by Doug Ashbury
Northern News Services

NNSL (Dec 08/97) - The owner of Igloolik Isuma Productions is more than a little frustrated with the way Ottawa funds aboriginal programming.

The independent aboriginal television production company's secretary treasurer, Norman Cohn, said that he expected to have filed access to information documents with the federal government by the end of last week.

Isuma wants information on how Canadian Heritage funds aboriginal communications organizations.

"They'll have 30 days to respond," said Cohn, the only non-Inuk in Isuma.

Canadian Heritage gives millions of dollars each year to 14 aboriginal communications organizations through the Northern Native Broadcast Access Program and the Northern Distribution Program.

Among the 14 are the Inuit Broadcasting Corp. (IBC), Taqramiut Nipingat Inc., Northern Native Broadcasting Yukon and the Northern distribution channel Television Northern Canada.

"Just because it's called Inuit Broadcasting Corp. doesn't mean it's run by Inuit," Cohn said. "IBC has never been run by Inuit and TVNC has never been run by aboriginal producers," he said.

Zacharias Kunuk and Paul Apak, president and vice-president of Isuma respectively, claim the system that trained them has now disenfranchised them.

To rectify that, they are attempting to shine a searchlight on where federal funding for aboriginal communications goes.

Kunuk and Apak both worked at IBC for years. They helped build IBC and claim southern control is now ruining it.

A month ago, they proposed a plan which would see them take control of IBC and TVNC from Ottawa-based management.

They are fed up with a decade of poor Inuit programs, with southern-based control of the North's aboriginal broadcasting and with Heritage Canada, the federal department that supplies the money.

They claim poor management and misspending, as well as Northern politicians unwilling to let go of the system, are to blame.

"TVNC, in its present state -- we are ashamed of it," Kunuk said. "We even had trouble getting our Nunavut series aired."

Nunavut, written, produced, directed and featuring Igloolik Inuit, has been showcased at the Sundance Film Festival and New York's Museum of Modern Art.

Curiously, CBC, TVOntario, Tele-Quebec, Discovery Channel, the History Channel and Vision TV all rejected broadcasting the series, Cohn said.

Cohn, based in Montreal, added that Isuma had to practically beg to get the show on TVNC. It was aired through GNWT Presents.

In 1993 and 1994, Igloolik Isuma Productions required two years to assemble from seven different sources the minimum 15 per cent licence fee needed to trigger TeleFilm participation in its 13-part series Nunavut.

This series created employment for 20 Igloolik Inuit over 18 months and contributed $500,000 to the local economy, Cohn said.