I came to Canada a decade ago as an immigrant. This journey of settling into my new adopted home has opened up many unresolved questions for me about history, heritage, and belonging. My quest to build a deeper, meaningful connection with this land leads me back to its beginnings toward Indigenous communities. Not as subjects of study, but as elders, teachers, keepers of wisdom and of stories that matter. To build, heal, connect. To belong.

I am a documentary filmmaker and a teacher. The way I know how to find belonging and learn is to make something together across generations.

That instinct led me to conceive Bridge to Gesgapegiag, a fellowship model that brings together film and media students from urban centres with Indigenous youth and elders to co-create short films. The goal is not to make films about a community but to support films made with the community while building skills, and, most importantly, connections.

The distance between generations and communities is widening, quietly and steadily, and I feel it. Bridging that gap, between elders and youth; between cultures; between the stories that are fading and the people who have not yet heard them, is part of why this work matters to me.

Bridge to Gesgapegiag is a traveling fellowship that brings together a group of film and media students to spend two weeks in an Indigenous community, working alongside elders, high school students, teachers, and local partners.

Elders share their knowledge, history, culture, spirituality, and stories. Indigenous youth, as the primary tellers of those stories, learn the basics of filmmaking, interviewing, story development, sound, camera, and editing. The visiting university students support the process through mentorship, technical guidance, and collaboration, while also documenting their own experience during the fellowship. Together, they will create remarkable short films.

When production ends, selected youth from the community, accompanied by an elder or community representative, travel to the partner university for post-production. The institution hosts the editing process, provides technical support, promotes, and screens the finished films. The films are also intended to tour to other Indigenous communities, universities, and cultural spaces with a small group representing the community, students, elders, and institutional partners.

The model is designed to grow: different communities, different institutions, different stories, but the same commitment to co-creation and exchange.