Penticton filmmaker\u2019s award-winning documentary set for broadcast TV debut<\/p>\n
Published 2:06 pm Saturday, June 20, 2026<\/p>\n
National Indigenous Peoples Day is sure to be extra special this year for Penticton-based filmmaker Damien Eagle Bear.<\/p>\n
His new documentary, Skoden (officially stylized as #skoden), will make its broadcast debut on Sunday, June 21, as Canada marks 30 years since the occasion was recognized nationally.<\/p>\n
After premiering at Hot Docs in 2025, #skoden \u2014 the story behind a viral NDN meme and the man at its centre \u2014 will air for free on demand on TELUS Optik TV.<\/p>\n
Directed and produced by Bear, the film explores an image of an Indigenous man with raised fists that circulated online in the 2010s, the early days of social media as it\u2019s known today. <\/p>\n
The man in the photo was the late Pernell Bad Arm, who, while experiencing homelessness in Alberta, underwent viral fame as the photo became an Indigenous pop culture icon after initially being shared to mock cultural stereotypes.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis documentary reclaims Pernell\u2019s humanity and offers a deeper, more complex portrait of the man behind the meme,\u201d reads an announcement about the film\u2019s broadcast debut.<\/p>\n
Bear has already won several awards for the film, which was filmed in Lethbridge.<\/p>\n
After winning the Earl A. Glick Emerging Canadian Filmmaker Award at Hot Docs, Bear took home Best BC Director at the DOXA Documentary Film Festival in 2025.<\/p>\n
The film will be available starting Sunday, National Indigenous Peoples Day.<\/p>\n
It falls annually on June 21, the summer solstice, or the longest day of the year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Penticton filmmaker\u2019s award-winning documentary set for broadcast TV debut Published 2:06 pm Saturday, June 20, 2026 National Indigenous…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":487861,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[156,409,111,139,69,244650],"class_list":["post-487860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-okanagan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=487860"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487860\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/487861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=487860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=487860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=487860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}