Garden River youth featured in APTN’s new TV series, Warrior Up!
By Rick Garrick
GARDEN RIVER — Garden River youth Nevaeh Pine’s advocacy on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) is featured in the second episode of APTN’s new 30-minute youth TV series Warrior Up! The 13-episode series, which highlights the stories of young Indigenous change makers, launches on May 4 on APTN Lumi and May 11 on APTN with the Talon Pascal: Time Traveller episode, while The Nevaeh Pine: The Voice of Disruption episode airs on APTN Lumi on May 11 and APTN on May 18. The series was produced by Picture This Productions in association with APTN.
“We filmed the assembly we held at my high school about awareness and action for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls,” says Pine, a Grade 12 high school student at White Pines Collegiate and Vocational School who was 15-years-old when the episode was shot in her community and Sault Ste. Marie. “At this assembly, we had Elders, drummers, speakers, dancers, and the community attended and so did my high school — it was open to all, it was an opportunity for people to not only learn but also listen because education and educating yourself is the first step to being able to understand such an injustice.”
Pine says she started advocating about MMIWG after entering into oral speaking competitions when she was 12-years-old.
“It gave students a chance to use their voice,” Pine says. “It gave me the confidence to be able to speak out and I started speaking on MMIWG2S at first. I never fully understood the depth of the situation until I got older and I heard the families and women’s stories, but I understood it was a topic that needed to be talked about and it needed to be brought up.”
Pine says there was an amazing response from her peers and the community about the assembly.
“I did talk to a lot of my peers afterwards and a lot of them said thank you, but a lot of them didn’t really understand the topic and how horrific it is,” Pine says. “Multiple students came up to me and said: ‘I heard this was a thing but I never understood it was a problem.’”
Pine says she hopes the episode will inspire other people to use their voice and stand up and not be afraid to speak up.
“And don’t be afraid to listen because educating yourself is a first part to understanding anything,” Pine says.
Pine says her future goal is to pursue human rights law, specifically as a human rights lawyer, noting that she has been accepted to study a double major in political sciences and law and justice at Algoma University in Sault Ste. Marie.
The Warrior Up! series features co-hosts Anna Lambe, who hosted The Nevaeh Pine: The Voice of Disruption episode, Joshua Odjick, and Joel Oulette learning what it means to be a modern-day warrior as they join activist youth in shooting arrows from horseback, improvising raps, walking the fashion runway, constructing a pit house, and packing Blessing Bags throughout the 13 episodes.
“Anna herself put so much into relating what the story was, which was the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls that Nevaeh was talking about and what she was striving to help get people to understand and know about,” says David Finch, co-producer and series director at Picture This Productions. “Anna related to that because one of her close friends, a person she acted in a movie with, also was a victim and it happened one year to almost the day that Nevaeh had her [assembly] at school. It really educated me about how deep Anna really related to the subject — I felt that was an extremely powerful moment for the series and for the show.”
The series also features a companion website, warriorup.tv, a full slate of social media accounts and a digital Activism 101 Toolkit to help youth create change in their own communities.