Hamilton artist Tom Wilson hopes new film will help put 'Mohawk culture into the light where it belongs'

Hamilton's enormous impact on artist and musician Tom Wilson's life has been reflected in everything he has done over the last several decades.

Beautiful Scars, a documentary based on Wilson's bestselling memoir of the same name, is no different. It's set to have its first screening at the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival on May 2 at 5:15 p.m. ET at TIFF Bell Lightbox 2 in Toronto. 

Wilson — who grew up in "a blue-collar Hamilton neighbourhood filled with factory workers and nuclear families," as the film describes — says the city has helped shaped him into the artist he is today, one dedicated to honouring his culture through his work.

"Hamilton is a giant part of my life. It's where I grew up, so as somebody who is working in his life to be an artist, it had a massive influence on me," Wilson told CBC Hamilton.

"Not only the people, but the streets, the characters, the stories that went on here, [they] are all the stories that I based my first 53 years of creating art and literature and music...

"Now my job, as someone who's working to be an artist, is to put the Mohawk culture into the light where it belongs, and to also be able to take on Indigenous issues that are important for the world to be aware of through my art," he added.

The documentary delves into Wilson's life-long quest to find himself and ultimately uncover his true identity as a Mohawk man.

Like his book, it shares truths about Wilson's biological family and Indigenous heritage, tracing back to unravel his family history and, eventually, follow him to the Mohawk Nation of Kahnawà:ke, just south of Montreal, where he meets for the first time the birth family that didn't know he existed. 

Wilson says Shane Belcourt, the two-time Canadian Screen Awards-nominated Métis director, worked as a facilitator to develop a relationship with his mother that otherwise wouldn't have happened.

"Having a Métis director who has an understanding of the Indigenous world, and of the struggles of the Indigenous world, was essential," Wilson says.

"My mother and I had conversations and new truths were able to come out that otherwise wouldn't have come out the same way, would have come out awkwardly, would have come out guarded." 

"But if you find the right person to direct a movie, who can also work as a therapist, who also has their heart in the right place, it's amazing how the truth can come out. And I really feel that if nothing else, we were able to tell a truth in this movie that, in our own way, we were able to crush the spine of colonialism for an hour and a half," he added. 

Belcourt first heard Wilson in the '90s when "it was impossible to escape the sound of Junkhouse [a band Wilson formed in 1989] and the hits that they had."

He continued to follow the "amazing artist's" career in the 2000s with Blackie and the Rodeo Kings.