Squamish cultural centre staff say First Nations live with constant racism after hate-speech incident

Photo: Glacier Media

Staff at the Squamish Lil’wat Cultural Centre are focused on healing after a recent hate-speech incident.

A man walked into the Whistler museum Oct. 1 with the alleged intention of instigating an altercation, staff say. 

“They were there for the purpose of hurting our staff,” claims Heather Paul, executive director of the centre. “Without repeating what they said, it is a criminal offence, what they said. It was hate speech supporting the loss of life of Indigenous people.” 

The incident was reported to Whistler RCMP and is under investigation.

While it’s not the first racist incident at the facility, it was the most aggressive, said Mixalhítsa7 Alison Pascal, curator at the SLCC. “Sometimes it takes our staff a long time to heal from it,” she said. “So right now, as an organization, as a family, especially since we have a really youthful staff, everybody is just really taking this time to heal and re-centre themselves and prepare to welcome more people into our doors and continue that work in a really good way, a pure way that’s not tainted by this experience.”

Many people in the community reached out after learning about the incident to offer support, express shock, and, for some, renew memberships. 

However, SLCC staff and cultural leaders were not surprised at the alleged verbal attack. “There was no shock it occurred,” Paul said. “[There was] shock of it occurring in the moment, but [that’s the] divide between non-Indigenous people being flabbergasted this is occurring, and Indigenous people saying, ‘It has happened before and I wait for it to happen again. I go to work wondering if it will happen today.’ Somewhere in that divide is the work that needs to be done.” 

Pascal speculated that the recent incident might also have been compounded by the high number of women working at the SLCC. 

“We’ve always been heavily staffed by females, which is really interesting,” she said. “On [that day], we were heavily staffed by females. Male aggression towards females also plays a role.”