CULTURAL TRIBUTE
Calgary honours First Nations
For Toni Eagle Tail Feathers, the start of summer is a busy time for her and her family. “We go to a lot of powwows,” she says with a smile. “We’re kind of all over the place.”
When she was asked if her family, known as the Good Striker Dancers from the Blood Tribe/ Kainai First Nation in Standoff, would return to Calgary this year to help mark National Aboriginal Day, she had no trouble fitting it into their packed schedule.
“We’d never say no to this,” she says as a crowd gathers over the lunch hour in the Harry Hays federal building downtown. “We love to share our culture.”
All across the country on Wednesday, people are marking National Aboriginal Day (it’s also Aboriginal Awareness Week in Calgary, for event info go to aawc. ca) in myriad ways, from academic conferences and educational workshops to dance, music and other cultural events.
The Making of Treaty 7, the theatrical production first envisioned by the late Calgary arts maverick Michael Green and co-directed by Blake Brooker and Michelle Thrush, is set to debut on this very day at the National Arts Centre.
Also in Ottawa, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau marks the occasion by announcing both re-naming the Langevin Block building across from Parliament — its namesake Sir Hector-Louis Langevin played a role in the establishment of Canada’s residential school system — and the day itself. In 2018, it will be called National Indigenous Peoples Day.
While some would like to see Trudeau go a step farther and have it declared a statutory holiday, people like Toni Eagle Tail Feathers feel it’s finally getting the recognition it deserves, 21 years after then-governor general Romeo LeBlanc announced its creation.
“When I was a kid in high school, we didn’t get the day off for it, but now my kids do,” she says. “I see more and more people come out each year, and today there are twice as many people who’ve come to see us as last year.”
While it’s a day for all Canadians to recognize and celebrate First Nations, Inuit and Metis peoples, Shandi Thachuk also sees it as one to give everyone a first-hand opportunity to get to know their neighbours from all cultures and communities.
“We welcome everyone here,” says Thachuk, the program co-ordinator for the Aboriginal Friendship Centre in the city’s southeast. In addition to its yearround services that offer everything from moccasin making to community lunches and housing services, each June 21 the staff put on a barbecue and invite the public to help them commemorate National Aboriginal Day.
“We cook up about 250 burgers and always run out,” she says. “We think of this as a community place, where everyone can get to know each other, to break down barriers.”
At Fort Calgary, a meeting of the Commonwealth Association of Museums marks its daylong events with a reading out of the names of the many residential schools that existed in Alberta, which takes several minutes. In the room, many residential school survivors listen along with the delegates from 15 different countries.
“I’m a bit uncomfortable with the word celebration,” says Catherine Cole, the association’s Edmonton-based directorgeneral, who wears a Metis sash around her waist.
“I think it’s more a commemoration, a time to think about how we can make things better,” says Cole, who began the day by joining in a Reconciliation Walk with delegates, First Nations elders and residential school survivors. “One of our talks today includes how museums and indigenous cultures can work together.”
Not all events and participants on this day are as sombre. When I meet up with Colby Manyheads at the National Music Centre, he’s grinning from ear to ear after his music performance before a small crowd.
“They asked me if I could play today and I said, ‘Of course,’” says the 25-year-old charmer. “I mean, it’s the National Music Centre — I didn’t even know today was National Aboriginal Day.”
Describing himself as “a musician who’s aboriginal, not an aboriginal musician,” Manyheads adds, with another flash of his infectious smile: “I just love playing music, any kind. I love Frank Sinatra.”