By one set of criteria – those established by colonial institutions – Vancouver is 200 years old. A baby city, when compared to Canadian kin like St. John’s (434 years), Quebec City (409) and Montreal (375).
But while the city of Vancouver might have two centuries worth of candles on its cake, the Coast Salish people have called this region home for nearly 9,000 years. Vancouverites work, live, and play on the unceded traditional territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations, but how many Vancouverites know the history of the land beneath our concrete constructions, or the traditional hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓ names of our neighborhoods and waterways? How many Vancouverites know that, 5,000 years ago, the area now referred to as Marpole was actually called c’əsnaʔəm, and was one of the largest village sites of the Musqueam people?
A new feature-length documentary – c’əsnaʔəm: the city before the city – aims to give a voice to a hyper-local history that is largely unknown beyond the area’s First Nations communities.
c’əsnaʔəm: the city before the city is the brainchild of filmmaker Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers and collaborators within the Musqueam First Nation and the UBC Museum of Anthropology’s curatorial team. The film – which screens Oct. 1 and 6 as part of the 2017 Vancouver International Film Festival – is built from more than 40 hours of interviews that Tailfeathers conducted for video installations at the three-site c’əsnaʔəm: the city before the city culturalexhibition (on view at Museum of Vancouver, Musqueam Cultural Centre, and Museum of Anthropology).
“We filmed over 30 interviews with community members, and it was a really incredible process just to sit in the room and hear so much rich knowledge and history be shared,” says Tailfeathers, a well-respected filmmaker (Rebel, Bloodland, A Red Girl’s Reasoning) and actress who earlier this year took home the Canadian Screen Award for Best Lead Actress in a Dramatic Program or Limited Series for her role in On the Farm.
Shortly after the c’əsnaʔəm: the city before the city exhibition opened, Tailfeathers sought to repurpose the footage, to give it a life beyond the museum spaces and archives. “I felt that it was my responsibility as an uninvited visitor in this territory, or guest in this territory, to honour the First Peoples whose land I call home,” she says, as a member of the Kainai First Nation (Blood Tribe, Blackfoot Confederacy) as well as the Sámi from Norway. “And I felt that it was my responsibility to the rest of the people of Vancouver to make this film, because I had all of the material there, and access to such rich material. I felt I had an obligation to do that.”
Tailfeathers’ 75-minute film illustrates the long history of the region while also exploring recent events where the Musqueam people have mobilized to protect their ancestral village sites – events such as the vigil in 2012, in which protesters kept watch at a c’əsnaʔəm burial ground for 200 days after condo development had begun on the site without proper Musqueam consultation.
“The process of editing and sitting in the interviews, I don’t even have words for it,” says Tailfeathers. “I learned so much about this city and the Vancouver area; there are historical sites, ancestral villages, all over the city that I hadn’t even realized were there.”
c’əsnaʔəm: the city before the city screens Oct. 1 at SFU Goldcorp and Oct. 6 at Cineplex Odeon International Village Cinemas. Tickets at viff.org.
