The Motion Picture Industry

Sandra Crowchild, Tsuu T'ina, one of the main characters in The Gift of the Grandfathers

Greg Coys

Greg Coys, a Métis of Nehiyaw, French and Polish ancestry, was born and raised in central Alberta. A graduate of Yale University, he made his film debut in a feature role in Running Brave.

Greg worked as a production assistant or assistant director on some of the most successful films produced in western Canada in the 1980s, including My American Cousin and Life after Hockey. Over the past ten years, he has written and directed dozens of documentaries and client-sponsored films. In the early 1990s, he entered into partnership with Gil Cardinal at Great Plains Productions. There he worked as a writer/director on the Native documentary series My Partners, My People, and produced and directed Wild Horse Round-up, filmed on the Peigan Reserve in Brocket, Alberta. In addition to producing and coordinating the production of feature-length documentaries, he wrote and directed the award-winning documentary Learning with Love. Greg's work is currently being broadcast nationally and internationally.

Greg continues to work in the documentary genre. He is the executive producer of All My Relations, a weekly Native magazine broadcast nationally on the CBC. He is also co-producing the feature-length drama Charcoal, the story of a turn-of-the-century Kainai medicine man and fugitive, as well as an animated children's series, Stories of the Seventh Fire.

Doug Cuthand Doug Cuthand, Nehiyaw, is an independent producer, writer and journalist from Little Pine, Saskatchewan, who currently works in Saskatoon. He and his wife, Pauline, own Blue Hill Productions, a film and video production company that specializes in documentaries and docudramas. Doug has produced about 20 documentary films, including The Gift of the Grandfathers, which follows two cowboys, a man and a woman, who are hoping to qualify for the Indian National Finals Rodeo in Saskatoon in November 1996.

Doug Cuthand and a cameraman during the filming of the Tsuu T'ina Nation rodeo, for The Gift of the Grandfathers, 1996

Doug writes a weekly column for the Saskatoon Star Phoenix and the Regina Leader Post, and is producer-host of "Indigenous Circle", a half-hour weekly newsmagazine carried by BBS Saskatchewan. His many awards include the Unity Award in Media, awards from the Saskatchewan Motion Picture Association and the Native American Journalists Association, the National Association of Inuit and Indian Photographers Award for Best Documentary over half an hour (The Gift of the Grandfathers, 1996) and the Living in Harmony award for race relations.

Film crew during the filming of an interview with Emmet Crowchild, a team roper in the Tsuu T'ina Rodeo

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