On June 6, the VIFF Centre hosted a screening of Nechako: It Will Be a Big River Again. The documentary is a personal account of the impact that the construction of the Kenney Dam had on the Indigenous nations who rely on the Nechako river, as well as the ongoing legal battle for fishing rights undertaken by members of the Stellat’en and Saik’uz nations in recent years.
I spoke with director Lyana Patrick, assistant professor in UBC Health Sciences and former education coordinator at the UBC Faculty of Medicine. The process of making the documentary, she said, was not just one of discovery and recognition of the catastrophic events since the dams construction but one of reconnection to the community and the land.
Patrick herself appears frequently in the film, alongside her father, former Stellat'en chief Archie Patrick. She discussed this personal connection to the cause, describing the life of her father before the dam was built in 1950 as deeply connected with the land.
“You could drink the water wherever you went — it was just a really good and healthy life," she said.
But the impact of the dam, as well as Archie Patrick’s time in residential school, is felt throughout the film, representing “this really profound rupture,” as Patrick put it.
Patrick also discussed the physical impact the Kenney Dam has had on Indigenous communities in the Nechako watershed:an area of land in Northern B.C. as big as Switzerland. Citing her academic background as a health researcher at SFU, Patrick spoke about the importance of diet in keeping healthy. She outlined how the diets of Indigenous peoples were affected by the dam’s construction, a project that led to 70 per cent of the Nechako’s flow being diverted.
“90 per cent of our diet was salmon. And so the loss, when you have a river that has such a reduced flow, it really impacts the salmon and their return to spawning,” she said.
But the impacts of the Kenney Dam go further than the physical. Patrick mentioned the cultural and spiritual importance of the Nechako to the Stellat’en people, saying, “the river was the source of our laws, our stories, of how we learned, passed on teachings.”
Portraying this deep, profound disruption is one of the film's greatest triumphs. Deep moments of silence throughout, accompanied by images of the Nechako, left the audience to reflect on the substantial loss for the river and the Indigenous communities who rely on it.
Patrick explained how it was not just the Stellat’en and Saik’uz First Nations that suffered from the dam’s construction. “It was a really traumatic event, especially for the Cheslatta Carrier, whose homelands were completely flooded," she said. Nechako, though, tells this story of struggle and loss through a uniquely personal lens, giving the audience a viewpoint into the everyday difficulties of the community feeling the effects of the dam’s construction.
The film follows various individuals forced to balance the challenges of everyday life with their responsibility to seek justice. By providing a window into the community, Patrick hopes to highlight the mistreatment of land across the world, the effects of which — increasingly frequent wildfires, hurricanes and rising sea levels — now confront us on a regular basis.
At the time of construction, the impacted Indigenous communities were not permitted to hire a lawyer to challenge installation of the dam under Section 141 of the Indian Act. In 2011, however, the Stellat’en and Saik’uz nations began a legal battle against Rio Tinto Alcan (RTA), the corporation that constructed and maintain the dam.
Driven by members of the Stellat’en and Saik'uz nations, this precedent-setting case has resulted in the BC Court of Appeal finding that the constitutional fishing rights of the Indigenous nations were infringed by the construction of the dam. The court also ruled, however, that RTA was not legally liable for this infringement because the construction of the Kenney Dam was authorized by the provincial and federal governments. Legal efforts to restore the Nechako's flow continue today.
With the film opening up questions surrounding how effective reconciliation can take place, Patrick stressed the importance of soundly understanding the historic silencing of Indigenous voices for economic gain as well as more well known issues like residential schools.
“This is how reconciliation happens: through attention to responsibility,” said Patrick.
Patrick also spoke about her desire for the film to be a base of discussion. “I think there’s an opportunity to come to a collective transformed understanding of our experience, to really give empathy, because there are people who have relied on those industries for their survival.”
More information about the film and the effort to restore the Nechako River can be found at here.
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