Lyana Patrick | CANADA | 88 min
Feature Film Screening: In the face of environmental destruction, two Nations fight to restore their river and a way of life. When the Kenney Dam was built in the 1950s, the Nechako River was forever changed. The Stellat’en and Saik’uz Nations embarked on a groundbreaking legal proceeding against the Canadian government and Rio Tinto Alcan that lasted over a decade—a battle that continues today. Following community members living day to day on the river while they take on powerful institutions, Nechako is an urgent call to action to restore a river and a way of life.
Nechako is a story of survival 70 years in the making. The saga begins in the early 1950s in northwestern British Columbia, when the Kenney Dam was built to power an aluminum smelter. The for-profit project diverted 70 percent of the Nechako River into an artificial reservoir, flooding lands, displacing wildlife, destroying ecosystems and severely impacting the lives of local Stellat’en and Saik’uz Nations. The dam decimated salmon runs, which are vital to the Nations’ way of life and provide a food source that composes up to 90 percent of their diet.
What followed were decades of resistance, including legal actions against the Canadian federal and provincial governments and Alcan (later Rio Tinto Alcan, a subsidiary of the global mining conglomerate), beginning in the 1980s. Indigenous Elders had to prove not only that they held a right to the lands and waters they’d coexisted with for centuries, but that their people had existed there at all . Fast forward to the present day, as the Nations wage a potentially precedent-setting legal battle against Rio Tinto Alcan.
DIRECTOR BIO:
Lyana Patrick
Lyana Patrick is an award-winning, Vancouver-based director, writer and researcher from the Stellat’en First Nation. Committed to elevating Indigenous stories, she studied film at the Native Voices Program, University of Washington. Her acclaimed short films A Place to Belong and The Train Station have been showcased at prestigious festivals like Hot Docs, DOC NYC and the Vancouver International Film Festival, earning her recognition for her powerful, community-centred storytelling.