Correction
This story originally said the missing and murdered indigenous women's walk was to start at 11 a.m. It actually started at 10 a.m. The Gazette apologizes to the organizers and to anyone who missed the walk.
Thousands of St. Albert residents will come together to celebrate Canada’s First Peoples this week as part of National Indigenous Peoples Day – and also to pay tribute to those who are no longer here to celebrate it with them.
National Indigenous Peoples Day is Friday, June 21, and scores of St. Albert and Sturgeon residents will turn out to celebrate First Nations, Inuit, and Métis culture.
Student celebrations
St. Albert students will mark this day with a pair of events.
Some 500 Greater St. Albert Catholic students will be at the St. Albert Parish Grotto on Mission Hill Friday morning for an inculturated mass. (Inculturation is the process by which Christian teachings change or are adapted when presented to non-Christian cultures.)
While the Catholic board has previously hosted pipe ceremonies and other Indigenous cultural events for Indigenous Peoples Day, this year the board’s Indigenous advisory team said they should take their efforts to the next level, said assistant superintendent of learning services Rhonda Nixon.
“One of the things we know through relationship building with our elders is we need to be able to walk with them in our traditions rather than watch,” she said.
An inculturated mass is about reconciliation by engaging in shared traditions that have meaning in both cultural communities, Nixon said.
This two-hour event will feature a round dance, a blessing from local elders, and a mass led by Father Susai Jesu, who often combines Christian and Indigenous spiritual traditions at Edmonton’s Sacred Heart Church. It will also explore links between Indigenous and Catholic traditions, such as the use of smoke as a way to get closer to God/the Creator.
St. Albert Public’s celebration will see over a thousand students head to the big hill by Sir George Simpson on Friday to hear drum songs by the One Nation Singers, Cree songs sung by the district’s elementary choir, and a talk by renowned Métis author David Bouchard, said Simpson principal Pierre Rousseau.
City celebrates and remembers
Paul Kane student Hannah Nash will be at the public board event Friday to promote St. Albert’s second annual missing and murdered indigenous women walk being held on June 23.
The walk comes in the wake of this month’s release of the report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, which found that thousands of Indigenous Canadian women had gone missing or been murdered in recent decades due to a deliberate pattern of human rights violations perpetuated by the Canadian government.
“They deemed it a genocide,” Nash noted.
Nash said the report calls on all Canadians to stand up to the racist beliefs and practices that are killing Indigenous women, and that participating in events like this walk is one way to do so.
Nash said she hoped to get about 200 people to come out for the walk, which will set out from Lions Park at 10 a.m.
“Your walking will show you support Indigenous people and you’re willing to reconcile the relations between us,” said Nash, who is Métis.
Walk participants will be back at Lions Park by noon for the grand entry for the 10th annual National Indigenous People’s Day event in St. Albert.
This year’s event will feature an array of performers demonstrating Inuit throat singing, First Nations drumming and dance, and Métis-style fiddling and jigging, said Gwen Crouse, president of the St. Albert National Aboriginal Day Society. Guests will get to make dreamcatchers, learn about St. Albert’s Healing Garden, and chat about Indigenous culture with elders in the elders’ tent.
The event will also feature a tribute to Tom Ghostkeeper, the St. Albert Métis elder who died earlier this year.
Ghostkeeper had been the host of St. Albert’s Indigenous People’s Day event since it started, Crouse said. His loss made organizing this year’s event a challenge.
“Tom had 40 years of knowledge behind him, and that’s irreplaceable.”
Area elders will perform an honour song for Ghostkeeper and wrap members of his family in a blanket as part of this weekend’s event, Crouse said. Métis dancer Luc Gauthier will serve as this year’s host.
Crouse encouraged everyone to come out Sunday to learn more about Canada’s Indigenous peoples.
“When someone comes and participates in something like this, it shows acceptance of who Indigenous people really are.”
The event runs from noon to 4:30 p.m.
