North Bay Indigenous man creates videos to foster understanding of First Nation realities

An Indigenous man in North Bay is creating self-paced training videos for people and businesses that want to better understand the history and realities of Indigenous people.

Warren Lewis has been working with a filmmaker to create training videos that teach people about their culture and what reconciliation truly means.

Warren Lewis has been working with a filmmaker to create training videos that teach people about Indigenous culture and what reconciliation truly means. (Eric Taschner/CTV News)

The project is called 'My Truth.'

"It’s really an attempt to make people more aware and make people more culturally competent about First Nations peoples and how to make things better for First Nations peoples," Lewis said.

He’s the founder of the Indigenous Training Collective, which started in 2015 and rebranded in 2022.

Lewis used to run in-person Indigenous cultural competence training. But speaking about the difficulties First Nations people have endured over and over again proved to be difficult and took a toll on him.

"My target would be non-Indigenous peoples and organizations of all sizes," he said.

"I really wanted a way to get this information out there to a broader audience."

The videos tell the story of historical interactions between Indigenous people and the Canadian government and the major events that shape their current-day struggles, including the Indian Act, residential schools and the Sixties Scoop.

The videos also deal with contemporary issues such as the missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. (Eric Taschner/CTV News)

Topics covered in the videos include the residential school system. (Eric Taschner/CTV News)

They also deal with contemporary issues such as the missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls.

"I feel like not enough Canadians truly know the history of First Nations peoples and the difficulties that they had went through," Lewis said.

Nipissing First Nation Chief Cathy Stevens said it’s critical all people learn about these events from an Indigenous perspective.

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"First Nations are gathering strength in their movement," Stevens said.

"Everybody kind of comes in with their textbook version of history -- and the textbooks were not favourable to the First Nation version of how things really unfolded."

Lewis is working with filmmaker Ed Regan of Regan Pictures and George Easton from Ion8, who is building the course.

With the shooting now concluded, Lewis is hoping to have the training videos edited and posted to the Indigenous Training Collective website sometime near the end of January.

The training videos include quizzes and a final exam.

“I'm really hoping that this training will reach a lot of people,” he said.