Dozens of Jasperites exchanged friendship and respect with community members of the Big Horn Stoney First Nation during a flag raising ceremony on National Indigenous Peoples Day.

On June 21, with the sun shining bright on the first day of summer, elders John and Barry Wesley, with help from Jasper’s deputy mayor Ralph Melnyk, raised the Every Child Matters flag high into the sky above Jasper’s Emergency Services Building. 

Before they raised the flags, Indigenous mentor and literacy specialist Wyanne Smallboy-Wesley taught the crowd how to smudge. 

“You might call it prayer, we call it communicating with the surrounding beings, mountains, land, trees, sky, birds animals and insects,” Smallboy-Wesley said. 

With her sister’s help, Smallboy-Wesley helped those gathered cleanse themselves with smoke from burning sage and other medicinal plants. She told the participants the ritual helps us blend into nature.

“It helps us become calm and relaxed and feel at ease,” she said. 

Smallboy-Wesley introduced her grandfather, a survivor of Canada’s notorious day schools—colonial tools of assimilation which caused widespread harm to Indigenous communities. 

“He was legislated to not speak Stoney,” Smallboy-Wesley said. 

Addressing the local students assembled, she said June 21 is an opportunity to move forward with reconciliation.

“Take a look around you—at the mountains, the sky and the ground. By saying âba wathtech [good day; hello] in the mountain people language, you yourself are a mountain person.”

Bob Covey // bob@thejasperlocal.com