Indigenous
Theatre
Festival
Staging Our Voices
Coast Salish Territory • University of Victoria
Phoenix Theatre . September 12-13 2025
Free and Open to All
We acknowledge and respect the original caretakers of the land that we are finding ourselves on whose good work continues each day, so that we are able to gather, live and work together. Specifically, the Lək̓ʷəŋən (Songhees and Xʷsepsəm /Esquimalt) Peoples on whose territory the university stands, and the Lək̓ʷəŋən and W̱SÁNEĆ Peoples whose historical relationships with the land continue to this day.
The Indigenous Theatre Festival aims to support artists working to revitalize their Indigenous languages through theatre and performance. This festival is open to everyone—Indigenous and non-Indigenous—honouring Indigenous languages through the power of performance. By partnering with the Hul’q’umi’num’ Language and Culture Society, Hul’q’umi’num’ Language Academy, Simon Fraser University Indigenous Language Program, and Vancouver Island University, we honour the relationships across Vancouver Island and the broader Coast Salish territories that support this initiative.
The festival also seeks to encourage broader dialogue among Indigenous communities and language traditions beyond Canada. Bringing together artists from BC, other territories, and Europe (Ireland and the Netherlands), we celebrate the power of performance in maintaining and renewing ancestral languages. Through workshops and panels, we strive to build inter-Indigenous connections and share research-based knowledge on best practices for using theatre as a tool in language reawakening.
The festival is free to everyone,
but seats are limited!
To save your spot, fill out the registration form below:
Reawakening Languages on Stage
Storytelling holds a central and lasting place in many Indigenous worldviews, preserving ancestral memory, cultural knowledge, and community resilience. Theatre’s embodied and expressive nature stands as a powerful medium through which Indigenous languages can be reawakened and reclaimed, not just as tools of communication but as living, breathing forms of resistance, creativity, and care.
kwus ’i uw’ stutul’een’u
The Indigenous Theatre Festival gathers performances, panels, workshops, and forums that animate Indigenous languages and cultural knowledge in ways that confront legacies of colonial violence, including the intergenerational trauma of residential schools. Through this festival, we seek to honour the richness and diversity of Indigenous storytelling traditions by creating opportunities for Indigenous languages to be heard, felt, and reimagined on stage, affirming their ongoing presence and creative strength in today’s world.
Our means are:
Presenting original theatrical works that focus on Indigenous languages, worldviews, and lived experiences;
Hosting interdisciplinary panels, workshops, and lecture talks led by Indigenous artists, language custodians, scholars, and Elders;
Facilitating story-based engagements that highlight themes of resilience, healing, community care, and cultural resurgence;
Making theatre accessible, welcoming, and meaningful to a diverse range of intergenerational and intercultural audiences, and
Building an inter-Indigenous network of artistic exchange, research, and solidarity through performance.
Our aims are:
To foreground storytelling as a foundational epistemology in Indigenous cultures for cultural transmission and collective healing;
To create space for healing, remembrance, and reconciliation by acknowledging the traumatic legacies of colonialism and honouring the resilience of Indigenous communities;
To affirm the role of theatre as a creative space for linguistic and cultural reclamation;
To challenge the relegation of Indigenous languages to academic or archival contexts by celebrating their forces of artistry and survivance;
To engage audiences with narratives of endurance, transformation, and relationality, and
inspire emerging Indigenous artists to view theatre as a form of language activism and cultural continuity.
Hul’q’umi’num’ Language Heroes
Indigenous Performance and Language Revitalization
