Meet Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers: Clip from COMING HOME (Wanna Icipus Kupi)

Meet Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers, Director of episodes 1-3 of Little Bird Series, featured in our Coming Home Documentary streaming now on Crave and APTN lumi. An award-winning filmmaker, writer, director, producer, and actor, she is of Sami (Norway) descent and is a member of the Kainai First Nation (Blood Tribe, Blackfoot Confederacy).
As a filmmaker, one of Elle-Máijá's prime focuses is activism and social justice for Indigenous people. Her films often focus on issues that directly relate to and affect Indigenous women and communities. She has received and been nominated for awards at various international film festivals and has been recognized for her work rooted in social justice. Most recently, her documentary Kímmapiiyipitssini: The Meaning of Empathy won the award for Best Feature Length Documentary at the 10th Canadian Screen Awards in 2022.
Tailfeathers co-directed The Body Remembers When The World Broke Open with Kathleen Hepburn. The film premiered at the 2019 Berlinale - Berlin International Film Festival in the Generation program and had its Canadian premiere at the 2019 TIFF It was nominated for six Canadian Screen Awards, including Best Motion Picture, and won three. Tailfeathers shared the Canadian Screen Award for Best Director with Hepburn. The film also won the Toronto Film Critics Association's $100,000 Rogers Best Canadian Film Award.
Tailfeathers studied acting at the Vancouver Film School. She graduated in 2006 and then moved on to the University of British Columbia where she would graduate with a degree in First Nations studies and a minor in women and gender studies in 2011.
We love you Elle-Máijá. 🐦🧡🌾