Pelq'ilc (coming home)

Summary: Pelq'ilc (Coming Home) focuses on the place of education in renewing Indigenous culture and tradition. The film is part of a larger Social Science & Humanities Council funded study and is based on interviews with the children & grandchildren of residential school survivors first interviewed for a 1986 study done by Celia Haig-Brown. The offspring are actively engaging in regenerative educational initiatives such as art, language immersion schools, traditional wilderness camps & filmmaking. Helen Haig-Brown, Celia's niece and the daughter of one of the initial residential school survivors interviewed, is not only a participant and co-investigator in the project but the film's director/co-writer. The research explores with selected children & grandchildren of the survivors of residential schools the place of education in renewing culture and language. In this case, education refers to both formal schooling and other less direct approaches to teaching and learning. Specifically, the guiding question is: What is the role of education in the regeneration of Aboriginal/First Nations cultures & languages? How does it serve the re-creation of indigenous knowledges in contemporary contexts?