A small coastal city grapples with its colonial past in “təm kʷaθ nan – Namesake,” a documentary tracking what happens when the Tla’amin Nation asks Powell River, BC to reconsider the name on its welcome sign.
The film just landed a spot at Hot Docs, North America’s largest documentary festival, where it will world premiere in the Canadian Spectrum competition section. Screenings are set for April 29-30, 2026 at TIFF Lightbox in Toronto.
The story centers on a request that cuts deep. The city is named after Israel Wood Powell, who served as BC’s Superintendent of Indian Affairs for 17 years and played a key role in establishing residential schools, banning the potlatch, and seizing Tla’amin territory. Now the Nation is asking, what if we called this place something else?
Co-directors Eileen Francis and Evan Adams have been filming since 2022, capturing community meetings, heated debates, archival footage, and the oral histories that tell a different version of this place’s story. The result is 76 minutes that sit in the tension between who gets to name a place and what those names mean.
“This film comes from this place,” says Francis. “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.”
Adams puts it plainly: “It sits in the tension between memory and responsibility. 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.”
The Tla’amin Nation is a self-governing First Nation with over 1,200 citizens on BC’s upper Sunshine Coast. Under its Treaty and Constitution, the Nation governs its own lands, resources, and services, guided by ancestral teachings and relationship to the land.
The documentary was supported by TELUS originals, part of a funding program aimed at locally-rooted stories from BC and Alberta. It’s exactly the kind of small-town, nationally relevant conversation happening across Canada as communities reckon with reconciliation in real time.
The film is in English and ʔayʔajuθəm. More info at namesake.film.
