Image Credit: CFJC Today / Kent Simmonds

By Jill Sperling

Day of Sucwentwecw

School district honours Indigenous history and culture with eighth annual Day of Sucwentwecw

Apr 7, 2021 | 5:02 PM

KAMLOOPS — Students at Four Directions Secondary School learned to make traditional rawhide rattles Wednesday (April 7) as the Kamloops-Thompson School District celebrated the annual Day of Sucwentwecw.

“It’s a time for people to recognize the history of the Secwepemc and all First Nations people,” said Bernice Jensen, cultural education coordinator with the Kamloops Aboriginal Friendship Society. “It’s a time to celebrate that we are here today and that we are still having our language, our culture and our traditions carrying forward for the next generation.”

Jensen regularly visits schools to promote awareness and pride in Aboriginal history.

“We’re going back and teaching them some of the cultural art projects that they had done from a long time ago and so the kids, they’re really hands-on,” she said. “They love learning the cultural activities that we do in the classes.”

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Due to the pandemic, most of this year’s activities were virtual.

“The virtual piece has allowed us to go out in the communities, for example we have a video of Chief Casimir doing a welcome,” explained District Principal of Aboriginal Education Mike Bowden. “Now, Chief Casimir is one chief out of the seven bands and we have 47 schools in the school district, so she can by no means make it to all of the schools, but virtually now she can.”

Day of Sucwentwecw is unique to the Kamloops-Thompson School District and was brought about as a way to acknowledge and build relationships with local First Nations in the school district.

“Sucwentwecw means, in the local language, to acknowledge one another, to build those relationships,” Bowden said. “It was about how we begin that process and how we educate, I guess, our public students and acknowledge the Indigenous students in our schools in a very appropriate way.”

The virtual event will have to suffice this year, but the school district hoped to celebrate next year with a gathering.

“That’s really important when we gather, we share food and we share stories personally,” Bowden said. “Despite what I said about the virtual piece and how that acts as a broader audience, there’s also some real importance when we talk about acknowledging one another in relationships of that one-to-one personal interactions that happen in those gatherings.”