The Nazko First Nation and director Tracey Cochrane worked together to create a documentary about healing and community in Nazko.
The title of the documentary, Ndazkoh, is the original name of the First Nation before it was anglicized. Nazko Chief Leah Stump told The Observer it means "the rivers flowing from the south."
"It's a film about our community of Nazko and our residential school survivors, and the different things that we do to carry on in a positive way," Stump said. "It's about a community that is healing. It's just been really great in working with (Cochrane) in the last four years because she's come to every single event we've had."
Stump said Cochrane went to events such as tree plantings, where the Nazko community was giving back after fires devastated the area, salmon release ceremonies, funerals and many other kinds of events.
Stump said it shows "the passion and the culture that we have for sharing and learning and healing as a community." She said there are joyful events featured in the documentary like community Bingo nights as well as the sadder events like funerals.
The film has been in the works for around four years after Stump was first elected chief and upon her meeting Cochrane.
"I'm pretty sure Tracey knew what we were getting into, but I myself didn't really know. We started doing some videoing here and there and then it's just over the years blossomed and really bloomed," Stump said.
The film has been to several film festivals so far including in Rome and Berlin, where it has received praise and won awards. It has an upcoming screening in Los Angeles at the LA Femme International Film Festival. The festival started in 2005 to highlight women filmmakers with films that can reach a domestic and global audience. The festival's webpage says its philosophy is "by women, for everyone."
It isn't yet going to be shown in or around Quesnel, but Stump said it will happen down the road.
"I believe it's important to showcase my community because it's such a beautiful community and we have such beautiful people. Our elders are very knowledgeable, our youths are so bright and they want to learn. We have so many of them in college," Stump said. "There's a lot that people don't see, like that sense of community and just being with one another."
She said the tight-knit nature of the community is amazing where cousins are raised as close as siblings and visiting family is frequent.
One of the reasons Stump wanted to show off Nazko is because she wants to fight stereotypes that exist about First Nations reserves. She said it's important to her that her daughter not hear those negative stereotypes in school because Stump herself heard them while growing up.
"I just want to help get rid of those stereotypes and help people understand and welcome them to come to our community, to see how beautiful we are and to see the beautiful things that we do," she said. Stump added she is honoured to have been part of the film and to honour the survivors of residential schools.
"All my mom's generation went to residential school. And in the last 50 years they haven't done any healing and it's really hard," she said. She added that all of the pain from the past comes back up when anomalies are found at residential school sites such as in Kamloops.
Stump said the Nazko people used to be nomadic before the Canadian government put reserves into place and they moved from place to place for fishing seasons or hunting seasons.
"It's a big territory so our people would travel," she said.
Aside from Nazko, another anglicized word was the naming of Stump Lake. Nazko calls it Chuntezniai, meaning "the stump under the water" which references fishing traps made from logs.
"When the Indian agents came, they translated Chuntezniai from the meaning, the stump under the water, to Stump Lake," she said. "I guess a lot of this film too is just keeping everything, keeping our culture alive and sharing our history and sharing our knowledge."
She hopes people stay curious about Nazko and ask questions and visit to help understand the people of the community and the culture.
Editor's note: A statement about specific territories was removed from this article.
