Animated Indigenous series filled with friends of all kinds

Before they became chums, they were strangers with little professional acting experience.

Elise Armitage, 17, and James Siegers, 11, are two of the young local voice actors featured in Chums, an animated children’s series with an all-Indigenous cast and creative team from Manitoba and Saskatchewan.

The show — the second season of which premières on APTN today in Anishinaabemowin, Cree and English — follows a girl named Flies with Eagles and her ragtag group of animal friends as they learn about life on Turtle Island pre-contact.

“Romper is a fast-moving, energetic, but really empathetic bunny. So, pretty much me,” says Armitage, who is of Cree heritage and lives in Miniota, a small municipality 300 kilometres west of Winnipeg.

“Pterry the ptarmigan, he’s pretty energetic, probably not as energetic as Romper, but he’s a really fun character to voice. Every now and then he’ll crack a joke, which is similar to me,” says Siegers, who lives in Oakbank and is a member of the Waskaganish Cree Nation in northern Quebec.

Voice acting has been a learning experience for both up-and-comers.

Prior to auditioning for Chums, Siegers had worked as a photo double on Crave drama Little Bird and has since appeared on several episodes of sitcom Acting Good — both Manitoba-based productions.

Armitage is a former member of the Westman Youth Choir with performance credits in community musical theatre productions.

“It took me a while to really get comfortable in the studio. I was so nervous because I didn’t want to screw up or get fired,” she says.

Siegers also describes his first few days in the recording booth as nerve-racking.

“But after that I was like, ‘Oh, this is actually pretty good and fun,’” he says.

Their initial reactions to hearing themselves on screen as a ptarmigan and a rabbit ranged, respectively, from “funny” to “weird, like in a good way.”

Other local youth voice actors include Olivia Sinclair as Flies with Eagles and Zacchary Fontaine as Emiree the baby beaver.

The 11-minute episodes are geared towards preschoolers and rooted in Indigenous teachings, with walk-on appearances from a wide cast of wildlife, from squirrels to coyotes to a young goose named Ryan the gosling, who has blue eyes and a swoop of blond hair.

Chums is written, directed and produced by Dennis and Eric Jackson, a father-and-son team from Saskatchewan, and executive produced by Winnipeg’s Zoot Pictures.

The show, which made its television debut in spring 2024, has been greenlit for three seasons and picked up by global distributor Serial Maven Studios.

The simple 3D design of Chums is also homegrown.

Unable to find space at a Canadian animation studio during the height of the pandemic, Zoot decided to build its own.

“We have animators in Saskatchewan and here in Manitoba,” Zoot principal Leslea Mair says, adding the goal is to expand the studio while helping train local animators.

“It’s a bit of an incubator for animation personnel and we’ve had great success with people taking on bigger pieces.”

The success of Chums is thanks in large part to the strength of its Indigenous-led storytelling and creative, Mair says.

“As someone from a settler background, I may have a hand in the story editing or I may have comments, but I don’t make the final creative decisions, the Indigenous team does. That’s something we have to do in order to have it really ring true.”

eva.wasney@winnipegfreepress.com