Healing garden receives blessing
As the last floats passed by and the massive crowds taking in the Canada Day parade in Niagara Falls Monday headed over to city hall for a day of entertainment and free birthday cake, a small gathering a few blocks away paid tribute to a time long before Europeans set foot on Canadian soil.
At the site of the city’s former farmers market, now home to the Niagara Holistic Pavilion off Park Street, Jituska Triesz organized an event dedicated to Indigenous culture and the vast contribution of Indigenous peoples to Canada.
Triesz, who is promoting the site as a place for holistic healing for people, brought in artist and advocate Leona Skye, whose ancestry is Ojibway, to oversee a brief ceremony blessing the property after acknowledging it is part of land once occupied by Indigenous peoples.
“I’ve blessed this land, asking our ancestors to join us in making this ground safe, a place for solace within our tradition,” said Skye, after burning traditional sage.
Triesz said the irony of celebrating Indigenous culture in a tourism mecca such as Niagara Falls is that native artisans often aren’t allowed to sell their traditional Indigenous art and crafts in tourist areas.
“Right now, all the ‘native’ stuff in gift shops is made in China,” she said. “I find that totally unacceptable.
“We won the (War of 1812) because of the help of the native peoples here.”
She’s hoping events such as the one held Monday can change attitudes to ensure that the contributions by Indigenous people to this nation are front and centre when it comes to promoting Niagara Falls to the millions of people who come here every year.
“We want to bring awareness to our regional politicians that we need to include the native culture in our tourism and tourism education, to educate the tourists about the deep, rich history of the Indigenous people of this region.”