Tracey Deer

Tracey Penelope Tekahentakwa Deer (born February 28, 1978) is a First Nations (Mohawk) screenwriter, film director and newspaper publisher based in Kahnawake, Quebec. She has written and directed several award-winning documentaries for Rezolution Pictures, an Aboriginal-run film and television production company. In 2008, she was the first Mohawk woman to win a Gemini Award, for her documentary Club Native. Her TV series Mohawk Girls had five seasons from 2014 to 2017. She also founded her own production company for independent short work.

In March 2021, Deer's dramatic film Beans was featured at the New York International Children's Film Festival. Set during the Oka crisis of 1990, which Deer lived through as an adolescent, it stars Kiawenti:io Tarbell (Mohawk), a young actress from Akwesasne. and attended local schools Karonhianhnonha School Elementary and Queen of Angels Academy. Mohawk Girls received the Alanis Obomsawin Best Documentary Award at the 2005 imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival.

One More River: The Deal that Split the Cree (2005) Deer co-directed One More River: The Deal that Split the Cree. This won the Best Documentary Award at Les Rendez-vous du cinéma québécois and was nominated for Best Social/Political Documentary at the Gemini Awards. Club Native also received the award for Best Documentary at the Dreamspeakers Festival in Edmonton, the award for Best Canadian Film at the First Peoples' Festival, and the Colin Low Award for Best Canadian Documentary at the DOXA Documentary Film Festival. The film was co-produced by Rezolution Pictures and the National Film Board of Canada.

Other film work In 2009, Deer collaborated with Montreal writer Cynthia Knight on Crossing the Line, a live-action 3D short for Digital Nations. This was an NFB and Aboriginal Peoples Television Network joint project, featuring Aboriginal talent at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. and premiered at the 2020 Toronto International Film Festival. Set during the Oka crisis of 1990, it features a young Mohawk girl nicknamed "Beans", played by Kiawaenti:io Tarbell of Akwesasne.

TV work In 2014, Deer wrote and produced the first season of Mohawk Girls, adapted from her documentary of the same name. Broadcast on CBC, the show follows the daily lives and struggles of four young women who live in Kahnawake. The fifth and final season was to be completed in 2017.

In 2019, Deer joined the writing room for the third season of the television series Anne with an E, loosely based on the classic book Anne of Green Gables. In that season the writers added an indigenous storyline and new characters. Ka'kwet, a young Mi'kmaq girl, is played by Mohawk actress Kiawenti:io Tarbell. She befriends Anne, and her family members are also part of the season.

Personal life

Deer is married to a non-First Nations person.