Hundreds visit the Museum of North Vancouver, one of several events that marked the National Day of Truth and Reconciliation
Keaton, 7, and his brother Brooks, 5, were having fun weaving orange bracelets on Monday at the Museum of North Vancouver .
“We’re here to educate ourselves, they heard about Orange Shirt Day, they have some curious questions,” Meaghan Harder, their mom, said.
“This is a local gallery for us and we’re kind of exploring different ways that we can, you know, move forward and help kind of bridge that gap.
“I think my kids are going to be better off learning about this … this is not something I learned growing up, but it’s super important to learn.”
Last year 800 people visited the museum on Truth and Reconciliation Day, and this year the space became crowded minutes after it opened at 10 a.m.
One of several National Day of Truth and Reconciliation events held around Metro Vancouver, there was a scavenger hunt, story telling and rock painting for kids to learn about Coast Salish history and impacts of such policies as the Indian Act and Residential Schools.
Bannock was on the menu.
The yarn the boys were weaving was the sort you can buy at Michael’s.
But historically, Tsawaysia Spukwus said, it took a little more effort to obtain wool.
“Today I can go buy 40 balls of yarn, right?” said Spukwus, one of two Indigenous staff at the museum. “If we want local bread, we can go to aisle 9, we know exactly where to find our bread in the store.”
Her ancestors had to collect fur and wool that the wind had blown onto bushes, tree branches or into caves.
“We used to have to hike nine hours back in the day just to get to the height where the mountain goat lived. They had to watch and wait, it could be a week long.”
The museum opened its sparkling Esplanade and Lonsdale location three years ago, and Orange Day is its biggest day of the year, the museum’s director said.
Zoe Mackoff de Miranda grew up to North Van and doesn’t remember ever being taught anything about the Squamish or Tsleil-Waututh nations at school. Which was the norm until very recently.
“Most of what I was taught growing up was about the fur traders, the Hudson’s Bay Company, that sort of standard Canadian history textbook kind of education,” she said.
Today there are Indigenous teachers in her kids’ school, and they’re taught about the ancient cultures of the communities that predated European contact.
“They come home knowing words in Squamish, sing Squamish songs,” Mackoff de Miranda said. “They learn the history and the truth about what happened … we had a residential school here in North Vancouver, which a lot of people still don’t know.”
Spukwus’s dad was a residential school survivor.
“He has his language beaten out of him, but he kept it inside,” she said, tapping her chest, “and he taught it to me.”
Spukwus sings songs of her people tat she shares with museum visitors.
She explains her history, who she is and where she came from. She teaches pre-contact oral history, tells how her people made bread without the grains we’re accustomed to (ground bark was used) or yeast (bearded lichen).
The National Day of Truth and Reconciliation means a lot to her, she said.
“We have the opportunity to share our history. In other words, to understand the past, know the present and plan for the future.
“It’s not my-way-or-the-highway, like the government did to us. My mom taught me we’ve got to build that bridge and that that bridge is a two-way street.”
