Michèle Audette

Filmmaker Michael Zelniker wrote a love letter to the boreal forest and the Indigenous Peoples who have lived there for thousands of years — and it begins with panic-buying toilet paper. Throughout that story is heartbreak over the deforestation caused to create paper fibre used in paper products. The letter comes in the form of a documentary titled The Issue with Tissue: A Boreal Love Story. Zelniker, a non-Indigenous Canadian-American filmmaker based out of Los Angeles, travelled across the boreal to meet with First Nation leaders and knowledge keepers, and scientists to discuss how the link between colonialism and extractivism is threatening one of Canada’s essential carbon sinks. Now, Michèle Audette, a senator and Innu member from Uashat mak Mani-Utenam who served as an executive producer, is hosting a screening of the film for lawmakers on Parliament Hill. [to access the full story, a National Observer subscription may be required]