 Good morning and welcome everyone. Thank you so much for joining us today. My name is Kendra Sakamoto, and I'm one of the librarians here at West Vancouver Memorial Library. I recognize that today we are all in different places. I would like to acknowledge that for those of us on the North Shore, we are on the traditional ancestral and unceded territories of the Squamish, Slewa Tooth, and Musqueam Nations. If you are uncertain as to which traditional territory you reside on, I encourage you to visit who's.land to learn more about the traditional territories on which you reside. As I reflect on this day, the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, I am inspired by the Coast Salish peoples who have been the careful caretakers and stewards of these lands and waters since I'm immemorial. I am personally so incredibly grateful to live in this beautiful place. Today we commemorate the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. Today is a day for learning and for reflection. Let us all acknowledge the devastating and lasting impacts that the residential school system had on the children that attended these schools. These impacts continue to be felt among Indigenous communities across Canada. As we all work towards reconciliation, we each have a role to play, and we are all at a different place in this journey, but we are in it together, and I invite you to visit the library and our website for numerous resources to help you on this journey. Today we are honored to be joined by Chief Janice George from the Squamish Nation, who will offer a traditional welcome to this place. Chief Janice is the Hereditary Chief of the Squamish Nation. She is a trained museum curator and educator and a master beaver. Chief Janice co-founded the Le Hen Out weaving house to share the teachings and practices of traditional post-Salish wool weaving. She co-authored the book Salish Blanket, Robes of Protection and Transformation, Symbols of Wealth. Chief Janice recently gave a TED talk called The Spirit Moves Like a Storm, and I encourage you to find that on YouTube. It is very powerful. Welcome Chief Janice. To know you up in Sequoia, I is chopped to know you up. I is chopped to know you up. I'm here with a respectful heart, and I just said peace to each and every one of you. Peace to every one of you here today. So I just want to welcome you to view this on Salish territory, on Squamish territory. I'm so honored to be here to welcome you, and especially today when we think about our beautiful cedars in our territory. Our territory is so important to us, and it always has been, and we know the history of our territory, and we've been told from the beginning of time, when I think about our cedars, all of our land, but our cedars, how sacred it is to us, and how our elders have told us that when we are puzzled, when we are sad, when we need some answers, when we need to look within for answers, we go and sit up against the cedar tree. So you sit up against the cedar tree, and the answers will come. The help that you need will come, the energy that you need will come to you. So I feel like it's so important to know that, especially when we go out into the forest, because our ancestors are there with us, our DNA is in the trees. What a powerful thought when we go into the forest. So I just welcome you and encourage you to think about the ancestors and feel that connection yourself. You can have that connection as well. So I encourage you to do that, and honor those ancestors' knowledge in that way. Osean. Thank you, Janice, for that very, very beautiful welcome to this territory. So today we are very honored to be joined by Katlia Lafferty, who was our climate writer in residence earlier this year, and as well as elder Jeff Welch from the South Canadian. Jeff Welch is a single father, grandpa, and South Canadian band member living on reserve. Jeff committed his life 13 years ago to becoming a traditional knowledge keeper for his prospective South family, learning and teaching Indigenous education as an Indigenous role model in school districts 62. Jeff also facilitates traditional drum making workshops for organizations interested in learning his teachings. And Jeff on occasion does guest speaking at New York to Victoria. Katlia Lafferty is an author and activist from the Yellow Knives Dene First Nation. She's the author of Northern Wildflower, Land, Water, Sky, which just won the North Words Book Award for 2021. And her novel that was just released, This House is Not a Home. Katlia is in her final year of the Juris Doctorate in Common Law and Indigenous Legal Orders with the University of Victoria. And of course earlier this year, Katlia served as the inaugural climate writer in residence at West Vancouver Memorial Library. And much of her work that she did with us, including her blogs, are still available on our website. I encourage you to post those out. Welcome, Katlia. All right, so Katlia, it's so good to see you again. Last time I was together with you was right at the end of your residency with us. And we had the opportunity to go out to the traditional South territory with elder Jeff Welch from the South Nation, who took us theater harvesting. And today we're going to get to see a little bit about that process you want to let us know what we're getting