The $30,000 grants support environmental teaching and a series of restoration projects.
A non-profit group is using a pair of community grants from the Victoria Foundation to restore ecosystems in W̱SÁNEĆ territory and support its work with youth.
The PEPAKEṈ HÁUTW̱ (“Blossoming Place” in SENĆOŦEN) Foundation is named after the native-plant nursery and garden at the Lauwelnew Tribal School on West Saanich Road.
“Our work is based on doing native-plant and ecosystem restoration, hands-on education,” said ecosystems director Judith Lyn Arney. “We really are just intent on fostering the next generation of land stewards.”
She said the $30,000 grants, one of which came through the W̱SÁNEĆ School Board, support two streams of activity: environmental teaching at the kindergarten-Grade 12 tribal school, and a series of restoration projects at sites such as Tod Inlet (SṈIDȻEȽ) and Pender Island (S,DÁYES).
There is also a joint restoration effort with the Horticulture Centre of the Pacific, called the W̱SÁNEĆ Ethnobotany Trail.
“We kind of joke that when the kids are old enough to hold a shovel, we get them out to the restoration projects,” Arney said.
For Indigenous participants in the foundation’s activities, they can be drawn closer to the land and their culture, she said.
When people connect with the land, they can build “healing relationships,” not only with their surroundings but also with themselves and others, Arney said.
“We see ecosystem restoration as a very tangible act of reconciliation or decolonization, because we’re literally removing invasive species and allowing the native ecosystems to thrive.”
She said it is important to note that invasive plants are not thought of as bad, but rather “out of place, out of balance.”
“It’s not their time and it’s not their place, so we remove them.”
People from the larger community, such as college classes or teams of co-workers, can learn about restoration work through the foundation’s Learning on the Land program.
Arney said non-Indigenous people who get involved with the foundation have a chance to deepen their understanding of the Indigenous community.
”We talk a lot about relationships and reciprocity,” Arney said. She doesn’t have Indigenous ancestry herself but was raised in the W̱SÁNEĆ area.
She co-founded the PEPAKEṈ HÁUTW̱ Foundation in 2016, and has international experience with traditional-food ecosystems in Japan, Italy and Mexico.
Foundation staff are “very diverse,” she said, with some from W̱SÁNEĆ backgrounds and others from a range of other Indigenous groups.
“Our ultimate accountability is to the land and to future generations,” said Arney.
For more details about programs or to donate go topepakenhautw.com.
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