To Be Seen, To Be Heard: First Nations in Public Spaces, 1900–1965

Review By Leah Alfred-Olmedo

August 20, 2026

I’d imagine it’s an experience that’s been shared by many a guest: in a new space and unsure where to find your host, you orient yourself by sound, moving in the direction of a conversation you can hear in the distance. As you move closer, you hear laughter, reassuring you that you’re heading in the right direction, that this is a welcoming place. That is the effect created for viewers by the opening of the film To Be Seen, To Be Heard: First Nations in Public Spaces, 1900—1965, released earlier this year by the Museum of Anthropology at UBC as an online film version of their 2024/’25 exhibition of the same name. The film opens with indistinct chat and laughter before its speakers—sixteen contemporary First Nations knowledge holders from nations situated in the area now known as British Columbia—share their understanding of and thoughts on the archival imagery featured in the exhibition. The film feels like an invitation to audience members to reorient, to find themselves as guests of an incredibly knowledgeable host, and to take in that host’s generous offer to share their knowledge and their perspective.

The film features a wide range of archival imagery of First Nations people, often captured at state functions and, in their original context, used to perpetuate damaging colonial narratives: of assimilation, capitulation, performative deployment of culture, and the disappearance of those cultures altogether. However, the speakers in the film refuse such interpretations of the images, providing instead a distinctly First Nations perspective as they share what the images mean to them. In the opening minutes of the film, Marcia Crosby (Ts’msyen/Haida) offers a reading of one photo that can be applied to the film as a whole. Speaking about an image of a First Nations marching band parading in downtown Vancouver, she says: “I think one of the things I loved the most about them walking was that all these people are watching them. But what I love about this is that it isn’t about those people watching them. It’s about being seen. They use the bands to draw attention to themselves and to their rights” (2:03 – 2:21). The speakers repeatedly highlight the ways in which the images represent the agency and choice of those captured within them, that appearances at these events represent strategic political moves meant to remind the Canadian public of their continued existence and perseverance, and to assert their rights to the lands and waters within which they are being photographed. The speakers remind viewers of the assumptions and stereotypes that may have accompanied such imagery in the past, and directly correct the notion that to be the subject of an image in any way equates to the loss of one’s own subjectivity.

Though the exhibition’s title refers to the ways in which First Nations people chose to represent themselves as Indigenous in public during a period of particularly blatant assimilative government policies, the question of who is seen and heard—and how they’re seen and heard—is integral to the format of the film itself. The speakers in the film, who provide context and depth to the displayed images by sharing their knowledge aloud, never themselves appear on screen. Instead, they’re represented only by their voices, with their names and the names of their nations provided in writing. This format keeps the focus on the archival imagery, and offers viewers the sense of experiencing the photos and video clips alongside those speaking. It gives the film a feeling of visiting, as though viewers are looking through old family photos with the speakers, invited to take in their valuable perspectives. Yet despite the palpable sense of welcome the film’s format creates, the work that it takes up is incredibly significant. By considering public representation through a First Nations perspective, the audience is invited to reconsider the ways in which they’ve encountered such images in the past. They are reoriented away from the stories so often (re)told by the Canadian state, reminded that images can be captured, displayed, and explained at length without ever having been understood. As a primer on considering how First Nations people have been and are represented publicly, I recommend this film as essential viewing for anyone who works in archives, for anyone with an interest in history, and for anyone who lives in the area now called British Columbia.