The producers behind the documentary Inconvenient Indian have set a world broadcast release date more than a year since questions arose about its director’s Indigenous identity.

The film will broadcast on the network APTN on Friday, April 8 across all channels and will be available to stream on APTN’s lumi the following day.

The decision was made after a “series of meaningful consultations” with the Indigenous participants whose stories are told in the documentary, as well as the National Film Board of Canada (NFB), the NFB’s Indigenous advisory committee, production company 90th Parallel Productions and producer Jesse Wente, according to a release from the NFB.

Inconvenient Indian will be available for “educational distribution and community screenings” starting in fall 2022 as part of a decision to have the film “serve its highest value” and be able to acknowledge “the collective contribution of the on-screen Indigenous participants.”

The documentary is directed by Michelle Latimer and inspired by the Thomas King book of the same name, which dismantles the colonial narrative of the First Nations, Métis and Inuit peoples in North America. It is produced by Wente, Stuart Henderson of 90th Parallel Productions and Justine Pimlott of the NFB. Executive producers are 90th Parallel Productions’ Gordon Henderson and the NFB’s Anita Lee.

Participants in the film include King, Métis visual artist Christi Belcourt, Inuk filmmakers Alethea Arnaquq-Baril and Nyla Innuksuk (Slash/Back), electronic music band The Halluci Nation, Mohawk artist Skawennati, poet Jason Edward Lewis, teacher Carman Tozer, hunter Steven Lonsdale and Cree artist Kent Monkman.

Inconvenient Indian had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2020, where it won the People’s Choice Documentary award. It was pulled from its planned international premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in December 2020 after reports from APTN and CBC alleged that director Latimer had been dishonest in her claims about her Indigenous ancestry. Latimer initially filed a defamation lawsuit against CBC following the allegations, but the suit was dropped in 2021 when Latimer failed to serve a statement of claim to CBC.

Since then the Indigenous Screen Office, APTN and Archipel Research and Consulting have held consultations with the Indigenous community on best practices for preventing or remedying false claims of Indigenous identity for Indigenous-specific funding programs, resulting in the recently published report Building Trust and Accountability: Report on Eligibility in the Indigenous Screen Sector.