Winnipeg’s Eagle Vision and Toronto’s Spike & Sadie Media are partnering on a new factual series based on the award-winning book Indigenous Ingenuity: A Celebration of Traditional North American Knowledge published by Christy Ottaviano Books/Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. The team has optioned the rights to Deidre Havrelock and Edward Kay’s hit new children’s book and is developing it into a series for television. Indigenous Ingenuity, the 10 x 30 youth-driven show will shoot across North America and will be created with Havrelock and Kay as a part of a creative team that also includes Lisa Meeches, Rebecca Gibson, Dinae Robinson, Ira Levy and Kyle Irving, with Shaw Rocket Fund and the CMF as partners in development.
Indigenous Ingenuity will celebrate the amazing STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) contributions of Indigenous Peoples that are revealed in the book. Corn, chocolate, fishing hooks, rubber, innovative boats, recorded history, life-saving disinfectants, and forest fire management are all things that our lives would be unrecognizable without and these are just some of the topics covered amongst countless other scientific discoveries and technological inventions from Indigenous North Americans. Indigenous Ingenuity balances incredible traditional ideas and contemporary technology, with humor and adventure at its core.
“As we researched our book, it quickly became apparent that there were many fascinating Indigenous STEM experts and practitioners from all over Turtle Island who were safeguarding pre-contact Traditional Knowledge,” says Kay. “They all had stories to tell and incredible knowledge and wisdom to share, and with the television adaptation of Indigenous Ingenuity, we are excited about bringing these people to the screen and sharing the richness of North American Traditional Knowledge with the world,” says Havrelock.
Indigenous Ingenuity: A Celebration of Traditional North American Knowledge is written by Deidre Havrelock, a children’s author and a member of Saddle Lake Cree Nation in Alberta whose debut book Buffalo Wild! was released in 2021 and Edward Kay (This Hour Has 22 Minutes, Jimmy Two Shoes) an award-winning showrunner, screenwriter and author based in Toronto known for his critically acclaimed Gross Science book series. The book has won numerous awards and has been featured at conferences and by associations around the world. Within one week of its release, the book reached the #1 Best-Seller Spot on Amazon’s “Children’s Books on Inventors and Inventions” list and has seen tremendous success in the US. The book has been selected by numerous public and school libraries as recommended reading for Native American Heritage Month, including the Los Angeles Public Library, New York Public Library, Princeton Library, District of Columbia Public Library, San Francisco Public Library, and was selected for inclusion in the archives of the British Library.
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