SXSW FILM FESTIVAL 2026 REVIEW! In Slts’lani Banchi Hanuse’s documentary, Ceremony, the disappearance of the ooligan, a fish, from the Bella Coola River becomes the starting point for a much larger story of the Nuxalk Nation. From Nuxalk Radio in Bella Coola, voices from the community begin tracing what happened to the fish known as sputc, once so plentiful they fed families, supported trade, and marked every year a season of renewal. Megan F. Moody dreams of their return, while elders remember grease camps, crowded riverbanks, and buckets filled with fish. Today, as Megan and her brother Jason head back onto the water, they find the ooligan has all but disappeared, along with the predators that hunted them.
The disappearance of the ooligan has become a metaphor for the buried history of Nuxalkulmc territory and the attempted erasure of the Nuxalk people living in this region of British Columbia. The film moves through testimony and archival records to show how smallpox tore through the region in 1862 as settlers moved in and intentionally infected the Nuxalk. As the numbers dwindled, colonizers arrived and seized the land. Roads replaced river routes, forests were cut back, rock was blasted, and the watershed was steadily reshaped by extraction and settlement. Through radio broadcasts, family memories, and community knowledge, the story connects the collapse of the ooligan run to a longer history in which land, ceremony, language, and governance were all pushed aside together.
From there, the film turns toward a return. In 2014, the Nuxalk community revived the titular sputc ceremony, carrying a carved pole to the river as drums sound and offerings are made to the water. Jason continues scientific monitoring of the few fish that come back, while families begin rebuilding at ancestral village sites such as Nusq’lst, asserting that the land was never surrendered.
“…the disappearance of the ooligan, a fish, from the Bella Coola River becomes the starting point for a much larger story of the Nuxalk Nation.”
Ceremony takes us on the front lines of the dispossession of the Nuxalk community as they face one hardship after another. It’s one thing to remove people from their land, but it’s another to try to remove one’s culture from existence. Filmmaker Hanuse uses watercolor animation to tell ancestral stories and visualize the fate of the ooligan. The story of native fish is tied not just to ecology and history, but also to tribal beliefs in which land, water, people, and spirit remain bound together.
Hanuse is driven by a sense of responsibility to her community, using Ceremony to document stories that were on the verge of being lost forever. Hanuse’s desire is to tell the truth about what happened to the Nuxalk people and their land, while also honoring the ancestors whose lives, traditions, and ceremonies were violently interrupted. That urgency becomes part of the Nuxalk Nation’s ongoing fight to reclaim what was never surrendered.
As a documentary, it’s easy to see the heavy-handedness of Ceremony’s underlying message. Everything negative about the obstacles the Nuxalk people face is seen through the lens of colonization. Some might feel it’s a bit overboard… until Jason receives a letter from a Vancouver official. All told, I walked away from the film with a better understanding of the plight of First Nations people, while at the same time wondering whether there’s even a solution out there, given that this is the proverbial David v. Goliath situation.
Slts’lani Banchi Hanuse’s Ceremony leaves behind the image of a people refusing to let disappearance have the final word. It is a story of return and hope, where survival is measured not only in what was lost, but in what the Nuxalk Nation is determined to rebuild.
Ceremony screened at the SXSW Film Festival. For screening information, visit the Ceremony official website.
"…Everything negative...is seen through the lens of colonization."
