Gary Gottriedson to receive honorary degree during UNBC convocation

PRINCE GEORGE — UNBC will bestow an honorary Doctor of Laws degree to Indigenous leader, educator, rancher and poet Garry Gottfriedson during their convocation ceremony May 26.

Gottfriedson was born into a ranching family in the vast watersheds of the Thompson Rivers, near Kamloops. As a young boy, he spent the first five years of his formal education at the Kamloops Indian Residential School on Tk’emlúps te Sécwepemc before his parents secured his entrance into the public school system.

Gottfriedson is a fluent speaker of both Sécwepemctsin and Cree. His advocacy is deeply interwoven with his passion for language preservation, education and the arts.

For more than four decades, the Secwepemc knowledge holder and Indigenous leader has been at the forefront of Indigenous self-determination and identity reclamation.