Tracey Penelope Tekahentakwa Deer (born February 28, 1978) is a First Nations (Mohawk) screenwriter, film director and newspaper publisher based in Kahnawake, Quebec. She has written and directed several award-winning documentaries for Rezolution Pictures, an Aboriginal-run film and television production company. In 2008, she was the first Mohawk woman to win a Gemini Award, for her documentary Club Native. Her TV series Mohawk Girls had five seasons from 2014 to 2017. She also founded her own production company for independent short work.
Tracey Deer was born in 1978 and grew up in a large, close-knit Mohawk family in Kahnawake, a reserve in Quebec, Canada that is south of the St. Lawrence River, across from Montreal. She is a member of the Bear Clan[2] and attended local schools: Karonhianhnonha School Elementary and Queen of Angels Academy.[3]
Deer moved to the United States for college, attending Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. She graduated with a degree in film studies.[3]
Deer's first Rezolution/NFB co-production explored the lives of three teenage girls from her reserve. They faced the same decision as she had at their age: to move away and risk losing their rights as Mohawks, or stay and give up the possibilities offered by the outside world.[4]Mohawk Girls received the Alanis Obomsawin Best Documentary Award at the 2005 imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival.[5]
One More River: The Deal that Split the Cree (2005)
Kanien'kehá:ka/Living the Language (2008), about the Kanien'kehá:ka language immersion program at Akwesasne, a Mohawk Nation reserve that covers parts of Canada and the US across the St. Lawrence River.[5]
Deer and Knight also worked together in 2009 on the comedy television pilotEscape Hatch. A spin-off of a short she had directed in 2007, it explores the lives of four young Mohawk women at Kahnawake making their way in the 21st century, including looking for relationships.[3] In 2014 it was picked up as Mohawk Girls (the same as her documentary) and ran for five seasons.[7]
Deer formed her own production company, Mohawk Princess Productions. She wants to produce her own short fiction films.[5]
In 2014, Deer wrote and produced the first season of Mohawk Girls, adapted from her documentary of the same name. Broadcast on CBC, the show follows the daily lives and struggles of four young women who live in Kahnawake. The fifth and final season was to be completed in 2017.[7]
In 2019, Deer joined the writing room for the third season of the television series Anne with an E, loosely based on the classic book Anne of Green Gables.[10] In that season the writers added an indigenous storyline and new characters. Ka'kwet, a young Mi'kmaq girl, is played by Mohawk actress Kiawenti:io Tarbell. She befriends Anne, and her family members are also part of the season.
Personal life
Deer is married to a non-First Nations person.[11] In April 2017, The Globe and Mail reported that there were rumours that authorities on the First Nations Reserve where Deer lives, and where her hit show is set, had sent her an eviction notice. The Kanahwake membership rules do not allow non-Natives, even spouses, to live on the reserve.
Deer said the rumour was false. She was concerned that she might yet face eviction because of her political activism; she had long opposed the eviction of non-Native spouses from housing on the reserve.[11]
