Image courtesy of the National Film Board of Canada, Lantern Films, and Experimental Forest Films.

For the First Nations communities who coexist with the Nechako River, there’s a deep understanding that they will persist.

Nechako: It Will Be a Big River Again, a documentary directed by Lyana Patrick and co-produced by the National Film Board of Canada, follows the Saik’uz and Stellat’en First Nations in their decades-long fight and legal battle against the B.C. government and the mining company Rio Tinto Alcan to save the Nechako River.

Nechako, which means “big river” in Dakelh, is a complex watershed that stretches over 500 kilometres across west-central B.C. In the 1950s, 70 percent of Nechako’s waters were diverted by Alcan to make way for the Kenney Dam, decimating fish populations and altering the lives of the First Nations communities who live along its banks.

“We have only one way in the future and that’s the way of the salmon,” says community member Isaiah Reynolds in the doc. “They’re the ones that survive everything and come back home.”

While Patrick, who is Stellat’en, weaves her own story throughout the documentary, she keeps the viewer’s focus on Nechako’s importance and magnitude between scenes and interviews. “I knew growing up how devastated those lands and waters were, so there was always an impulse to run away from it,” Patrick says. “But I just have come to see such beauty in even those places.”

First Nations communities aren’t just fighting to preserve the river, but to stay connected with the land. Interspersed with their legal battle, the film focuses on day-to-day lives—work, childcare, fishing, and maintaining knowledge passed down by elders, who are remembered through pictures, videos, and stories shared by community members. Despite documenting five years of struggle, these everyday moments keep the film hopeful. It’s a tone that comes naturally to the Saik’uz and Stellat’en, who push on with a bitter sense of humour and a love for their ancestors, traditions, and communities.

The fight has been long and hard, and Patrick says she wonders whether it’s a luxury to be apathetic, but says she understands the feeling.

“It’s a response that makes you shut down when there’s a crisis and nobody is doing anything.” But Indigenous people, she stresses, are here for the long term, regardless of how the natural environment may look.

“There is so much love in our ancestors, who are in those lands and waters… I really wanted it to be inspiring and show that there are people who are in it for the long haul and to join us. Fight against the apathy and the despair. Find your strategies to help you with that.”

Nechako: It Will Be a Big River Again is available for free through the National Film Board of Canada.