Discovering our Spatial Identity

Our film Portraits from a Fire was invited to play at the Harvard Art Museums at Harvard University, part of the museum's 'Screens for Teens' program. It was an honour to represent our people and territory in a world that understands very little about Dechen Ts'edilhtan or other Indigenous ways of percieving the world.

I spoke about how important it is that the responsibility of Indigenous storytellers, specifically filmmakers, have a responsibility to inspire and support our youth in ways that make them want to continue exploring their culture and spacial identity. Dystopian films is not Indigenous cinema. Those films come from perceptions of the world that are not rooted within a spacial identity.

Being "Tsilhqotin" is a spacial identity. That means my absolute identity comes from a reciprocal relationship with an actual, physical phenomenon in nature. For us, it is the "glacier rock river” that we call Tsilhqox, and more specifically the places at Chilko Lake, where the glacial streams meet the lake. This means our identity is rooted, strong, and can continue to exist while my other, minor identities change.

For example, when we adopt a job, career, or nationality as our absolute identity, we are setting ourselves up for an instable way of navigating the world; jobs can disappear, we may lose interest in our career, and countries can also be wiped off the map. But, when we begin rediscovering our own spacial identity, we are stepping onto a path that is strong, grounded, and connected to the universe in a much more real way than any job, nationality, or gender ever could.

Here is a bit of our discussion at the Harvard screening: