“A lot of people don’t know how this movement started,” said Garry Feschuk. Leaning on his walker, the former shíshálh Nation chief told the Indigenous and non-Indigenous residents gathered at the longhouse last Wednesday about the origins of the nascent Syiyaya Reconciliation Movement.
It began with a book called Slow Dance. But it wasn’t so much the contents as the context. Feschuk said his friend Nancy Denham came to his house once a week to read him chapters from that book as he recovered from a debilitating stroke.
Over the course of those visits, they hatched the idea to raise money for a totem pole and friendship blankets. The community, said Feschuk, will weave the blankets. As for the pole, “[The carver] is going to have the community come in groups and carve notches in that pole, so it will be everybody’s story,” Feschuk told the crowd of 200 people who filled up the longhouse in support of the project.
Another book sheds light on what makes that simple fact quite profound.
In his ground-breaking work, Red Skin, White Masks, Indigenous studies scholar Glen Coulthard (Yellowknives Dene) warns against an insidious form of politics, what he calls a politics of recognition, and it boils down to this: it is impossible for a dominant governing power to engage in truly reconciliatory actions because in order to accommodate Indigenous identity and territory claims, it must delegitimize itself. In other words, he argues that true reconciliation cannot be imposed by government. It must come from the people.
Cam Reid, a former Sechelt mayor, is the other public face of this movement. He stood next to Feschuk at the longhouse during the launch. After Feschuk’s remarks he aptly noted, “Nobody is inflicting this upon us.”
And while local governments have pledged their support, they have done so only after being prompted by Feschuk and Reid. Besides, a movement like this depends on more than just money and political goodwill.
There are many truths woven into the history of this place, many that are contradictory. And this movement is offering an opportunity for these truths to co-exist as “both/and” rather than “either/or.” This homegrown movement will be its own kind of slow dance. But with community commitment and practice, it will succeed.
