Uploaded July 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
(1990, 24 & 47 minute versions)
Heiltsuk Hereditary Chief Frank Brown shares the story of his personal encounter with traditional Indigenous justice. As a juvenile offender facing a charge of armed robbery, Frank's family appealed to the courts to allow their intervention in the case. Instead of receiving punishment in a hard core juvenile detention centre in Vancouver, Frank was banished to an island for eight months. Ten years after the fact, Frank offered public thanks to the presiding judge, Cunliffe Barnett, the Heiltsuk community and his family through traditional ceremonial form, the washing-off ceremony (quxua).
Frank Brown was later responsible for the resurgence of Pacific coast-wide ocean-going Indigenous canoes (g'lwa). Carving the first g'lwa in almost 80 years, he gathered skilled artists and carvers and paddlers to display their efforts at EXPO '86. Since then the Tribal Canoe Journey has become an annual event with participants from many Pacific First Nations.
Director: Phil Lucas
Producers: Frank Brown, Phil Lucas
(1990, 24 & 47 minute versions)
Heiltsuk Hereditary Chief Frank Brown shares the story of his personal encounter with traditional Indigenous justice. As a juvenile offender facing a charge of armed robbery, Frank's family appealed to the courts to allow their intervention in the case. Instead of receiving punishment in a hard core juvenile detention centre in Vancouver, Frank was banished to an island for eight months. Ten years after the fact, Frank offered public thanks to the presiding judge, Cunliffe Barnett, the Heiltsuk community and his family through traditional ceremonial form, the washing-off ceremony (quxua).
Frank Brown was later responsible for the resurgence of Pacific coast-wide ocean-going Indigenous canoes (g'lwa). Carving the first g'lwa in almost 80 years, he gathered skilled artists and carvers and paddlers to display their efforts at EXPO '86. Since then the Tribal Canoe Journey has become an annual event with participants from many Pacific First Nations.
Director: Phil Lucas
Producers: Frank Brown, Phil Lucas
