Bee the Change

 

 As founding Director of Bee The Change Aboriginal Arts Society I am so honored and excited about Cooks Ferry Indian Bands, First Annual Unity Gathering in Spences Bridge. What a great way celebrate and honor our Ancestors and bring the arts back home for all to enjoy. Grateful to be apart of it. More info on the event below

      Supporting the Arts is my passion!

 

 

Cook’s Ferry Indian Band, Nkemcin,

Nlaka’pamux Nation Territory,

 Announces Completion of Memorial to Honor The

Interior Allied Tribes of BC 1908 – 1922

And

Invitation to June 11, 2010 Celebration

 

In December 2009 the Cooks Ferry Indian Band, a member community of the Nlaka’pamux Nation, completed construction of a memorial gathering site to honor the tremendous work of the Interior Allied Tribes of BC during the period 1908 – 1922.  The Memorial was constructed at Nkemcin, on Kumsheen Indian Reserve #1 at the confluence of the Nicola and Thompson Rivers. 

 

The year 2010 marks the 100^th anniversary of the meeting of Chiefs  from across British Columbia who met at Spence’s Bridge in May 1910 and the Memorial to Sir Wilfred Laurier was created then and there.  The Declaration was delivered to Prime Minister Laurier on August 25, 1910 when he visited Kamloops. The full text of the Declaration can be read at: http://www.shuswapnation.org/news-and-meetings/memorial.html     

 

The Cooks Ferry Band is planning a grand opening of the facility on Friday, June 11, 2010 and is inviting the original signatory Nations and other First Nations, as well as supporters and community members and the public to attend the celebration.

 

The Cook's Ferry Indian Band built the $1.2 million structure to provide a gathering place to annually celebrate, honour, and memorialize the strength and enduring truth of the words of the interior indigenous peoples. The impressive structure, was designed by Lynda Ursaki while working for Patrick R. Stewart Architects from Chilliwack.  Lynda is the daughter of Don and Lorna Ursaki and Don is a Cooks Ferry Band Elder.  Lyndas’ design, though influenced by traditional structures of our past, embraces technologies of the present to create a place where our past and future can be celebrated.  The path of our ancestors spirals out from the fire pit, where we tell the stories of our past, and follows the interpretive ramp towards the top of the platform, the brightest part of the building and our future.  From the platform our history surrounds us.  The structure is designed to accommodate professional lighting and audio presentations. . 

 

 

Funding for the project was provided by a number of government and corporate contributions as well as the Cooks Ferry Band.  The Band acknowledges the financial contributions of the Community Economic Diversification Intitiative from the Western Economic Diversification Program, the Northern Initiative Trust, the Southern Interior Beetle Action Committee, Teck/Highland Valley Copper, CN Rail, CP Rail and local fund raising within the community.

 

A full day of events is being planned by Event Coordinator Nadine Spence, (Cook’s Ferry/ Nlaka’pamux) under the direction of a local Planning Committee and Chief David Walkem.  Kevin Loring (Lytton First Nation / Nlaka’pamux) a recipient of the 2009 Governor General’s Award for Drama, has been commissioned to produce a one-act play for the official opening and for use for future performances at the site.  Look for more information in the near future.

 

Some of that history:  Laurier was Canada’s seventh Prime Minister, in government from 1896-1911. After receiving the Memorial and promising to act on it, he lost the 1911 election to Robert Borden, who turned federal policy back sharply against Native people and implemented the findings of the McKenna McBride Reserve Commission in 1916, against the Indian Rights Association’s protests. Formed in late 1909, the Indian Rights Association was founded by many people, and was the first organization to try to bring such a broad range of nations together in one alliance. This group became the Allied Tribes in 1916, when they reoriented to oppose the unilateral imposition of the BC Reserve Commission. That Commission cut off choice areas of land from the Reserves, sometimes replacing the land selection with poor and useless lands, and sometimes not replacing it at all. There was no financial compensation for the cut-off lands, no agreement to the Reserve boundaries in the first place, and no meaningful response from either the provincial or federal governments when they were advised of the nations’ strong opposition to their colonial process. One of the previous documents regarding the Reserves was written in 1874, when the Chiefs from Port Douglas all the way to Bute Inlet signed a complaint about the Reserve limits that were being drawn in around them.

 

For more information on the day of celebration, or how you can be involved, please contact Nadine Spence at email: nespence@shaw.ca Tel: (250) 491-1308 Cell: (250) 859-8199 or Cooks Ferry Indian Band (250) 458-2224