In the space of a year, Kerry Swanson moved from raising concerns about the future of the Indigenous Screen Office (ISO) to overseeing a long-term strategy with an estimated $37 million in annual funding as of 2025-26.

When Swanson, a member of Michipicoten First Nation, assumed leadership of the ISO in September 2022, her remit was clear: to turn its three-year allocation of $40.1 million from the federal government in 2021 into a permanent funding allocation. Less than two years later, she has exceeded that goal threefold.

In March, the Department of Canadian Heritage confirmed that the ISO would receive $13 million on an ongoing basis. In June, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) gave the ISO’s Certified Independent Production Fund 10% of the overall base contributions owed by foreign-owned streamers, with the first wave of funds due by Aug. 31, 2025, worth an estimated $14 million annually.

That same month, the Canada Media Fund (CMF) announced that the ISO would take over administration of its $10 million Indigenous program, starting in 2025-26.

“Creating an Indigenous screen sector requires supporting the entire ecosystem. It’s a huge endeavour and $13 million is certainly not enough to accomplish that,” Swanson tells Playback. “But, with the combined resources of [the CMF] and the CRTC allocation, I think we can really start making some transformative change.”

For Swanson and the ISO, securing permanent funding meant balancing the messaging within the organization and outside to pressure the government while also communicating to the Indigenous screen community and staff that its programs and activities would continue.

Swanson penned a letter to Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland and then-Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez in 2023 when an early funding decision did not come through. She followed it up with a letter to current Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge in 2024 and multiple public talks on the importance of the ISO, including at the CRTC’s hearings on base contributions.

“I think it was crucial that we took that strategy, given all the pressures on the federal budget and given that the CRTC process was happening at the same time,” says Swanson. “Because we were working so hard on securing our funding, that definitely played into our messaging for the CRTC.”

The permanent funding decision came down to the wire, just one month before the ISO’s funding would have run out. The first payment arrived three months later.

“She did not flinch, she did not back down … Kerry held the line and got us to a place that, years ago, when Kerry and I were starting out, we could have only dreamed of,” says Danis Goulet.

The Cree-Métis filmmaker describes Swanson as a collaborator and builder. The two have collaborated for years and Goulet is also a part of the ISO’s Membership Circle, an advisory group that approves the annual report and incoming board of directors.

“[I met Swanson] when I worked at the imagineNATIVE Film and Media Arts Festival as a director,” says Goulet. “I interviewed her for a job to be second-in-command at the festival and she actually called me to turn down the job. I spent an hour convincing her to take it because I saw something in her.”

The long-term security of permanent funding will allow the organization to expand capacity and hire at the senior leadership level, something the ISO could not do last year, says Swanson. The funding will also help diversify its revenue and reach out to new partners.

For 2024-25, the federal allotment will continue to be funneled into the Story Fund ($9.5 million) and its Sector Development programs and initiatives ($2.5 million).

Out of all of her achievements, Swanson says she is especially proud of the all-Indigenous team they have built across four provinces.

“I think the biggest testament to success for me will be that I can leave the ISO and it will be perfectly fine and capable of functioning without me,” she says. “We have such a strong team in place, that we’re continuing to build, that isn’t reliant on any one person, and it’s certainly not reliant on me.”

Image courtesy of the ISO; photo by Red Works

This story originally appeared in Playback’s 2024 Winter issue