Humboldt and area residents, along with provincial and community partners, came together for a culminating discussion on Reconciliation as the year long Reconciliation through Heritage Living Pilot Project wrapped up.
The project was a joint venture between the City of Humboldt’s Cultural Services Department, the Office of the Treaty Commissioner, Aboriginal Friendship Centres of Saskatchewan and Heritage Saskatchewan.
The project began with the invitation of Heritage Saskatchewan and a survey to the community about how it would like to proceed with learning around Indigenous people and culture. The partial goal was to address the calls to action from the Truth and Reconciliation Committee’s report.
David Siebert, researcher with Heritage Saskatchewan, explained that the organizations wanted to create a link between living heritage - the ongoing, day to day manifestations of an area's culture - and Reconciliation.
“Living heritage includes the practices and activities around identity – things like language,” Siebert elaborated. “Bread itself may not be living heritage, but the practices of making it, when you eat it, who you share it with, that’s living heritage.”
Siebert says the steering group saw the link between living heritage and Reconciliation in the attempts of residential schools to remove the living heritage, the way of life, from Indigenous people.
“People will understand why reconciliation matters if they understand their own living heritage.”
Organizers for the year’s event used a circular, four stage model as a guide. The questions governing each of the four parts were:
- Where are we and how did we get here?
- What is our common ground?
- Who and what is missing here?
- How do we complete the circle by putting knowledge to action?
Siebert says that Heritage Saskatchewan’s previous work with Jennifer Fitzpatrick of the Museum and her staff would make Humboldt an excellent choice for the pilot project. Siebert praised the efforts of the Cultural Services Department in delivering a host of activities and learning experiences targeting all audiences with different outcomes.
Rhett Sangster with the Office of the Treaty Commissioner has spoken in Humboldt at events during the pilot project. He returned with an overview of Treaty history, with a focus on Treaty 6 whose area includes Humboldt.
Sangster outlined the histories of Treaties 4 and 6, acknowledging that the Canadian government’s purchase of Rupertsland from the Hudson Bay Company triggered the need for Treaties as expansion and settlement came westward.
While some Indigenous Chiefs of the 1860’s supported Treaties as a way to acquire life saving medications, food and shelter, others saw the potential for their lands and rights to be stripped away. The introduction of diseases like smallpox, the depletion of the buffalo herds, and the desire of many Indigenous leaders to shift to a new economy led to the eventual agreements.
Sangster pointed out that many of the terms of the Treaties’ agreements were simply not met. The promise of education entrenched in the Treaties led to the inception of residential schools and the decimation that followed.
Sangster stressed that Indigenous people originally entered Treaty agreements “through the pipe” - with traditional ceremony as the basis for the agreements, not with signatures as was the protocol for their European counterparts.
Jennifer Fitzpatrick closed the evening discussion by examining what is next now that the pilot project has reached its conclusion. The work continues by analyzing a final report and pouring over the discussions from the committee meetings. There will be more community engagement on the horizon, Fitzpatrick says.
“We need to hear from the community; this is not the first and only ask of how you’d like to move forward. We are going to continue to ask what you’d like to see from Reconciliation in the community. I think because we have a lot of avenues as the Department of Cultural Services, whether it’s a museum exhibit, an art installation by an Indigenous artist, a piece of public art, a program or event.”
Fitzpatrick acknowledges that there needs to be various levels of engagement for new people to enter into the conversation in a safe and comfortable environment. To voice your wishes about ongoing projects, contact Jennifer at the Museum.