 [known as the Online Streaming Act] will create new policies that allow us to deem fellow Indigenous peoples from the same nation across the colonial border as Canadian. This would enable us to keep using the current system while allowing us to work with our cousins across the water. That would be a game changer.  

Inuit aren't the only nation affected; there are a lot of Indigenous nations along the U.S. border. Hopefully, we can be a pilot for that — to show that it's doable and worthwhile. We're colonized by different people, but we have a lot of shared colonial history, of schooling and all of that.

Q: Twice Colonized is directed by Lin Alluna, a Danish white woman, who is here with us today. What made Lin the right director for the project?

Emile Hertling Péronard: I knew that this was going to be a complex film, and it had to be the right director in charge of the vision. Aaju chose Lin to tell her story because of who Lin is and how she works. Then, what convinced me was seeing Lin's footage up to that point: it was undeniable that there was a strong bond between Lin and Aaju.  

Alethea had worked with Aaju before on her film Angry Inuk. Alethea pointed out that because Lin came from the outside, there was something in the way that Aaju reacted to the camera that was different — because Lin is not Inuit, Aaju didn't feel that she had to be a role model all the time. That was one of the reasons why we see such fantastic, intimate scenes.

And then, of course, from there, it was very much a discussion about how to do this ethically. And Lin, from the beginning, had a very strong idea about really involving Aaju in everything.

Lin Alluna: This was something that I was very conscious about from the first conversations I had with Aaju and the first time I shot with her, because I've been developing this collaborative method of filmmaking since film school. 

I knew that I wanted it to be a personal and nuanced portrait of Aaju as a modern-day hero, but I remember filming a scene with her that was super intense. I felt like, "I shouldn't be in this room. Is it really OK that I'm here? Is it OK that I'm here with the camera?" 

In situations where I would put down the camera because I felt like it was too private, she would say, "You have to film this. You can't just film me on the stage being successful; you have to film how I'm fighting the effects of colonization in my private life."

At one point, she told me that people had been choosing for her her whole life, but she chose me to make this film. And that was a beautiful thing, too, for me to hear — something that touched me and that I'm honoured about.

Stacey Aglok MacDonald: We thought it was very interesting that Lin was Danish because of the colonial relationship between Canada and its Indigenous people versus the colonial relationship between Denmark and Greenland. 

In Canada, we've named a few historical things that have happened to us, like residential schools and the Sixties Scoop. We have terminology and words for things that have happened. 

One thing we struggled with in Twice Colonized is that there's no terminology for what happened to Aaju and many other kids in Greenland. We wanted to be a part of exploring and sharing that from Aaju's perspective.

Alethea Arnaquq-Baril: I confessed to Stacey that I was having emotional issues over the fact that Aaju opened up to Lin in a way that she didn't with me on camera during the filming of Angry Inuk. We'd had personal conversations about her childhood, but it was a different situation when we had the camera.

Stacey Aglok MacDonald: We saw the raw emotion, just the bare, open soul that Aaju was. Aaju felt comfortable enough to do that with Lin in a way that she hasn't been able to do with Alethea and me. We were from her home community. We were neighbours and young Inuit who looked up to her. And, you know, it's a different kind of relationship dynamic.

Q: I wanted to touch on active and ongoing consent in the filmmaking process. Aaju Peter is the subject of this film, and she is also credited as the writer and executive producer. How was she involved in shaping the project?

Lin Alluna: When we were shooting, we would develop scenes together. During the edit, we agreed that Aaju shouldn't watch all the raw footage because it's a lot. When we had the rough cut, she got involved with Alethea and Stacey, and they watched it.

Stacey Aglok MacDonald: There were times when she explicitly said, "I am uncomfortable with that being in this documentary," and we would promptly discuss it, and most likely remove or alter it so that it was something she felt safe and comfortable with.

Lin Alluna: I remember opening up the film to a specific scene where Aaju had felt like she had been OK with it, but rewatching it later on, maybe with some distance to it, she felt differently. She felt it was too private. We changed that vérité scene into a dream instead, which I feel  made the film much better artistically.

Stacey Aglok MacDonald: It always kind of worked out to the advantage of the film somehow. Lin is such an artist, and it's not to take away from her skill as a storyteller, but Aaju had all the say when it came to when and where they were shooting and what they were shooting.

Q: How have different audiences experienced the film so far? What kind of impact do you hope this film will have?  

Emile Hertling Péronard: We're bringing the film to Greenland next month, so that's, of course, hugely interesting to see how it will play there.

Alethea Arnaquq-Baril: So far, it's primarily been non-native audiences that have seen the film. I can't wait for the Inuit to see it and to see those reactions. 

I think it has had an incredible response from non-native audiences. People have been gutted, but they've also understood more after seeing such a personal expression of what colonization has done to Aaju. It humanizes the effects of colonization. Audiences are feeling the real emotional impacts of it, and not just hearing statistics. Sometimes you hear stories in the news, and you're not emotionally invested in that person's life — you don't know them.

So to get to know Aaju and see her working through things, picking herself up and keeping on going — it touches people in a way they don't necessarily expect, even if they know some history. 

Emile Hertling Péronard: I always hope these films create a conversation back home, because we are from cultures documented by white people. It's difficult to tell our history when we don't have our first-hand sources. I'm talking about our colonial history from before we were born. I also think it's essential to create a discussion between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people, as we've seen happen during the screenings.

Alethea Arnaquq-Baril: I think anybody who watches it will walk away understanding that a bit more. How could people still not want to help or at least not want to stop oppressing, you know? I realized that we're just seen as subhuman by many people — even people who don't want to think of themselves as racist.     

The great challenge of my career now is to help humanize us as a people. The only way to do that is to connect emotionally, which is partly why I'm working on a comedy show now with Stacey.

It is so important to tell history, witness things as they unfold and show the real-life impacts now. But it's just as essential to make ourselves known as people who love and hurt and bleed and laugh because otherwise, no matter how well laid out our arguments are, people won't care enough to do anything.

Watch Twice Colonized on CBC Gem.