təm kʷaθ nan (Namesake) heads to the 2026 Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival for its world premiere. The documentary follows the Tla’amin Nation’s call for the city of Powell River to reconsider a name that honors Israel Wood Powell, a provincial official whose legacy is bound up with policies that caused lasting harm to the Tla’amin people, culture, and territory. Selected for the festival’s Canadian Spectrum programme, Namesake enters one of the country’s most visible documentary spaces, carrying a conversation that reaches well beyond a single municipality.
Namesake centers on an issue often reduced to a political talking point, but the film keeps its attention on the human and historical stakes beneath the headlines. For many non-Indigenous residents, the name Powell River is benign and far disconnected from the violence of the past. But for the Tla’amin Nation, it is extricably tied to Israel Wood Powell’s complicity in the residential school system, the banning of ceremony, and the broader theft of land and culture.
Israel Wood Powell was not a minor figure tucked away in the footnotes of provincial history. He served as British Columbia’s Superintendent of Indian Affairs for 17 years. He was a key figure in advancing violent colonial policy during a period when Indigenous Nations were being pushed off their lands, their governance systems undermined, and their children targeted through church- and state-run institutions. His name is linked to the expansion of the residential school system, the criminalization of ceremonies such as the potlatch, and the seizure of Indigenous territory, including Tla’amin land known as lot 450.
Seen in that light, the debate at the center of the documentary is not about a city trying to update its image. It’s about whether a community is willing to keep celebrating a figure connected to the deliberate harming of Indigenous peoples while asking those same communities to accept that legacy as normal and “get over it”.
Namesake follows Tla’amin Nation’s call for change and the range of reactions that emerge around it, from support and careful reflection to discomfort and resistance. Community meetings, personal memory, and public disagreement come together in a larger reckoning over history, belonging, and what it means to live together in a place shaped by unequal power.
Co-director Eileen Francis has made clear that the film’s relationship to community was central from the beginning. “This film comes from this place. It was important for it to take root here first, with the people and conversations that shaped it, and with the history that continues to be felt,” Francis said. “This is not just a story we are telling; it is one the community has been living.”
Interviews, archival records, oral histories, and footage from public gatherings build a portrait of a debate that is still unfolding. Viewers are brought into a process that remains unresolved, where listening, disagreement, and uneasy reflection all sit side by side.
Co-director Evan Adams describes the film as one that remains with those hard questions rather than sidestepping them. “This film sits in the tension between memory and responsibility,” Adams said. “It does not turn away from difficult truths, and it asks what it means to live well with each other in a place where we have different histories. It’s a story that will resonate in small towns facing Reconciliation across the country.”
His words underscore the documentary’s broader relevance. Although the story is rooted in Tla’amin territory, the questions it raises extend to other communities where colonial history remains embedded in place names, institutions, and public life.
Care around the process is also part of what shapes the film. Namesake grew from a collaborative effort between the Tla’amin Nation and allied filmmakers, who began production in 2022. They took great care to ensure their work was rooted in relationship and shared responsibility, with trust, consent, and accountability guiding the filmmaking process.
Their approach reflects Tla’amin understandings of storytelling, where stories are not simply gathered and packaged for an audience. Stories carry teachings. Stories shape relationships. Stories have consequences. Namesake was made with those responsibilities in mind, choosing honesty over ease and keeping community relationships in view long after filming ended.
Director t̓agəm Eileen Francis has a strong personal and creative connection to Namesake through her work documenting stories for future generations within the Tla’amin Nation. Her background includes training through Capilano University’s Indigenous Independent Digital Filmmaking program and the Powell River Digital Film School, as well as work for APTN and cultural consulting on Bones of Crows. Co-director ƛɛsla Dr. Evan Adams brings his own wide-ranging experience to the film as both a physician and an actor known for Smoke Signals, Reservation Dogs, and Bones of Crows, as well as earlier work on Kla Ah Men: As Far Back as the Story Goes, which focused on the Tla’amin Treaty process.
The broader team behind Namesake reflects the same collaborative spirit that shapes the film itself. Peg Campbell served as producer, writer, and story editor, while Angela Kendall took on camera, sound, editing, and writing. Claudia Medina joined as executive producer and also contributed camera and sound work. Executive producers Davis McKenzie and Emily White helped guide the project’s partnerships, stewardship, and overall care.
With its world premiere set for Hot Docs, təm kʷaθ nan (Namesake) is bringing this conversation to the TIFF Lightbox on April 29 and April 30, 2026. The screenings place the film before one of the largest documentary audiences in North America, opening the door for wider conversation around the questions it raises. The festival debut marks an important next step for a documentary shaped by community, history, and the ongoing work of naming what has too often been left unspoken.
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