Filmmaker presents First Nations success stories -- there's plenty as Venturing Forth heads into third season tonight

Lee Bacchus
The Province

Sunday, February 09, 2003

Brenda Chambers produces Venturing Forth on Aboriginal Peoples Television.

It's more than just a warm memory. For B.C. filmmaker Brenda Chambers, it's a spark that lit a fire.

Chambers was 14 when her grandfather Fred Boss, an 80-year-old hereditary chief, asked her to help him preserve their language. She taped the songs and language of his Champagne and Aishihik band in the Yukon and
interviewed the native elders in the community.

"We did do a little taping before he died [in 1981] and that was very inspirational for me," says Chambers, a B.C. filmmaker whose series Venturing Forth, a documentary about successful First Nations entrepreneurs, begins its third season tonight on the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (at 5 and 9:30 p.m.).

"My grandfather was amazing. He led by example, accomplishing things in a very quiet way."

Those first few tapes were also Chambers' first steps in media production, and the inspiration stuck.

Venturing Forth is all about the changing landscape of aboriginal business, which runs the gamut from a successful clothing designer to major mega-projects involving First Nations in Northern Quebec. Chambers herself is emblematic of a generation of new and forceful First Nations entrepreneurs making it on their own terms -- without abandoning their heritage.

At 38, she is not-so-quietly accomplishing a lot: running her own film/video production company (Brenco Media), teaching communications at Capilano College and getting named as finalist for The Globe and Mail's Top 40 Under-40 business awards.

Chambers grew up in Whitehorse, the third of four children raised by their mother. "My mother was incredible," says Chambers. "She's beautiful to this day."

The family support and inspiration reached back even further than her mother and grandfather. Chambers heard and read stories about her great-grandfather, Chief Jim Boss, a colourful Yukon character who ran a trading post, owned a pet monkey and pioneered the land-claims process during the Gold Rush.

Her aunt, too, was another strong influence. She introduced her to the arts, and impressed upon her young niece that she could do anything she put her mind to.

And Chambers has put her mind to many things, including executive secretary for the government of Yukon and part-time model. But it was after a stint in communications at an Edmonton college and a subsequent summer in a Ryerson University television production course in Toronto that Chambers rediscovered the energy she's been channelling into Venturing Forth.

"Yes there are these problems on the streets and in the prisons, but not all depictions need to be full of despair," she says. "There are an incredible number of success stories out there as well that we never hear about."

lbacchus@png.canwest.com

Interview with Brenda Chambers.
© Copyright 2003 The Province

Read about Venturing Forth in The Province Newspaper

Previous Press Releases:

Dec 2001 | Jan 2003 | September 2003 | January 2005 | March 2005