Marie Burke’s work as a filmmaker is informed by her experience in community activism and as a Native journalist. Marie began working as a print journalist in 1998 with the Aboriginal Multi Media Society of Alberta. One of the biggest influences in Marie’s life comes from her with work with AMMSA and it’s publisher, Bert Crowfoot. She continues to collaborate with Bert on video projects related to the cultural and spiritual life of Indigenous people who live primarily in western Canada.
Marie spent almost 10 years working in northern British Columbia for Smithers Friendship Center, Wedzen Kwe Native Legal Aid Office, and as Regional Coordinator for the Northwest Aboriginal Health Council. She possesses a passion to help people along in their respective lives by actively listening to their issues at hand. It is this passion that she carries with her into filmmaking.
Marie wrote and directed her early work in video during her time with A-Channel, Edmonton. She wrote for The Sharing Circle and contributed to the news shows as an on air reporter from 1999 to 2003.
After leaving A-Channel, Marie began independently writing, directing and producing documentaries, including her first documentary with the National Film Board of Canada, Spirit Doctors, 2005. Marie’s films include The Quest of Buffalo Spirit, a 4-part limited series for Omni Television, 2007; The Significant One-Good Medicine, for Alberta College of Art and Design, 2008, and a short film, Vistas: Carrying Fire, for the 2010 Olympics, part of a series produced by NFB and broadcast on APTN.
Marie was a consultant for the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, providing information services in the areas of Aboriginal and community arts to individual artists, not-for-profit organizations on artistic development and grantsmanship.
Of Cree, Dene and French descent, Marie was born and raised in Edmonton, with original family roots in Philomena and Owl River, Alberta. Both of her parents have experience in the Residential School systems that have affected her in many of the same ways that it impacted Indigenous people across Canada. This experience leads her to practice many of the beliefs and ways of knowing of the Cree people in Alberta. Marie holds strong beliefs that Indigenous people are the storytellers who keep the fire of the their way of life burning.