Hawk, a teen drama series (13 x 30) to be pitched at Banff’s Market Simulation ‘is like the concept of Are You Afraid of the Dark?,’ says producer Darlene Mulligan of Chikak Communications, Winnipeg.

The main character, Hawk, is a 19-year-old healer who, in partnership with the older healer Joe, runs a camp for troubled youth on a wilderness island. Every night the young people get together, sit around the fire and tell stories of their backgrounds and their problems. ‘We’re going to be talking about bullying, substance abuse, racism, maybe even suicide,’ explains Mulligan.

‘But it will take an Aboriginal spirit type approach with lessons – it solves problems from an Aboriginal philosophical point of view.’ For example, an episode on bullying will include an elder speaking on the subject of abuse of power.

‘Joe is a wise one because he understands the culture of the people. Hawk is from a poor reserve, he never grew up with their culture. He was lost in an abyss for a long time, he had substance abuse issues of his own and was almost gone ’til he met Joe, who counseled him back to sobriety. He was inspired by Joe and that’s how the whole camp came about. Hawk goes on a vision quest, and while on it gets the vision for his camp.’

The one-hour pilot will tell Hawk’s story: structured around Hawk’s vision quest, the episode includes flashbacks taking him up to the present.

The idea for Hawk was spun off from an earlier, Blizzard-winning, educational series from Chikak called JCR The Sharing Circle. Essentially a series of classroom materials, JCR consisted of 12 four- or five-minute vignettes done for the Junior Canadian Rangers, an organization like the Boy Scouts specifically for kids in the North. Designed for use in communities north of 60, the emphasis was on indigenous kids’ problems.

‘The vignettes themselves were designed to accompany a workbook, so the premise was that you watched the vignettes and then worked through the problem with the group,’ explains Mulligan.

And kids with some insight from personal experience into the problems raised were able to talk about them in the Sharing Circle. ‘It was hugely successful in the Northern community. The series was such a success that it inspired me to develop it into a series,’ Mulligan says.

Unlike that series, Hawk is more character-based and sees issues resolved in the half-hour. Linked stories can be told that show opposing sides of the same story and help to cut costs. Rather than a new cast being sourced for every individual episode, for example, one tactic is to include a group of characters for a number of episodes.

‘We’re going to have a core group that’s there all the time, and then segment the episodes into blocks – one four-episode block might be about a group of ex-gang members who come to the island. We can cause problems among them and then as each reviews their story we can show different sides of the story. There are lots of ways to save money and keep it interesting,’ she says.

Part of Mulligan’s pitch is a tie-in at the end of the program directing viewers to existing sources of help, that is a kids phone help line and an Internet site that will have specific resources assigned to deal with problems raised on the show. *