at what we're in for. Yeah, so we went out into the forest following Jeff and he showed us how to honor the cedar tree, how to choose out what cedar tree we will be selecting and requesting that we utilize and harvest the bark from the cedar tree and a culturally appropriate way through proper protocol of the territory. And so we're just going to see that process from start to finish in this video. Great. All right. And here we go. Hello, Esquite Chill, good day. My name is Jeff Welch. I'm a traditional knowledge keeper for my respective South Nation family. I've worked in the school district 62 for 12 years as an Indigenous role model, teaching Indigenous education. My family, my mother is Karen George of South Nation. My grandmother is Sarah Daisy George of South Nation. Her mother was Mary George of South Nation. My grandfather was Chief Eddie George of South Nation. His father was Harry George of Songhees Nation. I have family at Songhees. I also have family at Patchidat Nation stemming from my great, from my granny, Ida Jones. Thank you. What I'm going to do now is offer an acknowledgement to the possible ancestral spirits that might inhabit this tree. We believe that when our ancestors are passed over, they can inhabit everything alive and even rocks. So we acknowledge by leaving some medicine, which is traditionally sage and or cedar, sometimes wrapped together in a bundle like this one. So what I'll do is I'll take a little bit off and offer it to the ancestors at the base of this tree. Sometimes it's offered in a smudge form. Sometimes it's offered like this in a medicine form just at the base of the tree. Some nations like Cree nations like to bundle it in a little cloth sack and hang it from a branch sometimes. So I'm going to give an offering right now to our ancestors acknowledging that we'd like to take some of this beautiful cedar bark. It's important that when you're doing this, you have good thoughts in your mind and in your heart to do it in a good respectful way. Cedar in our culture is known as the Tree of Life. It supplies many, many different things to our people since time immemorial. The bark, like what we're going to be harvesting today, used for creating things like my hat or cedar rope, which I'll do a demonstration for you a little bit later. Also harvesting the wood of course to create our big houses or ceremonial masks, paddles. The bark is even used to create our ceremonial clothing. So we harvest in a very sustainable way and usually on the south side of the tree where there's fewer branches. We can get a nice long strip without it breaking off too soon. So we'll harvest one strip about the width of two hands. That way the tree will live to be many, many more years after this harvest. These red cedars can live as long as a thousand years. Modern archaeologists look for these, look for old trees with cedar that's been peeled. They're called archaeological, it's archaeological evidence of our former past presence of our peoples. So we're going to harvest one strip and then we're going to prep it while it's still fresh and wet. Here it's much easier to prep and clean when it's fresh. We'll be taking the outside bark off of it to get to the nice wet bark on the inside and we'll show you that demonstration as we go along here. The only time that we would ever harvest all the bark off of our tree is of course if we're harvesting the whole tree for our various many uses. It's even used as a medicine. Branches like you see here, they would be used like I said in combination with sage for smudging. They'd also be used for cleansing, cleansing off various objects or homes or canoes that are newly created before they go out into the open ocean. They're brushed down with these branches in combination with smudging to clean out any negative energies that may be present. Okay we're going to start harvesting, peeling that strip of cedar. We start by cutting a vertical line high up off of the root because we don't want to get close to the root. This tree is going to live for many more years after we make this harvest. It's also, it's May, the middle of May right now, close to the middle of May. This is the time of year to harvest while the sap it covers nicely with the sap so it protects it from the elements for many many more years. So I'll start making my vertical cut. Make a cut up to start the, if you want to feel underneath this it's very wet. Lots of water there, the sap running. The tool that you're using what would that traditionally have been made of? Stone tools is to harvest planks for instance to build our big houses from standing trees using wedges and cedar rope usually from an old growth tree where the grain runs quite straight so they peel off really nice and easy nice thick planks get the start of this. We want to grab it and pull right up to a branch and then it'll break off. You give it a tug, break it off. Let's go off to the side a little bit. You can see him thank you for your help. Wow very wet eh? So this, this spot for the life of its tree will remain there and our descendants for many generations when they come up into this territory to do harvesting they'll see this for many generations to come to see our former presence just like we see theirs our ancestors. So what we're going to do is uh we can uh all