Tag Archives: Hot Docs Festival

Arts, Indigenous Nations History

NameSake: A filmed Journey towards Recognition, Reconciliation and Place

The radio version of this story opens with a short clip from the documentary NameSake in which Dr Evan Adams welcomes viewers to Tla-amin territory. Then he adds,  ”A lot of people who live here now don’t know us. They forget that all of this used to be ours, and that this city is still in our territory.” 

NameSake will be playing in the House of the Klahoose People, on Cortes Island, at 2 PM on Tuesday, June 30. It is about the Tla’amin People’s connection to the ancestral village site that was taken away from them and renamed Powell River. Then they asked the city to change its name back to  Tiskʷat. The film was screened at Hot Docs in Toronto, the DOXA Festival in Vancouver and will be shown at the Victoria Film Festival this coming July. In this morning’s interview we talk to Dr Evan Adams, who just welcomed you to Tla’amin territory, and Executive Producer Claudia Medina. 

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Indigenous Nations History

Hots Docs to screen film documenting endeavour to change “horrific” city name

By Sam Laskaris, Windspeaker, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

A documentary about a First Nation’s request to have the name of Powell River, B.C. changed will have its world debut at Toronto’s Hot Docs Festival this month.

The film, titled təm kʷaθ nan – Namesake, features interviews with members of the Tla’amin Nation, who have spent years attempting to get the name of its neighbouring city altered. According to Tla’amin belief, as stated in the film’s trailer, names carry history, teachings and responsibilities. Powell River gets its name from Israel Wood Powell, who served as B.C.’s superintendent of Indian Affairs for 17 years from 1872 to 1889.

Powell played a key role in the establishment of Indian residential schools. He also had a role in banning the potlach and in the theft of portions of Tla’amin Nation lands.

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