Don Marks
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Don Marks is a writer, director and producer. He was once a street youth, and was subsequently adopted by aboriginal family. From 1974 to 1976, he was co-ordinator of the War Resister Information Program in Winnipeg, providing assistance for Americans who moved to Canada to avoid service in the Vietnam War (Winnipeg Free Press, 17 September 1997). He campaigned for the Manitoba Liberal Party in the 1977 provincial election, and received 769 votes (15.63%) for a third-place finish in Point Douglas.
Marks identified himself as aboriginal during an early 1980s interview, although he is not aboriginal by background. Aboriginal leader Elijah Harper once said of Marks, "I don't view him as a white person. As a matter of fact, I view him as a brother, like you do when you get to know a person and become comfortable talking with him." (Winnipeg Free Press, 3 November 1994).
In 1982, he collaborated with Bill Brittain in preparing a stage version of the book InDEO, which examines aspects of native life before and after European conquest. Live performances featured the singer Shingoose in a lead role (G&M, 9 December 1983). Marks and Shingoose subsequently collaborated in the partnership Native Multimedia Productions Inc., and worked together in several television ventures (Winnipeg Free Press, 7 April 1993). They created the First Nations-themed show Full Circle (later First Nations Magazine) in 1986 (Winnipeg Free Press, 17 October 1995). Three years later, they worked as co-executive producers of the CTV variety show Indian Time (G&M, 25 March 1989), which received an American Indian Film Festival Spirit Award and a 1989 Gemini nomination for Best Canadian Variety Program (Winnipeg Free Press, 10 November 2000; Canada NewsWire, 25 October 1989). Marks later directed Indian Time 2: Fly With Eagles for Global TV in 1991 (Toronto Star, 9 August 1992), and wrote and directed First Nations for CKND in 1993, both in collaboration with Shingoose. The latter work examined aspects of aboriginal life in Winnipeg.
In the summer of 1994, Marks organized the Sagkeeng First Nations Gathering in collaboration with native and non-native groups (Winnipeg Free Press, 22 June 1994). Later in the year, he produced the special "Boys in the Hood" to focus on aboriginal talent in Winnipeg (WFP, 3 November 1994). He issued Friends - With a Difference, a hard-hitting work about general trends of racism in Canada, in 1985 (WFP, 19 June 1995). Marks also managed aborginal singer Aaron Peters in this period (WFP, 28 July 1995).
Marks once said that he started creating aboriginal-themed television shows to counter the negative perceptions of aboriginals in the mainstream media during his youth. He said, "All you ever saw about Indians back then was either a political confrontation, Main Street's socio-economic problems or the buckskin-and-beads powwow stuff. Nobody was doing stories about contemporary aboriginal people who were contributing to society. I was out there, seeing so many positive things, and I just wanted to say, 'Hey, wait a minute. Don't judge everybody by Main Street'." (Winnipeg Free Press, 27 October 1995).
In the late 1990s, Marks produced a video to combat the problem of solvent abuse in aboriginal communities (Winnipeg Free Press, 17 November 1999). He produced a five-part documentary series called Everywhere Spirit with Shingoose in 2000 (WFP, 10 November 2000). He produced a work in 2001 entitled They Call Me Chief about aboriginal talent in the National Hockey League, which was awarded Best Documentary Film at the Fargo Film Festival (WFP, 6 January 2001, 26 April 2003). He produced Indian Time 3 in 2003 (Winnipeg Free Press, 16 January 2003).
He wrote a tribute piece for media mogul Izzy Asper in 2003, thanking him for his support in the First Nations Magazine and Indian Time series (WFP, 11 October 2003).
In 2004, Marks was arrested on charges of possessing child pornography while preparing a documentary on the subject. He acknowledged downloading the material to his computer, but argued it was necessary for research purchases. He had already conducted preliminary interviews for the documentary, and had set a budget. The charges were dropped in 2005. After his name was cleared, Marks told a reporter, "I want the public to know I'm innocent. This wasn't a case of getting off on a technicality. All I was trying to do was empower the public to make informed choices and realize that this could be their child. [...] Once the police and Crown had the chance to review all this evidence, they realized that I really was doing a film and had a legitimate purpose for doing this. As a reporter, you sometimes have to look at ugly things. In my case, I had to see what's out there before I could report on it." (Winnipeg Free Press, 9 June 2005) His reputation was not permanently damaged by the incident.
He became a freelance writer with the Winnipeg Free Press in 2005, and began working on a documentary about Fetal Alcohol Syndrome Disorder (WFP, 22 September 2005). In November of the same year, he organized an exhibition hockey game between aboriginal ex-NHL players and alumni of the Winnipeg Jets (WFP, 23 November 2005).
