The month of June has a lot of effort and recognition jam-packed into just 30 days. In Canada, there’s Pride Month, Men’s Health Month, and National Indigenous History Month.
All good causes worthy of attention, and celebration in some cases, but let’s focus on National Indigenous Peoples Day, coming up on Friday, June 21.
The day means and has varying significance to different people, as most holidays do.
Kids in elementary school might make a craft related to Indigenous art or culture, or they might try fry bread for the first time, or learn how important salmon is to many West Coast peoples. Hopefully more than a few kids will head down to Maffeo Sutton Park on Friday between 5-8 p.m. to enjoy the celebration put on annually by the Mid Island Métis Association for the day – if you’ve never been, I highly recommend checking it out and bringing the little ones.
Although not a statutory holiday, like the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation in September, we can still appreciate the diversity of Indigenous heritage and perspective.
To me, National Indigenous Peoples Day is about sharing our stories, current and past, with people who aren’t aware of them. As the child of an Indian day school survivor and the niece of several residential school survivors, I know how close we were to never having them.
The day isn’t just about acknowledgment either, but also appreciation over appropriation.
In 2022, a Gitxsan artist from Hazelton, Michelle Stoney, had her creative work, a stylized hand she designed for Orange Shirt Day, stolen by a U.S.-based men’s indoor lacrosse league and two Canadian lacrosse teams for fundraising.
A local Snuneymuxw and Hupacasath artist, Eliot White-Hill, Kwulasultun, said he was aware of what happened and worried about what it meant.
“Orange Shirt Day is a powerful educational movement, it has brought a new level of awareness of the realities of residential schools to the general public,” he said in an e-mail. “However, we have to be careful and serious with how we handle it. As an Indigenous artist who has done this work before, we are being asked to come face to face with some of the ugliest things to have ever happened in this country and to come to some sort of resolution from that … The commodification of Indigenous trauma is something that must be avoided and we have to be cognizant of; when corners are cut and the public relations or marketing are what’s emphasized, the work is not being done in a good way.”
As White-Hill said, art has the ability to connect with people in a powerful way and connection is a place where empathy and understanding can flourish.
“Reading textbooks or court cases or anthropological notes won’t tell you about who we are; instead, read our novels and poetry and look at our art,” he said.
And to the uninitiated who want just a taste of Indigenous humour, I always suggest watching the 1998 comedy/drama Smoke Signals.
Because as Randy Peone said, “It’s a good day to be Indigenous.”
Mandy Moraes is the News Bulletin’s arts and entertainment editor.
