Pelq’ilc: Coming Home is a 33 minute documentary film that grew out of York University Professor Celia Haig-Brown’s 1986 groundbreaking research with former students of the Kamloops Indian Residential School. Collaborators Celia and Helen Haig-Brown came to the film project with a question, "What is the place of education in the regeneration of culture?”
Faculty of Education Professor Haig-Brown published the results of her original study Resistance and Renewal: Surviving the Indian Residential School (Arsenal Pulp Press) in 1988. Still used by universities and communities across the country, it was one of the first books in Canada to draw on interviews with former residential school students. It focuses on their experiences of and resistance to the efforts of the school to suppress First Nations language and culture.
The stories documented in this film begin at the Residential School. The filmmakers engage with the children and grandchildren of the former students and their current relation to education. Theirs is a story of challenges and hope as the people continue the journey from resistance to the renewal and regeneration of the Secwepemc culture and language. The film shows tells how the children and grandchildren of people who attended the Kamloops school are taking up the Secwepemc culture and language themselves and passing on what they are learning to their children.
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