I'm speaking to you at a moment of grave crisis.

I'm Jeff Turner and this is Recall.

It's a series about history, not the ancient past, but history that's still hot to the touch.

In this first season, I explore a revolutionary political movement that brought a modern democracy to the brink.

You can find Recall how to start a revolution on the CBC Listen app or wherever you get your podcasts.

This is a CBC podcast.

Before we start, this is a podcast about Canada's Indian Residential Schools and it contains descriptions of sexual violence, suicide, and abuse.

If you need support, you can find information about where to turn for help at CBC.ca slash Keeper Island.

On a cool day last September, James and Tony Charlie gathered with their extended family, brothers, sisters, children, grandchildren, to feed the dead.

They do this every four years or so. It's a ritual the whole community have been practicing since time out of mind.

We call it a burning.

What happens is we look back in our history of our family and we went back about three or four generations and we remember our family who passed on to the spirit world.

They were next to the panellicate cemetery under the towering cedar trees.

The ceremony lasted all day. At the heart of it was a lavish feast that took the family weeks to prepare.

We gather all our traditional foods and we set out plates for each family member with their food that they love and it could be the clams, crab.

There was prawns and salmon and all the family done the food say.

We had octopus, we had oyster, we had fish, we had deer.

We did have some biscuit and hamburger for some or the younger ones that don't then eat these cultural foods. They're a little picky, little fussy.

The traditional spaghetti and hamburger.

Yeah.

How many people ended up showing up then?

This was a small burn and I think we burned over 50 plates. Usually our burn is between 150 to 200.

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