LibGuides: National Indigenous History Month: Watch

Watch

Image by Artie Goshulak

The story of the Coast Salish knitters
Looks at the women who have produced the distinctive and cherished Cowichan sweaters. Using historic photos and interviews with generations of Salish women, tells how their work with wool has been an economic mainstay of the area. Talks about their small victories in improving their economic positions relative to their suppliers and the buyers of their sweaters.
Feasting for change
Examines the collaboration of members of Vancouver Island First Nations communities of Esquimalt, Malahat, Namgis, Pacheedaht, Pauquachin, T'Sou-ke, Tsartlip, Tsawout, Tseycum, Songhees, Scianew and Snaw-naw-as with the Victoria Native Friendship Centre and the Feasting for Change Working Group as they model and promote First Nations stewardship of land, animals, and sea to ensure sustainable resources and traditional foods, and reconnect aboriginal communities with their cultural heritage
Healing Through Connection
A decades-old collection of children’s paintings gives new perspectives on the residential school experience—and adds hope for making things right. UVic visual anthropologist Andrea Walsh works in collaboration with First Nations on Vancouver Island in a community-led research project that focuses on the children’s paintings from the Alberni Indian Residential School, 1959 to 1966.
Finding Dawn
Acclaimed Métis filmmaker Christine Welsh brings us a compelling documentary that puts a human face on a national tragedy – the epidemic of missing or murdered Indigenous women in Canada. The film takes a journey into the heart of Indigenous women's experience, from Vancouver's skid row, down the Highway of Tears in northern BC, and on to Saskatoon, where the murders and disappearances of these women remain unsolved.
Dancing Around the Table, Part One
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Dancing Around the Table, Part One provides a fascinating look at the crucial role Indigenous people played in shaping the Canadian Constitution. The 1984 Federal Provincial Conference of First Ministers on Aboriginal Constitutional Matters was a tumultuous and antagonistic process that pitted Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau and the First Ministers-who refused to include Indigenous inherent rights to self-government in the Constitution-against First Nations, Inuit and Métis leaders, who would not back down from this historic opportunity to enshrine Indigenous rights. In a now infamous exchange, Kwakwaka'wakw lawyer and lead negotiator Bill Wilson states that he has two children who want to become lawyers and prime minister. When he says that they are Indigenous women, the male audience bursts into laughter, and Trudeau replies, "Tell them I'll stick around until they're ready." Over 30 years later, Bill Wilson's daughter, Jody Wilson-Raybould, became Canada's first Indigenous minister of justice and attorney general in the government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. The conference was Pierre Elliott Trudeau's last constitutional meeting before he resigned and the process was handed over to his successor, Brian Mulroney.
The Washing of Tears
In 1903, a unique and magnificent Whaler's shrine was shipped from Friendly Cove, on the far northwest coast of Canada, to the Museum of Natural History, New York. The shrine had lain at the cultural heart of the Mowachaht, whale hunters and fishermen who had lived at Friendly Cove for thousands of years. In the 1960s and '70s, all but one family left their ancient village--they moved to Vancouver Island, to a new site under the walls of a pulp mill. They suffered extremes of pollution, violence, alcohol.... Then, in the 1990s, in defiance of the agony of their history and to overcome the grief of the present, the Mowachaht and their neighbours, the Muchalaht, revived their songs and dances, revisited their shrine and rediscovered their pride
Box of treasures
In the late 19th century, the Canadian government removed ritual objects from the possession of the Kwakiut'l. In 1921 the Kwakiut'l people of Alert Bay, British Columbia, held their last secret potlatch. In 1980 at Alert Bay, the U'mista Cultural Centre opened its doors to receive and house the cultural treasures which were seized decades earlier.