Kevin Lee Burton (Swampy Cree) is an award-winning filmmaker, programmer and freelance editor. One of the main areas in which Kevin has focused his artistic endeavor is to explore how “traditional” concepts can be coherently iterated within technological contexts. Specifically, Kevin has designed a niche by working in his ancestral tongue, Cree. Kevin received his film training at the Indigenous Independent Digital Filmmaking Program in North Vancouver, British Columbia, and has worked as program assistant for the Native and Indigenous Initiatives at the Sundance Institute in Beverly Hills, California. He was raised in the remote area of God’s Lake Narrows, MB, but now lives and works in Winnipeg, MB.
Artist Statement
There are so many elements loaded into the term “traditional” that it can dichotomize those that exist within the term. There are too many issues about how “traditional” is defined and how this term shapes and defines Indigenous persons. Within my artistic expressions I look at linguistic, social, emotional, spiritual and psychological scenarios and try to make sense of how my “traditional” values can be coherently iterated and/or demonstrated within a technological context. I do this to explore the many unanswered questions around how the notion of how “traditional” is not only something of the past, but is current and ever fluid.
