Assembly of First Nations
In 2007, Jester worked with the Assembly of First Nations on two projects that told an important story and pushed the boundaries of current technology. Jester produced a nationally distributed cultural film and developed a first-of-its-kind secure web portal for First Nations leadership across Canada.
CLIENT
Assembly of First Nations
SECTOR
National Indigenous Association
RELATIONSHIP
2007
SERVICES DELIVERED
Video Production · Web Portal Design & Development
Storytelling and technology in service of something larger
The Assembly of First Nations is the national organization representing First Nations citizens in Canada. They advocate on issues of language, culture, education, governance, and rights on behalf of communities from coast to coast to coast.
In 2007, Jester was engaged to support two distinct projects for the AFN's Education Programs: a cultural video and an online collaboration portal. Both required us to work with care, cultural understanding, and a genuine commitment to the purpose behind the work.
Work that required more than technical skill.
Each project presented its own distinct challenge. The video required sensitive, respectful production, working with an Ojibwe elder and a child at the Canadian Museum of History to capture something authentic about the urgency of Indigenous language preservation. Getting it right mattered in ways that went well beyond the craft of filmmaking.
The portal was a different kind of challenge: a technical one. The AFN needed a secure, national platform where First Nations chiefs and their staff could collaborate, share documents, and access information across vast distances and varying levels of digital literacy. In 2007, that kind of virtual collaborative space simply didn't exist off the shelf like it does today. We had to build something that had a special purpose but didn't yet have a name.
Two projects. One shared purpose.
Both projects were grounded in the same commitment: helping First Nations communities connect, communicate, and preserve their culture.
Aboriginal Language & Culture Preservation Video
Filmed at the Canadian Museum of History with an Ojibwe elder and a child, the video explored the importance of preserving Indigenous languages and passing them to future generations. Original music was composed and performed by an Indigenous drum group. The finished film was shared nationally across First Nations communities.
AFN Education Web Portal
A first-of-its-kind secure web portal allowing First Nations chiefs and their staff from across Canada to collaborate, share documents, and contribute to shared resources. What is now a commonplace capability was, in 2007, genuinely pioneering, built at a time when the tools to do it barely existed.
Work that was ahead of its time and still holds up.
The video reached people across Canada, carrying a message about Indigenous language preservation with authenticity and respect. The web portal gave AFN's education programs a collaborative infrastructure that was genuinely new. We built a national, secure space for leadership to share knowledge at a time when that kind of platform had to be built from scratch, and when many of the communities it was designed to serve didn’t have high-speed internet.
We're proud of this work not just for what it was technically but for what it meant. These weren't just deliverables. They were contributions to something that mattered deeply to communities across this country.
We were pioneers then. We continue to innovate today.
✦ HOW WE’D APPROACH THIS WITH AN AI LENS
The work we did for the AFN in 2007 required us to push into emerging technology and find creative solutions before the tools were mature. That spirit of innovation hasn't changed; only the tools have.
AI-Accelerated Creative Production. A film intended to reach people across a vast country, across different levels of access, would benefit enormously from today's AI-assisted production tools. Subtitle generation, language adaptation, format optimization for different distribution channels, and accessibility enhancements can now happen in hours rather than weeks, allowing more time and budget to focus on what matters most: the story itself.
Process Assessment & Implementation. The collaboration portal we built in 2007 was pioneering precisely because nothing like it existed. Today, the landscape of available tools is vast, but choosing the right one, configuring it correctly for a national organization with complex security, accessibility, and language requirements, and making sure it actually gets used is still a significant challenge. AI-assisted process assessment would help map stakeholder needs, identify the right platform, and design an implementation that works for communities with very different levels of digital infrastructure and technical knowledge.
We were pioneers then.
We continue to innovate today.
Where do you want to go next?