work together to peel this outside bark off to get to the beautiful inner bark that's the usable bark. How long does this coat usually take? That depends sometimes you get lucky and you can get a uh get a hold of a piece a really big piece and it'll come right off so it depends. How do you use a knife or this? What you want to do is you want to bend the inner bark and then you want to use the knife to just gently peel off all these. This guy's here yeah and also this darker stuff yeah so peel and bend yeah when you get a good piece yeah you can see how much labor goes into uh creating different cedar bark creations right from harvesting to creating the hat for instance there's a lot of a lot of work when we're done stripping this what we'll do is we'll roll it up careful not to fold it and we'll tie it into a bundle and um dry it whole in preparation to use for later time and then it's uh soaked again when it's later to be used and stripped into various different sizes depending on what it is that you're gonna create from it so mats you'd want uh larger strips depending on the size of the mat that you're gonna be creating um hats about as width as your paint the width of your pinky cedar rope for uh fishing you want quite fine strips for smaller fishing line or if you're making cedar rope quite thicker strips yeah it's many different uses yeah you know what they do use it for hair on traditional masks as well as real human hair it does work very well so when you peel off the brown is it normal that i would keep it stays on there yeah it's okay for the more skilled you get the less you leave behind it just depends on the the tree and how much sap is what we're running through it how much water is running through it looks like this is a good time a good one to peel it's peeling pretty easily drives home how disconnected we are from the land totally like just just not part of society anymore everything is just so quick and easy yeah it feels good connected to cedar awesome yeah you're bound to lose some as you peel is there a proper way to kind of dispose of all your leftovers usually if you're not going to use it for spire starter for instance then you put it back in the bush to be reclaimed yeah with our with our fish any parts that that we don't use it gets put back into the ocean yeah to be reclaimed by all the other creatures who taught you to do this i've learned uh a lot since i was a child from my from my grandfathers my aunties and my grandmas um a lot mostly what i've learned is uh since working in the school district uh 62 as an indigenous role model 12 years i've been doing it 12 years ago i i committed to becoming a traditional knowledge keeper for my respective salk nation family which means i'm i i've committed to learning all i can about our traditions and culture and to then hold that knowledge and teach it for anybody that wants to learn it especially to those in the school district 62 where i work like i said as an indian indigenous indigenous role model i also do presentations on occasion for university of victoria a lot of the knowledge that i've learned past 12 years since i committed to coming in a knowledge keeper i learned from other indigenous role models in the in the school district everybody usually specializes in in one or more things that they teach and so that's where i i get most of my teachings from i basically teach indigenous education uh of all all sorts of uh knowledge uh i start usually with cedar talks for my presentations but i leave the questions open for anything traditional or cultural of interest to the students that if i can answer their questions i i do my best to answer it for them i have a very wide knowledge of uh uh everything to do with our culture and traditions that's okay you can just peel it peel it off yeah it's important to do it with love in your heart with thoughts in your in your mind for the other thing that's a good thought collecting cedar uh means connecting back with our traditions uh it's uh important um that we we learn our our old ways our old teachings to uh acknowledge remember to acknowledge those uh ancestors that give us these gifts that of cedar that ancestors we believe uh inhabit our trees and everything around us including the stones um so it's it's important as a knowledge people to to learn these teachings and to to to uh teach them to all that want to uh all that want to listen using cedar it's very healing prepping it um it's important to have good thoughts in your mind and heart like i said earlier when you're working with cedar it will show in your work uh and your creations that you create from it if you if you're getting frustrated it's important to to stop and take a break if if you're if you're uh cedar isn't uh if you're having a tough time uh working your cedar bark it means you need to need to take a break it's not ready yet those energies all go into your creations to um follow proper protocol when gathering cedar it's it's very important to follow proper protocol when gathering cedar because uh we like i said earlier we believe that our ancestors when they passed on uh inhabit things like uh all living things including uh inanimate objects like stones and what have you so it's important that we acknowledge those ancestors who are giving themselves to us for