The film, Pelq’ilc (Coming Home), is a collaboration between Haig-Brown and her niece, award-winning filmmaker Helen Haig-Brown (Tsilqhot’in Nation). It tells how the children and grandchildren of people who attended the Kamloops school are regenerating the Secwepemc culture and language and teaching them to their children.

The story begins at the Kamloops school, which was established in Secwepemc territory in 1890. Almost 100 years later, in 1988, Faculty of Education Professor Haig-Brown interviewed a group of the school’s former students, and published Resistance and Renewal: Surviving the Indian Residential School.  Still used by universities and communities across the country, it was one of the first books in Canada to tell the stories of the Kamloops students, and the efforts of residential schools to suppress First Nations languages and cultures.

Almost two decades after the initial research, Professor Haig-Brown and her niece Helen, whose mother had attended the Kamloops residential school, decided to interview the children and grandchildren of the former students.

“A few years ago, I ran into two relatives of people I had originally interviewed for the book, and found they were both working in language immersion schools, teaching children the Secwepemc culture and language, which the residential school had tried to stamp out,” said Professor Haig-Brown. “My niece and I became interested in exploring the place of education in the regeneration of culture.”

There are two major themes in the film – the significance of language, and the importance of connection to the land, said Helen Haig-Brown, who has been filming short dramas and documentaries for most of a decade.

“We focused on two families. In one family, the daughter of Kamloops residential school students learned the Secwepemc language when she was in her twenties because she was committed to passing it on to her son,” said Helen Haig-Brown. “The other family focuses on raising their children to live with the land.”

Pelq’ilc (Coming Home) was screened at the World Conference of Indigenous People in Education, in Melbourne, Australia in December.

The Canadian premiere of the film, hosted by the York Centre for Education and Community, is on Tuesday, March 17, 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. in the Price Family Cinema, Accolade East Room 102, at York University. Admission is free but members of the public should register by March 13, at gina_kim@edu.yorku.ca, 416-650-8458.

The screening will be followed by a Q & A moderated by Jason Ryle, Chair and Co-programmer of the imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival.

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Media Contact:

Janice Walls, Media Relations, York University, 416 736 2100 x22101 / wallsj@yorku.ca