Working with Indigenous Peoples

Most of the Nations we work with are stretched thin. Their staff are running fisheries programs, managing territory, sitting at negotiating tables, and answering to their own communities. They don't need a film company that adds to that load. They need one they can trust to get it right.

That's the kind of partner we try to be. We do our homework before we arrive. We learn the Nation's history, its position on the issues we're covering, how it governs itself, and what it's trying to say. Then we make the work, and we bring it back for approval. Most of the time the process is that simple, because the understanding was built at the start.

What follows is how we work. It applies whether a Nation hires us directly or we're making a film of our own.

We follow your lead

Where a Nation has its own media protocols, we follow them. Where it doesn't, we use imagineNATIVE's On-Screen Protocols & Pathways as our guide, along with the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and BC's Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act. We don't hand these to you as homework. They're the standard we hold ourselves to.

Elected councils and hereditary leadership carry different responsibilities. We take the time to understand who speaks to what. We don't take sides in a Nation's internal governance.

We ask at the moments that matter

We won't bury you in check-ins. But some things always need a clear yes. We get consent before filming people, and they know where the work will be shown. We don't film ceremonies, songs, or cultural practices without permission from the people responsible for them. We don't publish the locations of sacred, burial, or culturally sensitive sites, including drone footage that would make a place identifiable. If someone changes their mind later, we work with them to remove or replace what they've shared.

Your stories stay yours

When a Nation hires us, the Nation owns the finished work and can receive the full raw footage, as set out in our data sovereignty policy. When we make our own films, anyone we interview can ask for a copy of their interview to use however they like.

Traditional knowledge shared with us stays with the community it came from. We won't sell it, license it as stock footage, or reuse it in unrelated projects. Our data sovereignty policy covers how we store and protect this material.

You see it before anyone else does

For client work, the Nation has final approval. For our independent films, we keep editorial independence, but we show people how they and their knowledge are represented before release. If we've gotten something wrong about a practice, a place name, a family, or a history, we fix it.

Names and credit

We credit people by name and Nation, spelled the way they spell it, with the titles they choose. We use Indigenous place names and languages where the community wants them, and we check with speakers rather than guess.

Time and knowledge are paid for

Elders, knowledge keepers, and community members who share their expertise get paid. Honoraria are in our budgets from the start.

We've mentored Indigenous youth in the past and want to do more of it. If there's a young person in your community who wants to learn filmmaking, we'd like to hear from them.

Who we've worked with

Holding us to it

We're a non-Indigenous company, and good intentions aren't enough. If we've fallen short, tell us. Contact Ben Hazel at hello@salmonberrystudios.com. We review this policy every year.

Last updated October 29, 2026