our creations um it's important to not lose those teachings uh it's important to teach them to to the to the youth in hopes that they retain that knowledge and never lose it and they'll grow up to teach it as well or maybe even grow up to become a knowledge keeper to uh to learn and and teach their their traditions and culture so have you noticed any changes in the land and water around the forest floor growing up and until now in terms of maybe seeing witnessing climate change? um not that i can uh think of and although uh i do teach about uh some of the things that we don't have access to anymore for our traditional tools due to over uh over harvesting or clear cutting of our forests for instance our uh our paddles traditionally we used you would to create those paddles it's known as one of the hardest woods in our traditional territory but due to over harvesting clear cutting um it's getting very hard to to find the uh amount of wood that we would need to create enough paddles even for one uh you wood paddles even for one canoe so we've adopted uh the use of yellow cedar which is uh a bit more dense harder heavier wood out of the two cedars the red and the yellow so i guess in keeping with the what does reconciliation mean to you? reconciliation means to me well it's it's about sharing and and uh in our different cultural ways uh non-indigenous and indigenous it's important that we live together uh respecting each other's teachings and learning from each other this uh i very much believe that that uh it's important to share our traditions and traditional territory as a multicultural uh country because i believe that the world is meant for all to share so i i highly believe in sustainable ways so even harvesting or our various different foods um you may have heard that we don't have a hunting season per se so some of us first nations that that live out of uh community that live mostly in the in the uh in the uh populated areas where uh there there isn't access to grocery stores to acquire supplemental foods um they harvest all year round so uh uh but me for instance and some of my salk family we go by uh since we have access to uh uh stores and and um are there available foods will harvest in a sustainable way by harvesting during a hunting season um so that uh we have um those uh animals that we may be harvesting if we harvest them in a sustainable manner we have to think seven generations ahead for our for our for our families to be able to have access to those same same uh animals and if if they're harvested at the rate that they are um we're not going to have anything left especially when it comes to to harvesting our ocean foods i i highly believe that um our oceans can't sustain commercial harvesting like they currently are um it's uh it's depleting our our oceans and our salmon much faster than they can replenish and so uh harvesting our fish we harvest in a living in a in a populated community we harvest usually in uh uh fishing season as well unless it's uh to do with harvesting salmon from our rivers we we harvest that sustainably as well in the fall it's just very important for for us to uh think about our seven generations ahead of us we need to leave think think of them and leave some for them okay so that was our experience last may when we went out to harvest the cedar so elder jeff very graciously gifted all of that cedar to patlia and myself and the cedar has to cure for a full year before we can use it here's a small piece so you can see what it what it's looking like at this point we're about five months post harvest um and then earlier in the year elder jeff had gifted us some cedar that was already ready so here's a piece so you can see when it's been fully cured and it's been cut so this is now all ready to use in projects so katlia do you have any plans for for your cedar well i have quite a lot of different um ceremonial pieces that i've collected over the years whether that be rocks or sage or sweet grass and now i've added cedar to the to the mix and i'm going to keep it in a very safe location where i'm just going to use that uh to energize me and to remember where i live now in lukwungen territory and um recollect on that day and just keeps that as a keepsake really um because i'm not aware of how to use uh cedar in ways for weaving and things like that so maybe one day what i'll do is i'll go back to elder jeff and ask him to teach me more but for now i'll have it on my mantle as a ceremonial um offering and um just to have in my home which i will cherish so cedar is not something that um you traditionally use in your culture um so how was this experience of harvesting cedar for you well the day it's interesting because when you're going out and harvesting cedar you really have to just immerse yourself in the forest and and kind of try to just be as one with nature and where you're at and where you're standing you're standing among giants and um that day was rainy and cold a little bit and um at some points i kind of wanted to just bundle it up and you know go home so it really goes to show that there's an entire process around doing this that is not to be taken lightly it's it's very serious work and a lot goes into it a lot of preparation a lot of time like you said it takes a whole year for the cedar to um you know go