“Not the right name”: notes on reconciliation

I’m traveling for work today but I wanted to share some notes from a community dialogue I was honoured to take part in yesterday on reconciliation. There was a combination of Indigenous and non-Indigenous speakers and much audience participation inside Nusdeh-Yoh, the province’s first Aboriginal Choice school.

Though the discussion went down quite a few roads, looking over my notes I realize the subject of language came up a number of times. Leona Neilson spoke about growing up in Saskatchewan speaking Cree and English and later refusing to learn French, then moving to Prince George later in life where she’s been teaching Cree. She teamed up with another of the speakers, Caitlin Nicholson (whose children are members of the Tahltan Nation through their father), to write books in the Cree language for early learners.

Clayton Gauthier presented a children’s book he’d written in both English and Dakelh, and shared a song gifted by his uncle to Nusdeh Yoh about the importance of passing on knowledge to new generations.

Hira Rashid, who identified herself as an immigrant from Pakistan, spoke about learning the history of the Southeast Asian community in Canada in relation to Indigenous people. She said the word used by Southeast Asian settlers to describe Indigenous people when they worked together at sawmills was “Taiké”, which means roughly “of my father’s family”, a phrase that described the close relationship between the two communities (more on the phrase here).

Rob Budde, who identified himself as a settler, as well as a poet and professor at UNBC, spoke about how his interest in the local Indigenous culture and history was sparked by an experience he had with with what we call in the English language, Devil’s Club.

He said based on his knowledge of the plant “Devil’s Club was not the right name” so he took language classes to find out what it was in the local language. At that point Noelle Pepin of the Nisga’a Nation volunteered the word for it in Nisga’a is “wa’ums”, which means “medicine” as that is what the plant has actually been used for by Indigenous people for generations, something you would never guess from “Devil’s Club.”

“Language opens doors,” Rob said, and that sparked my memory of learning the meaning behind “Lheidli T’enneh”– people of the confluence. Based on the name of my blog, that obviously had an impact on me because it was the first time I had experienced my home having a name that reflects the local geography. I grew up in “Prince George,” named after a dead monarch who never saw the place– colonization literally erasing local history, identity, and culture. Through words alone, a new connection to the place I call home had been opened up, which is the power of language (and provides insight as to why our country tried so hard to erase it from the people it was colonizing.)

There were other stories of language, too. Noelle Pepin mentioned an academic project she is doing combining the language of computer code with the language of beading, both of which you learn by building something. There was talk of an speaker at another weaving words event who said his language did not have a word for “reconciliation” and so the language keepers came up with a phrase that translates to “making amends for damage done.” They found the right name.

All in all it was a great way to spend two hours, and thank you– musi– to Toni Carlton for inviting me.

Photo by Toni

some notes I took during the discussion