The Canadian drama Cashing In this week debuted its fourth and final season on APTN.

But the legacy for the series about sex, money and power at the North Beach Casino includes serving as a launch pad for a host of aboriginal crew members, screenwriters, directors and producers.

One is veteran actor Tina Keeper, best known for her star turn in the CBC series North of 60 before becoming a Member of Parliament in Ottawa for one term to 2008.

After leaving politics, Keeper guest starred during the second season of Cashing In as Aura Sphere. Besides becoming a series regular, Keeper also became a producer trainee.

“I thought it was a very great opportunity when it presented itself to be involved as a producer,” she told Playback Daily.

She said Cashing In had aimed to develop “capacity” for aboriginal artists to create homegrown dramas for APTN. The aim is developing and producing scripted series with competing and complementing narratives that native and non-native communities in Canada can view to be entertained, while also understanding the relationship between one to the  other.

That said, producing APTN dramas is expensive, so opportunities for aboriginal artists to get into the industry remain limited.

Shot on location in Winnipeg, Cashing In is a coproduction between Animiki See Digital Production, Kistikan Pictures and Buffalo Gal Pictures.

Kistikan Pictures is a partnership between Keeper’s production shingle, Keeper Productions, and Buffalo Gal Pictures, and its first project was the third season of Cashing In.

“One of the things I’ve learned is a lot of success is due to opportunity. The aim of [Kistikan] is to provide opportunity for aboriginal people in the industry,” Keeper explained.

Kistikan Pictures also came about because APTN had a requirement that only majority-owned aboriginal companies could produce work for the network.

“[Buffalo Gal] had the ability to mentor me, and I had so many years of experience, so I felt very comfortable moving into the role of a producer,” she said.

Keeper began her career as a young woman in Winnipeg theatre as a set and costume designer.

She eventually studied acting at the Centre for Indigenous Theatre before starring in CBC’s North of 60.

With hindsight, Keeper insists major industry financiers like Telefilm Canada and the CBC aren’t doing enough to support and sustain aboriginal screenwriters and producers, and so the aboriginal community has to generate activity on its own, helped by APTN.

“I do have a large network, and I do have good partners, and it really does become that opportunity to provide networking for writers, directors and artists and to see what we can come up with,” Keeper said.

As much as APTN TV shows like Cashing In and Blackstone, and award-winning movies like Empire of Dirt, Maïna and Rhymes for Young Ghouls revolve around where aboriginal communities are today in Canada, Keeper insists it also springs from an artistic awakening barely 40 years old in the face of discrimination and stereotypes.

“It’s kind of moved simultaneously with the residential schools and people not being isolated within each of their own cultures. A lot of it is driven by politics, we felt politicized to participate as actors and have our voice,” Keeper recalls.

“But that’s all very recent. We don’t have a history that Euro-Canadians have with literature and theater,” she added.

Keeper pays homage to aboriginal artists like Tomson Highway and Tantoo Cardinal whose creations have provided a bridge between native and non-native communities in Canada.

“They are people who are of the land and of the language and took their own cultural knowledge and brought it into western art forms. I was deeply inspired by that,” she said.