Through their eyes
Xet’òlacw Community School on the Lil’wat Nation’s traditional territory was created in 1972, when a group of parents who were not happy about how Canada was treating their children decided to take matters into their own hands.
Today, the school stands as a beacon of hope—a place where an education system built on resilience helps future leaders to connect with their culture and traditional territory, and where the Lil’wat Nation’s youngest members are turning the tables for generations to come.
Today, Rosa Andrews is the proud principal of the school and a welcoming face to current and past students alike. She has revolutionized the local education system and created a friendly atmosphere for locals.
“I was a student in the Indian Day School. I was afraid to go to the public school,” Andrews recalls. “My brothers were in the public school system and they weren’t being treated right. One of their friends was punched and knocked out by a teacher. My brothers had to find their way home. They hid in the ditches all the way home because the teacher was driving the road looking for them.”
Andrews’ mother decided to take action when her boys refused to ever go back to school. “They said if she wanted them to go back to school, she would have to make our own school,” she says. “That’s when my mom and a few others took over the Indian Day School in Mount Currie. They brought in elders to teach us. I started to learn that we had songs, a language, a culture and our ways.”
This momentous change was the start of something special, the start of restoring balance. “The way the education system was going meant that it wasn’t instilling pride in us,” says Andrews. “It was a form of assimilation. It was a continuation of ‘Kill the Indian in the Child.’”
Xet’òlacw Community School’s supercourses are an integral part of a curriculum that prioritizes protecting their students’ sense of self. In addition to regular classes like math, English, Ucwalmicwts, social studies, and science, Xet’òlacw Community School runs five supercourses throughout the year. Each course lasts at least five days, and represents an opportunity for students to immerse themselves in an area of interest, to develop new skills, engage with traditional and contemporary aspects of Lil’wat culture, and explore potential career directions.
The supercourses usually run in September, December, February, April, and June. This year’s supercourses include: mountain biking, restaurant kitchen prep, visual arts, exploring the territory, ultimate frisbee, traditional crafts, golf and frisbee golf, bull-riding, Shakespeare, cedar-hat making, independent studies, grad prep, and construction. Past students were able to learn woodwork, skiing and snowboarding, hunting and fishing, drivers ed, philosophy, wilderness first aid and emergency preparedness, and equine studies.
The school’s annual supercourses are favourites for students and teachers alike. Grade 8 students embark on a camping trip to Skelula7 (Owl Lake), while Grade 11 has a college and university exploration trip. Meanwhile, Grade 12 hikes the long trail to the Stein.
Charlotte Jacklein is one of the teachers on the supercourses.
“In my current supercourse, exploring the territory, we are canoeing on One Mile Lake, hiking in the Duffey, whitewater rafting on the Green River, horseback riding near Birkenhead Lake, and visiting elder and hereditary chief Hubie Jim at Sutikalh in the Duffey,” she says. “In addition to exploring their traditional territory in a variety of ways, students help plan and shop for meals, discuss and decide on possible trip routes based on weather, conditions, and group needs, and develop their teamwork and leadership skills.”
Andrews says the courses have run for as long as she can remember.
“The supercourses are more our way of connecting kids to their land and traditional territory,” she says. “When I take the Grade 12s out to the Stein Valley, I bring a spiritual leader and elder. We do our sweat ceremony. The kids build the sweat lodge. They learn the proper procedure for building a sweat lodge. The elder and spiritual leader are both there to teach them and guide them. They go through the sweat. When I’ve gone into a sweat with those kids, I see and hear the learning that’s going on there.”
For many students, it is their first time in a sweat. The trip gives them time to disconnect from the modern world and connect with what really matters.
“It’s really good for them because there’s no WiFi,” says Andrews. “They have to disconnect themselves and reconnect to the land and the spiritual connections that are out there. When they get to Grade 12, it’s a long hike. On the trail, the kids are learning team-building. In our culture, it’s not all about us. We are always thinking about community and how we can contribute to our community.”
Photos taken by the students display the important connection between the elders and the community’s youngest members. Andrews has seen first-hand how culture saves lives. One student’s story has stayed with her as it shows just how important the supercourses can be.
“There was one student and for one reason or another, his parents moved away,” she says. “He ended up in Alberta. When he came back to us in high school, he was very disconnected. He was very troubled with alcohol and drugs. He started coming to school but he couldn’t stay in a classroom. I started to feed him. I kept asking him if he was hungry. I gradually got him into the classroom, and he started to take classes.”
The following year, Andrews took the young man on the Stein trip with her Grade 12s.
“When we got there, he found a drum that somebody had brought. He started to sing and said he wanted to learn how to drum,” she says. “He wanted his own name. We said we would work on that. The fog came and we couldn’t fly out. We decided to have a naming ceremony…
“They were sitting at the sacred fire talking about the name. All of a sudden, I heard the boy holler. He started running towards me. He was so excited that he didn’t see the guideline on my tent. He hit it and fell.”
The young student was so excited because he had finally found his name.
The group then held a name-giving ceremony for the young man, with all the Grade 12s joining in.
“In our name-giving ceremony … You lift the person up. We put him on a block of wood. We wrapped him in a bear hide,” Andrews says.
“During the ceremony, he kept saying to himself that he wasn’t going to cry. When he officially got his name, one of the students said that they wanted to sing him a song. They sang him the Bear Song. Then another student wanted to sing him a song and they kept doing that.”
After he was honoured with the songs, the young boy vowed to reconnect to his language and to become a fluent speaker. “When we take the kids out onto the land, it’s about connecting them to who they are as Ucwalmícw, people of the land,” Andrews says.
Former students are always welcome back to the school when they feel lost or just when they want to feel at home.
“A lot of students come back. They come back as education assistants,” says Andrews. “There’s got to be balance. The mission and vision of our school is to instil pride in who we are. We have to educate our children in a way that we can entrust them to be our future leaders as we have been entrusted. Within that, there has to be balance. Our children have to be able to survive in both worlds. They have to survive in the Western world with their identity intact. Right now, the Western way is so dominant that we go off balance.”
Read more at slcc.ca.
Roisin Cullen, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Pique Newsmagazine
