Yellowknifers talk past, present and future
Canada 150 a time of celebration, mourning, remembrance and looking forward
Emelie Peacock
Northern News Services
Friday, June 30, 2017
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Leading up to the 150th year since Canadian federation, Yellowknife community members are reflecting on how to mark the day.
Greyson Gritt, left, and Tiffany Ayalik are the musical and storytelling duo Quantum Tangle. - photo courtesy of Kayley Mackay |
"For some people it's a celebration and for some people this is, I think, as sombre as like a Rememerance Day," said Tiffany Ayalik, a member of musical duo Quantum Tangle. She and others in Yellowknife are grappling with how to relate to the marking of the country's 150th year.
"There are aspects of this country that I am incredibly proud of and there are things that I think we do really well. And in some way, I am really proud to be here and proud to be part of this country," she said. "But I think that overall we've really, kind of on a national level, really missed the mark of the significance of the sesquicentennial."
Ayalik and Greyson Gritt are Juno-award winning musical duo Quantum Tangle, they will be performing at events organized by the Canadian government to mark the occasion. For Gritt, it's a complicated path to walk as an artist performing in a system actively trying to assimilate them, while simultaneously as an artist supporting the resistance to 'Canada 150'.
Musician and composer Carmen Braden, like the members of Quantum Tangle, has mixed feelings about marking Canada 150.
While she said it is strange to call it a celebration, it is a recognition of the resurgence of aboriginal culture and a push towards dialogue, reconciliation and inclusion.
The process of artistic creation, she said, can be a model for the work of reconciliation.
"It can be so many parts of it: it can be a reflection of what's happened, to allow others to see, it can drive forward a dialogue, it can pose questions that are difficult to pose or can propose answers that are difficult to find," she said.
Mayor Mark Heyck is a child of two first generation immigrants with a remarkable love story.
His father, an immigrant from Germany, arrived in Edmonton without "two dimes to rub together" and was hired on the spot to work for Con Mine. While at the mine, he lived in a bunkhouse together with a man who was receiving letters from Turkey. Those letters, written by Heyck's mother through a program at her university in Ankara connecting German speakers with German literature students, intrigued his father so much he began writing her back.
What began as a long distance relationship expressed through love letters, turned into Heyck's mother leaving her life in Turkey and starting a new one in Canada.
Heyck's mother and father came from distant countries to become Yellowknife residents, adding to the diversity of the city that Heyck said now has close to 120 nationalities represented and a strong indigenous foundation, with one-quarter of the city being First Nations, Metis and Inuit.
"One of the remarkable things about Canada is the diversity of this country and the relative harmony in which we live. I think Yellowknife is absolutely a shining example of that," he said.
Bill Braden, a Yellowknifer, former politician, reporter and now photographer, said he is proud of his family's pioneering roots in Saskatchewan and the many strange ideas that together make up Canada.
"When you peel back the history, Canada is a bunch of really strange ideas. At the time it was created, audacity, bravery, almost ridiculous aspirations. Like the guys who built the trans-Canada railway, an astonishing thing," he said.
Braden said while Canada is a huge nation in terms of its geography, it remains small due to the linkages and similarities between people.
"I think we all aspire to the same things," he said. "We are so lucky, we are so fortunate to have the opportunities and the protections as individuals and families. We all want to make the most, of course, for ourselves. But I think there's a real deep-seated desire and appreciation that we have a responsibility to look after the future of Canada as best we can."
Ayalik, a Yellowknifer of Inuit ancestry, said she thinks Canadians need to sit in the discomfort of the darkness of Canada's past and see their role in it, before moving forward.
"I feel like we're kind of in a bit of a thin ice situation, and if we want to go forward it's not marching off into the sunset just with no regard for what we're standing on," she said. "I think the way that we move forward is lying down on the ground, just getting close to the ice and just inching forward."
Marie Wilson, Yellowknife resident and former commissioner of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, said on the eve of Canada Day there is still a huge gulf of ignorance about the history of Canada's indigenous peoples.
"We have such a huge and continuing - I'd like to think slightly narrowing, but huge - gulf of ignorance of each other. And the most ignorant are the non-indigenous, because the indigenous peoples have been forced to learn all about non-indigenous ways and beings and institutions," she said.
Wilson said she senses a slow burgeoning of respect and knowledge across the country and leading up to the celebration she remembers a saying by a Northern elder about the long history of the land now called Canada.
"This is a very long chapter in the history of Canada, but it is a very short chapter in the history of the Inuit," she recalls the elder saying.
Canada Day for Wilson is a milestone and any good milestone involves looking towards the future but also remembering to turn around and face the past. "You climb a mountain, you are crazy not to look at the vista behind you," she said.
Braden said reconciliation will take generations, involving shifts in values in the court system, the reservations system and governance. He said changing mindsets around what is normal or accepted is crucial, and time is an important part of healing as is each Canadian doing their part.
"I think everybody has a responsibility at some point in their lives to chip in and help run the place, if you will," he said, adding people can contribute in small ways or big ways.
"I think through that connection to ourselves, to our neighbours, to our communities we're going to learn more about each other. We'll understand and appreciate and value the diversity, the differences that there are. We'll learn how to build on our common ground and we'll learn ways to understand and accept."
Carmen Braden said she became disenchanted with the idea of national borders at a young age while studying at an international school. Her connection to the North is a stronger one, she said, than her national identity.
Braden's family history stretches right across the country, yet she said this doesn't make her more Canadian for it.
"If I think about my family's history and how it reaches across so many different geographies, again the borders seem to fall away and it becomes more of like a 'journey' feel than an 'established with fences' feel," she said.
This Saturday, Chief Ernest Betsina of the Yellowknives Dene First Nation would like people to remember the long history indigenous people have in Canada. A history that extends far further back than 150 years.
"As a First Nation, we've been here longer than that...we are still here and we will continue to be here," he said.
"I hope the governments will recognize us as being here first and we will continue to voice our concerns and continue to remind the governments that we were here first."
