Prince George Native Friendship Centre unveils first Indigenous Christmas Tree

Explaining that the group was inspired by the Festival of Trees, the Friendship Centre’s Cultural Advisor Bertha Cardinal said each ornament carries special significance, as it represents important aspects of Indigenous heritage like building canoes, crafting mocassins, and many more.

“In cultural traditional ways, this is what we did in the past. And we’re bringing that back up to rise,” Cardinal said.

“It’s so critically important that we don’t lose those ways. The elders that were involved in this particular project, they’re grandmothers, they’re great grandmothers, and so they’re passing on their way of knowing to generations to come,” added the Friendship Centre’s Executive Director Barb Ward-Burkitt.

While the tree is beautiful, it does come with the troubled history between Christianity, Residential Schools, and Indigenous communities. Indigenous Elder Pearl Lalonde this history should never be forgotten, but it’s also important to look to the future and find new ways to preserve Indigenous culture, rather than just focus on a dark past.

“I think that the less we talk about it, the less hurt we are. This was just inspired by our culture, We hope maybe our kids will do it, our grandkids, different groups, we just want to keep our traditions alive,” Lalonde said.

“We really want to focus on protecting and sharing our past. And how then does that fit in the current and moving forward into the future? We can’t forget and we don’t want to lose some of our past traditions and cultural ways. But then how do we figure out how we fit it into an urban context,” Ward-Burkitt added.

Christmas of course has Christian roots, but the holiday has grown to be much more than just that, as it’s also a holiday about family and friendship. For some Indigenous communities, that is what Christmas is all about and that is how they hope to keep Indigenous culture alive for future generations in a new, modern way.

“It’s about the coming together, it’s about having a meal together, it’s that gathering, it’s sharing our stories at our Christmas table. I’m sharing stories about our culture and my mother with my grandchildren. It’s like medicine, that’s what we call it. It’s that we come together in that way and it’s medicine,” Ward-Burkitt said.

This is the Centre’s first Indigenous Christmas tree, and it hopes it won’t be the last. Given that the tree was inspired by the Festival of Trees, the Centre even said decorating a tree for auction could potentially be in the works for next year.

by Tommy Osborne

Prince George Native Friendship Centre unveils first Indigenous Christmas Tree

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