Indigenous singing Storytelling is such a huge part of Indigenous culture.

That's what we've been doing since time immemorial.

And I think filmmaking is such a great way to story tell, and use visuals to convey a message.

My name is Asia Youngman.

I'm Cree, Métis, Haudenosaunee, and I'm an Indigenous filmmaker.

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I remember when I was in high school, I wanted to be an actor.

At that time, there didn't seem to be a lot of Indigenous female directors.

My parents, as supportive as they are, were like, You should go to university and get a degree first.

So I went to the University of Victoria.

I studied psychology and sociology.

I started working in public health for this online Indigenous youth wellness program.

We used to do a lot of film workshops for youth, so we go into communities and teach them how to film, edit their own videos.

I loved it.

That was what inspired me to do filmmaking, to uplift the voices of Indigenous youth and support them.

There are a lot of overlapping themes with the first three short documentaries that I've done.

The first one was "Lelum'" and it was about the importance of land from the perspective of Indigenous youth in British Columbia.

The second film was called "In the Valley of Wild Horses."

It's about a 200 kilometer horse and wagon trip from Nemiah Valley to the Williams Lake Stampede, and the whole point of it is to connect you to the land.

And then my most recent film, "This Ink Runs Deep," and it's about tattooing and the importance of teaching these traditions and passing them along to youth.

The goal with my filmmaking is to create representation of our people accurately and just have us there on screen.

Also, when I portray female characters on the screen, I give them this place of power and strength, as opposed to always being in these positions of dealing with trauma and dealing with abuse.

I think it's important for young women to see powerful female characters on the screen.

When I was young about being an actor, you know, maybe it's because I didn't really see or women directing, but now it's starting to shift and we're having representation and younger women can hopefully be inspired that, you know, they too can go into these roles.

It's so cool to be able to network with other Indigenous filmmakers around the world and hear about the different stories that people are telling.

And it's just really a huge sense of pride I feel like, to see our people just killing it and doing so many amazing things.

For so long our stories have been told without us, and I think it's a beautiful time because there's so many amazing Indigenous filmmakers and we're all kind of coming up together and supporting each other.

So it's a really beautiful time to be a part of that.