Montreal – Documentary filmmaker Tracey Deer is examining issues of native status in her new film Club Native. The documentary, a coproduction between the National Film Board and Montreal-based Rezolution Pictures, is slated for the festival circuit this summer.

Deer points out that the federal government keeps official lists of native people in Canada, and that those of mixed-race parentage can be denied native status.

Deer – who also directed the 2005 documentary Mohawk Girls, another NFB/Rezolution copro – says this list only adds to what is already a growing identity crisis facing aboriginal people.

‘What this does is prompt a series of questions: What does it mean to be native? What makes me a native, if not language and tradition?’ she asks.

Budgeted at just under $500,000, Club Native is produced by Adam Symansky of the NFB and Christina Fon, Linda Ludwick and Ernest Webb of Rezolution. It is exec produced by Ravina Din and Sally Bochner of the NFB and Rezolution’s Catherine Bainbridge.