École Mer-et-montagne, a Francophone school in Campbell River, has a new mural on its building, showcasing the plants indigenous to the area and signifying the new knowledge students have about them.
Jessica Chickite, a locally-based Indigenous artist, painted the mural.
"We asked her to do something about plants just because it had been a long process," said Cynthia Richard, the school's cultural ambassador and educational assistant. "We had been focusing on it for a couple of years. As every other school district, we are asked to teach indigenous perspectives."
In addition to the mural, the school learned about invasive plants through the Greenways Land Trust, inspiring them to create their own gardens. Students and staff removed the invasive species before starting a veggie garden.
The next step was learning more about native species in the garden, which they tried planting in the veggie garden before deciding to start a dedicated garden for Indigenous plant species, focusing on their Indigenous perspectives.
"We're not Indigenous ourselves, and sometimes we try to have guests here to teach the students, but we are still in a phase where we are learning how to do this work. We felt that the environment is a safe step for us because it's universal," said Richard.
Along the way, Richard says, she noticed other schools were doing the same thing at the same time, and the school ended up in the same process as the schools in School District 72 (École Mer-et-montagne is part of School District 93 of the Conseil scolaire francophone de la Colombie-Britannique),
"We are just like a baby that is starting to walk," said Richard. "We are still learning to build relationships and be respectful and make the difference between cultural appropriation and cultural appreciation. It's a big road, but we are definitely going to walk it."
The garden with native plants is a place for students to learn about the various plants' cultural uses and benefits. Richard said she consulted with the local museum for more information on the plants, which they gave to her.
"They gave me permission to translate that into French," she said. "We are trying to show the kids that reconciliation is not just about doing a land acknowledgement before every assembly, but it's also by taking actions to actually recognize that we are on native land and show them that we can take concrete steps to make it more visible. The land, it's not ours. It's theirs, and we're just here taking care of it and changing it slowly so it regains how it should be, and those small concrete steps are all we can do to further reconciliation."
