The First Peoples’ Map of B.C. is providing audio clips of First Nations languages, resources to find Indigenous art and culture, and more. Today we learn more about the unique project, how it came to be, and how it will continue to grow.
The First Peoples’ Map of B.C. is providing audio clips of First Nations languages, resources to find Indigenous art and culture, and more. Today we learn more about the unique project, how it came to be, and how it will continue to grow.
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Disclaimer: This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Jackie: Hi, my name is Jackie Lamport. Today is Friday, June 25. Welcome to the Capital Daily Podcast. Today on the show, a new online map is focusing on preserving and celebrating indigenous culture across the province. We learn about what it is, how it works and what comes next. On today's good news Friday episode, we will come to Capital Daily's good newsletter editor Emily Fagan to learn more about the mapping project called First Peoples map of BC. One of the things you'll find on the map as we will learn more about from Emily is audio recordings of greetings and pronunciations of the community names in their traditional language. Here's an example if you're on the island, you'll know this First Nation.
Cathi (audio recording): Ditidaht.
Jackie: And here is a traditional greeting.
Cathi (audio recording): *clip from FPPC website*
Jackie: Emily will let me explain more about what she learned in her research. And you'll also hear the voice of Cathi Charles Wherry, a special advisor to the FPCC (First Peoples' Cultural Council). Emily, welcome back to the show.
Emily: Yeah, thanks for having me on.
Jackie: Can you start by explaining what exactly this project is?
Emily: Yeah, so this project is the culmination of a couple of other projects that the First Peoples' Cultural Council has done before. And also new work being done over the past couple of years. So basically, they set out to create a First Peoples map that showed all of the many languages of First Nations in BC and their kind of like cultural history and the art, the artists, and their art. And also, there are events pages, and it's incredibly interactive and really shows you a deeper sense of how expansive First Nations culture is in BC and how deep it goes.
Cathi (audio recording): The First Peoples' Cultural Council was created in response to the communities telling us that they wanted an online platform like this where they could share, honour, some of the great work that they've done in communities, the brilliant work that artists are doing, and the really significant cultural heritage, points of interest, that people want to share with each other and then with the broader community.
Jackie: I gather that the purpose is to embrace culture and also preserve it. Would I be right in saying that?
Emily: When I interviewed the folks at the FPCC, they were careful to note that it's not preserving culture; it's revitalizing culture. Because, as they noted to me, you know, they're only getting stronger and stronger.
Jackie: That's incredible. What kind of information does it get into? Can you give me some examples?
Emily: So one of my favourite things that I found was Lola Parks, an award-winning Indigenous songwriter listed on the map. And she made a music video of her song All this time. And it's set to a video of her skydiving, which is like an incredible thing to find on a map, in my opinion, and it brings an extra dimension to it because you cannot see the coastline of BC in this video.
Jackie: And it'll also help Indigenous artists reach a new audience or larger audiences.
Emily: Especially for those living outside of big cities, it's a good way for people to kind of get educated on who's out there. Another one of my favourite parts is for each of the regions. You can find out how many fluent speakers there are, how many people who are fluent and can either write or accurately speak the language and how many people are learning. That was one of my favourite things to find out just to see what the process of language revitalization looks like by the numbers. They had this available because they do regular reports on the FPCC.
Jackie: What was the journey for them like in making this happen?
Emily: As I mentioned before, they've had other maps in the past. So they had an arts map, and I believe they also had a language map. But it wasn't as interactive or expansive as this map is today. Basically, they heard from the communities that there was a real desire for something like this that could bring accessibility to all of these resources. And for example, Pkols Mt. Doug is there, and you can hear how Pkols is spoken in the traditional languages of the people who live on this territory. And it's really cool to have them reclaimed back, you know, some of the areas like when you look at a map of BC on Google Maps; you don't see this kind of history, you don't see these names. So I think it's really cool that they have this map.
Jackie: How many people are involved in this project?
Emily: There are about eight core members involved with the project. But there are also loads of people working in the communities doing on-the-ground research to build this map. Like when I spoke to Cathi about it, she had a hard time putting it into just one number because there are just so many people who have been involved, kind of as a passion project, or like doing the groundwork for this.
Jackie: What's the importance of a project like this?
Emily: When I spoke to the people involved in this project about why they thought it was so important, they really touched on language revitalization, which is like a huge effort and BC because 50% of the Indigenous languages spoken in Canada are spoken in BC. So it's really cool to have this resource where people can take the first steps towards learning the language of their territories and for non-Indigenous people to educate themselves about the languages and the culture and the many parts of this map that we can't even get into. There are just so many parts.
Cathi (audio recording): A lot of deep healing, self-actualization, strengthening our identities of Indigenous people, it's all connected to language, arts and heritage. I've heard stories and experiences too, but I'll make this about someone else. I've talked to artists who have started to engage in traditional art practice, such as weaving or making baskets, birch bark, bark, baskets, and people when interacting with these materials. And these ways of making beautiful artworks or ceremonial robes or baskets have experiences where they realize that they know things and carry knowledge that they didn't know they had. And so, engaging in those practices helps to wake those things up in us again.
Jackie: Is there anything else like it?
Emily: Not at this moment, not for BC and according to the people that I spoke to, it seems like it's the first of its kind.
Cathi (audio recording): The content is from community experts who are really invested in language arts and cultural survival. That they're actually woven together in one space, those are the real highlights of the map. But I don't think there's another map that's providing content in quite the same way. It's not coming from the government or outside entities. It's really from the communities and sharing what they want to share.
Jackie: What's the goal for the project going forward?
Emily: So they hope to grow it in their perspective; it's going to be a living document. So there's a button on the map itself that says, I think "add to the map," and people can submit events or you know, submit themselves as artists or submit art they see and other like parts of you know the map and grow it as time goes on. And one of the other people I spoke to, Suzanne Gessner, said they're actually going to build an oral history component to this project because they've been working on it for a couple of years now, collecting oral histories of First Peoples in territories around BC. And they're going to be kind of working that into the map over the next couple of months.
Jackie: Wow, that's incredible. So who's the project meant for who was meant to go to this website?
Emily: It's meant for everyone, essentially. So it's meant for Indigenous people and non-Indigenous people, for different reasons, of course, but I think everyone can gain a lot out of this resource for sure.
Cathi (audio recording): Non-Indigenous people can go on the map and explore the area where they live or somewhere they're going to visit or just around the province. They can learn and be introduced to a lot of information about Indigenous people. And that's really important for Indigenous people who might be living away from home or being disconnected for some reason from their community. They can see what's happening in their community, and they can look at the language and what the statuses and kinds of projects are going on.
Jackie: And how do you get to it?
Emily: maps.fpcc.ca. So it's an extension of the FPCC website.
Cathi (audio recording): I encourage people to go on and visit this map. And they'll be quite pleasantly surprised by how easy it is to navigate. You don't have to read. They can go to the map, and they can explore, and they can explore in a lot of different ways. They can do it visually on the map, and they can do it with two-word searches and filters. There's lots of art to look at, music to listen to, and links like artists will have their own contact information. They might be on the map, but they may have links to their own social media website. So it's a really good portal to even more information.
Jackie: Emily, thank you so much. This is really exciting.
Emily: Yeah, of course. Thanks for having me, Jackie:
Jackie: To read Emily Fagan's full story in the project, head over to capitaldaily.ca.