Jennifer and Tamara Podemski are close. Like close, close. At 34 and 29 years old, they live across the street from each other, in the Bathurst and Wilson area where they grew up. They pluck lint from each other’s clothes. They eat off each other’s plates. They finish each other’s sentences. And while they’ve collaborated on countless projects over the years—everything from the mid-1990s series The Rez to the National Aboriginal Achievement Awards (Jennifer is the creative producer, Tamara the choreographer) to community work with Native youth—the sisters are now taking their individual turns in the spotlight. Tamara became the belle of Sundance this past January when she won a special jury prize for acting—the first Canadian woman and the first Native actor in the history of the festival to do so—for her role in the indie flick Four Sheets to the Wind. Jennifer, meanwhile, has finished filming the aboriginal-themed sitcom Moose TV (premiering on Showcase July 5), the most recent in a long list of television credits that includes Riverdale, North of 60 and Degrassi: The Next Generation.

Born to an Israeli father and a Saulteaux mother, the sisters grew to depend on each other as children, their home life marked by their mother Joanna’s battle with alcoholism. A Native rights activist, she walked out when Jennifer was 13, Tamara nine and their youngest sibling, Sarah—also an actor—four. (They have since reconciled, and Joanna now lives with Jennifer.) Left to raise three daughters on his own, their dad, Saul, a self-employed publisher who ran an alternative health magazine, enrolled the girls in a full roster of extracurricular activities. Already attending Earl Haig’s Claude Watson School for the Arts, they added swimming, tennis, music and gymnastics to their itineraries. They were also encouraged to explore the dual sides of their heritage, and the sisters converted to Judaism, joining the Hashomer Hatzair youth movement while still attending powwows and becoming involved in Native issues. “We come from a long line of community builders,” says Tamara. “They fought through so much oppression and genocide so that we could live our lives with this luxury of freedom.”