Reconciliation starts at home

Frank Bucholtz photo

Joanne Charles, councillor with Semiahmoo First Nation, shared some powerful words about reconciliation with an attentive audience at the Semiahmoo Spirit Stage on Monday night, as part of a  community discussion on reconciliation, diversity and equality/ The event was one of a series of community discussions hosted by organizers of the Gordie Hogg Liberal campaign in the federal riding of South Surrey-White Rock. With her on stage is emcee Deb Saih.

The discovery of unmarked grave sites at four former residential school properties has changed the tenor of discussion about Canada’s relationships with indigenous people. Local governments have an important role to play in the process of meaningful reconciliation - as do all of us as citizens.

Delta council has gone a fair ways down that path, largely due to a treaty with the Tsawwassen First Nation,  and White Rock’s relationship with the Semiahmoo First Nation is improving considerably, after some rough patches a few years ago. Surrey still has a long way to go.

 

Mayor Doug McCallum has refused to give acknowledgements at the start of meetings that council meets on unceded lands which were used by many First Nations, including the Semiahmoo, Tsawwassen, Kwantlen and Katzie. When Coun. Jack Hundial tried to get council’s approval for such an acknowledgement in January, the motion was shot down by McCallum and his four Safe Surrey Coalition allies on council.

Unfortunately, this is just the latest in a long series of missteps by Surrey council over many decades. Surrey’s indigenous roots are rarely acknowledged by the city, and the lands local First Nations occupy or have occupied are consistently considered more suitable for other uses.

The city even treated a First Nations graveyard in one of its parks with extreme disrespect. Semiahmoo Park, which occupied land leased from the First Nation for more than 50 years, contains an important graveyard for members of the Semiahmoo First Nation. In 1980, then-Coun. Garry Watkins told council that park users were regularly traipsing over the headstones and seemed unaware of its existence and importance. He asked that a fence be built around it - which was eventually done.

This graveyard is adjacent to the Spirit Stage in what was Semiahmoo Park, on land now taken back by the nation. On Monday, an event on reconciliation, diversity and equality took place there, with the blessing of the Semiahmoo. It was put together by the campaign of former MP, MLA, and White Rock mayor and councillor Gordie Hogg. He will be running for the Liberal Party in the next federal election, in South Surrey-White Rock riding. 

SFN councillor Joanne Charles welcomed participants, who outnumbered organizers' expectations, and later spoke powerfully about her own experiences and how reconciliation looks to the Semiahmoo people. Her mother, a residential school survivor, was also present. Joanne is a caretaker of the graveyard and regularly is involved in burials of ancestors whose remains are found in various parts of the Lower Mainland - most recently in Crescent Beach.

The graveyard issue was just one of Surrey's questionable actions. In 1954, Surrey used the process of the era to take over First Nations land - going through the Indian agent, a federal official - to buy 40 acres of land set aside for the Kwantlen First Nation as reserve land. Most of this land is now Royal Kwantlen Park. The price was $40,000.

At current land values in the Whalley area, the land is conservatively worth well over $100 million. Most of it remains parkland, but 10 acres went to the school district and is home to K.B. Woodward Elementary and Kwantlen Park Secondary. Firehall 2 is also built on a portion of the land.

Surrey has very few street and park names of indigenous origin. The school district has done a better job in the naming department - Semiahmoo Secondary first opened in 1939, and there are several schools with indigenous names, including Tamanawis Secondary, Salish Secondary and Katzie Elementary.

Kwantlen Polytechnic University became a standalone college in 1981 when Douglas College was split into two. Other than Semiahmoo high school, this was the first major civic institution in Surrey to use an indigenous name - and the college sought the blessing of the Kwantlen leadership for use of the name.

Most local history accounts either completely ignore the role of indigenous people or simply relate a few legends. One book is a notable exception - Years of Promise, White Rock 1858-1958, by Lorraine Ellenwood, goes into extensive detail on just how difficult it was for the Semiahmoo First Nation to obtain a reserve in the first place. It then outlines a long litany of land being taken away from the reserve, including for the construction of Highway 99. As recently as the 1960s, there were active efforts to take away the remaining land for a variety of developments, including one proposal for a regional park.

