2025-01-17 15:14
By Fred Sgambati (’83)
Maya Macatumpag-Murray’s (’16) endeavours have truly distinguished her professionally. As a stunt performer, she broke into the film industry as an eight-year-old when she landed a role in Smallville and later went on to work in such notable films as Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022), Good Boys (2019), and Deadpool 2 (2018), to name just a few.
Being athletic and fearless are certainly elements of her success, but it’s not just Maya’s exploits on film that characterize her bravery and talent. She is a trailblazer whose courageous openness to experience originally brought her to Acadia and has enabled her to create countless new trails to inspire others ever since. Unafraid of risk, she embraces challenge as opportunity, and the Acadia Alumni Association is proud to acknowledge her as the 2025 recipient of its Outstanding Young Alumni Award.
“Maya Macatumpag-Murray exemplifies excellence,” says Alumni Association President Christine Luckasavitch (’11). “She immersed herself in the many transformative opportunities available at Acadia and built a solid educational and personal foundation that has allowed her, alongside her mother, to break down barriers and blaze a brilliant trail for Black women in film. Maya is excelling in a unique career that is truly inspiring, especially to new grads.
“We are honoured to celebrate her achievements both as a performer and an individual. Maya uses her voice, popularity and profile to elevate and inspire others. Her humility and work ethic are equally impressive and represent the values we hold dear within our alumni community. We can’t wait to see what she will do next, and we are so excited to recognize her as this year’s Outstanding Young Alumni Award recipient.”
Maya graduated from Acadia with BA in politics and once considered a career as a lawyer. However, her time at Acadia provided the opportunity to critically analyze the world and refine an innate curiosity to explore topics and viewpoints she never would have encountered otherwise.
As a member of the Acadia basketball Axewomen, she honed her skills as an athlete and stoked a competitive fire, noting that her experience at Acadia shaped her life for the better. “Working in the film industry, you deal with a crew filled with all different kinds of people with various backgrounds and skill sets,” she says. “Every set I walk on has a different crew and cast. There are challenging viewpoints and narratives prescribed in each project we create. I am able to stand strong and firm in expressing my opinions in my work because of my education at Acadia, and my work ethic is at a level it never would have been had it not been for the Acadia women’s basketball program.”
Strong and determined
It is worth noting that Maya is descended from a line of equally adventurous, courageous, talented, strong and determined women. Her mother Deborah was a pioneering African Canadian stuntwoman whose more than two decades of work within the industry inspired Maya to dream of following in her mom’s footsteps.
Along with a mother’s love and support, Maya received the vivid personal example, the connective pathways and an astonishing, truly impressive array of multi-disciplinary early training in the sorts of rigorous physical and psychological foundational pursuits that could prepare her for the amazing opportunities that she has since been able to pursue.
A generation earlier, Maya’s grandfather and grandmother immigrated to Canada from the Philippines to start a new life in the hope that their sacrifices and hard work could eventually give their children, and their children’s children, opportunities beyond what would have been available to them in their homeland.
Maya’s significance as a Filipino African Canadian woman ascending to fulfill roles in an international blockbuster like Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, playing a Dora Milaje, an elite group of warriors who serve as the all-female special forces for Wakanda as well as the Black Panther’s personal bodyguards, is almost beyond imagination.
The film’s importance to movies, to women as self-determining agents, to all people of colour, to North Americans as a mythical spur to begin to learn something about the actual continent of Africa, its varied nations, cultures and languages, and their place in human history, and the transference from fiction to a consideration of actual possibilities for more enlightened approaches to geo-politics: all go well beyond its origins within a comic book universe, and Maya stands at the forefront of this important form of human engagement.
She is truly paving a way in the film industry as a Black female stuntperson and actress, and creating opportunities for other young people to follow her lead.
We look forward to celebrating Maya on May 1 during the Acadia Alumni Awards Dinner at Pier 21 in Halifax, where the award will be presented.
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