Billy-Ray Belcourt delivered the 2025 Indigenous Speakers Series lecture at VIU
For more than a decade, Vancouver Island University’s Indigenous Speakers Series has challenged audiences to think more deeply about truth, reconciliation and Indigenous futures. This year’s lecture continued that tradition with an intimate, powerful reflection from award-winning Cree writer and scholar Billy-Ray Belcourt, whose words moved beyond history alone to ask what it means to imagine Indigenous lives beyond colonialism.
Drawing on personal memories, family stories and the history of his home community in northwestern Alberta, Belcourt explored the lingering presence of residential schools, the ways colonial violence continues to shape the present and the transformative power of literature to envision different futures. Rather than viewing reconciliation as an endpoint, he invited listeners to consider how storytelling can open new possibilities for understanding, healing and Indigenous flourishing.
Presented in partnership with CBC Radio's Ideas program, the annual Indigenous Speakers Series brings nationally recognized Indigenous thinkers, writers and leaders to VIU’s Malaspina Theatre. Belcourt’s lecture, My Mother's House: A Story of Haunting and Colonial History, challenged the audience to see history not as something confined to the past, but as something that lives in places, families and communities – and to recognize the role imagination plays in creating a more just future. Listen to his talk:
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