JESSE WENTE

Director of the Indigenous Screen Office

Jesse Wente is an Ojibwe writer, broadcaster, producer and speaker. Born and raised in Toronto, his family hails from Chicago and the Serpent River First Nation. For over two decades, Jesse has been a culture critic on CBC Radio’s Metro Morning. Jesse spent 11 years with the Toronto International Film Festival, the last seven as the director of film programmes at the TIFF Lightbox.

Jesse is currently co-producing his first film, a screen adaptation of Thomas King’s best-selling book, The Inconvenient Indian. An outspoken advocate for Indigenous rights and First Nations, Metis and Inuit art, he has spoken at the International Forum of Indigenous Peoples, Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, the Canadian Arts Summit, the Cultural Summit of the Americas, and numerous Universities and Colleges. Recently Jesse delivered the annual Eva Holtby Lecture on Contemporary Culture at the Royal Ontario Museum.

Jesse currently serves on the board of directors for the Canada Council for the Arts and the Toronto Arts Council. In 2017 he was named the inaugural recipient of the Reelworld Film Festival’s Reel Activist Award and the Association of Ontario Health Centres’ Media Award for 2018.

Jesse is currently working on his first book for Penguin Random House Canada and in February 2018, Jesse became the first Director of the Indigenous Screen Office in Canada.

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