I found one example of the disregard in a 1962 edition of The Surrey Leader. The provincial department of highways "agreed to pay for damages" to SFN lands during construction of the freeway. This mostly consisted of having a bulldozer grade a site near the Campbell River Road (8 Avenue) interchange. SFN did get a substantial settlement from the province many years later.

 

Most recently, as more people were becoming aware of the lack of clean water on Semiahmoo land, the former (not the current) White Rock city council gave notice that the Semiahmoo would lose access to the city’s water supply. As Joanne Charles noted Monday, this came a short time after the city took over the private White Rock Waterworks company in a highly-controversial (and perhaps unnecessary) move.

In this instance, Surrey did the right thing and stepped in to offer a replacement supply. A new water system there which went into operation earlier this year has finally laid to rest a longstanding boil water advisory.

The Katzie people have been almost completely ignored in Surrey, even though a substantial number live on Barnston Island, part of School District 36. Officially part of a Metro Vancouver electoral area, the island’s only transportation is the small ferry that runs to 104 Ave. in Surrey.

And while there have been some moves of reconciliation with the Kwantlen, for the most part this has involved the university and the school district. The city has made minimal efforts to communicate with the Kwantlen First Nation. Certainly, there has been no discussion of any reparations for taking over Kwantlen land in 1954.

One other indignity that Surrey was directly responsible for was outlined by Joanne Charles on Monday. The Surrey Museum, for many years, had the remains of Semiahmoo people on display. I worked at the museum on two different occasions and am ashamed to say that I did not know that. I apologize for my ignorance. It is an illustration of how many of us have been blind to the countless indignities suffered by indigenous people. 

It was only after some intensive efforts that the remains were returned to the Semiahmoo people and buried in the graveyard, with the utmost respect. 

Surrey is home to the largest urban indigenous population in B.C., yet its own deep indigenous roots are barely visible. Reconciliation in Surrey and surrounding cities could start with a more intensive effort to recognize and honour the people whose ancestors occupied this area for millennia. It also means listening to what they have to say.

On that point, here are a few of the powerful things that Joanne Charles shared with the audience Monday night.

She told people how she, as a "status Indian" is a "ward of the government" but "that does not define who I am."

This Big Brother mentality, which continues under the current Liberal government and stretches back to Canada's founding as a nation, prevents Semiahmoo people from harvesting shellfish from the bay they have lived along for millennia without a permit.

She told the audience that, at one time, the SFN was down to 16 people. Its numbers have since rebounded. The low numbers had politicians and developers eagerly eyeing the reserve lands which stretch from White Rock to the U.S. border.

At one time, her mother had to get a permit from the Indian agent in order to go to the store to buy flour and sugar.

She said her family in general was well-treated and respected in White Rock. Many of the Charles family attended school in White Rock. Some SFN children attended residential school - mostly at St. Mary's in Mission. However, when she moved to North Vancouver as a young woman the treatment was completely different. Athletic and involved in many sports, she was not welcome on teams. The parents of other girls of similar ages did not want a native person on their daughters' teams.

She said the colonial system "continues at all levels of government" with SFN members continually having to try to negotiate very simple issues involving their day-to-day lives with government bureaucrats. This isn't that much different from the Indian agent system. The freedom they enjoyed to live their lives for many generations has been drastically curtailed since the 1860s.

She asked the audience how many of them were parents, and how they would react if their five-year-olds were taken away from them by the RCMP, as happened to many First Nations parents. She also asked how many would encourage their children to hide if they know the police were coming. She said this intergenerational trauma continues to be a major challenge for today's indigenous people.

To further illustrate her point, this week's revelation of as many as 160 bodies buried in an unmarked graveyard at the former Kuper Island residential school near Ladysmith highlighted the trauma faced by students. Twin sisters drowned while trying to swim away from the school, known as "Canada's Alcatraz," in 1959. The school operated from 1889 to 1975.