Anishinaabe composer Melody McKiver’s new album, Returning Home, will be released
on December 15, in recognition of the sixth anniversary of the release of the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Composed for solo viola and electronics, the music explores tandem themes of trauma to the land and waters and the ongoing repercussions of residential schools. Despite the grief, the music is connected by an undercurrent of love and hope for the land and the interconnected healing journeys of Indigenous communities and our fish relations.

Returning Home, the first feature documentary from Can Geo Films and Secwépemc director Sean Stiller, interweaves Canada's history of residential schools with the plight of Pacific wild salmon.

The film profiles Orange Shirt Day founder Phyllis Jack-Webstad and her family's struggle to heal from the multigenerational impact of attending the notorious St. Joseph's Mission Residential School in Secwépemc territory. In an interweaving storyline, amidst a global pandemic and the lowest salmon run in Canadian history, Returning Home also explores how a multi-year federal fishing moratorium tears at the very fabric of Secwépemc communities and centuries-old traditions.

The film has already garnered multiple award nominations, including nods for Lunenburg's Audience Award and Best Feature categories, and has been announced as the winner of Calgary International Film Festival's Best Canadian Documentary Award presented by the Director's Guild of Canada. In a message for CIFF, Stiller expressed his immense gratitude for the award win, saying: "Returning Home is my first feature-length film and very much a labour of love. When we found out that we were part of the official selection for this year's Calgary international Film Festival, that was exciting enough news on its own. But, to be told we won Best Canadian Documentary was truly humbling. It's hard to imagine a better possible outcome for this film."
Canada's Indian residential school legacy and the decimation of wild pacific salmon stem from a common story: a world where relationships are severed in the service of power, where we become detached from one another and the complex webs of interdependence that sustain creation. In both systems, neither human nor animal are sacred. In the Secwépemc worldview we are all related.