through that cycle and then there's a ceremonial aspect and um just humbling ourselves to that and it's it's very spiritual process and i i would encourage anyone who's living among the cedar in in bc to um reach out to their local elders or their local knowledge keeper to go and experience that and have that experience because it's hard to put into words um what it's like out there when you're going step by step through the process and i mean we were we were scraping we were on our knees trying to scrape the cedar and that that was a long process and it was also something that we worked on together so it wasn't just one person doing the work it was kind of a group effort and so it's really great to be able to do that especially with family and friends and learning as you go yeah thank you um so on this day for you know national day for truth and reconciliation um this is such an important day and i'm so grateful that it's it's been made you know a national day um and i think so much of of reconciliation for non-indigenous people is to learn about the traditions and the cultures certainly of all indigenous people across canada but especially um on the territory where you're living you know what were the traditions and what are the traditions and the practices of the people who still live in this area and are the stewards of this land um i was so grateful to have this experience with elder Jeff and be able to take my family on that experience you know once in the lifetime yeah but i would love to hear from you you know what does reconciliation mean to you well you know reconciliation well the whole phrase truth and reconciliation i think we're still at the truth we're still very much trying to decipher and figure out what the truth is and and bring that to light so that we can eventually move forward to reconciliation i don't think that we're even close to reconciling right now um because there's still a lot of hidden truths there's still a lot of truths that are not wanting to be um recognized um or exposed um for what they are and until that happens until there's that genuine um trust that comes out of truth only then can we move forward to reconcile and also to the word reconciling is really making right the past wrongs and for indigenous people really we weren't the ones that did the wrongs right we were we were wronged and so i think that um there needs to be that understanding as well as it's not up to us to reconcile uh it's up to us to hopefully um move forward in a good way um and also to consider um forgiveness but it's not our job to reconcile anything and i think that that's where there is some confusion around truth and reconciliation and it comes from those um allies and um the settlers and the colonial mindsets that are and the policies that have been put in place that have dispossessed us from our homelands and from being able to understand our place-based teachings um slowly um only then will we be able to get to reconciliation so yeah this is such a challenging um it's a journey you know it's it's a continual journey for all of us whether we've lived here for generations or we've just moved here you know it is a continuous journey and i think anyone who's who's here today and just even watching this video that's already a step in the right direction definitely yes it shows the earnest um respect and the the effort to get to that point and that's what matters most is um um not so much you know um having that guilt uh because that that's not going to be useful for anything um but just uh being being there um learning as much as possible and um just really going out and and teaching that to others so among your groups among your friends and family kind of trying to explain that because it's it's it's kind of difficult to explain and it's not up to indigenous peoples either to teach that or explain that um because it's triggering and indigenous peoples have been through a lot of trauma and so um we should not be the ones to be teaching people about the history of so-called Canada and uh it's it's up to others to do that homework themselves thank you and um and on that note you know it can be really hard to know where to get those resources and and how to start this journey um library's a great place we have loads of resources so you know check out our website we have book lists we have book bundles specific for this day we have you know every staff member who would love to help you start on this journey or continue on this journey wherever you are so please come by the library um and also Katlia has a new book that you know just came out and it's called this house is not a home the beautiful beautiful book and it really really touches on um the lasting effects of colonization that you know indigenous peoples are still feeling right now at this very moment um so this book is is very poignant at this time and so I encourage everyone to read it we do of course have it at the library um so please check that out and thank you so much Katlia for inviting me to come on this cedar harvesting journey with you to elder Jeff I am I'm so eternally grateful and thank you both and I wish everyone um a very amazing day of reflection on this national day of retreat and reconciliation must be Joe Kendra thank you so much for everything thank you Katlia