Federal funds announced to help Skeetchestn Indian Band build a museum

SKEETCHESTN — On Friday (Apr. 1), Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations Marc Miller announced an $825,000 investment for a new museum located on the Skeetchestn Indian Band, near the new health centre.

The money comes from the new Cultural Spaces in Indigenous Communities Program and will go towards building a brand new facility on the site, as well as a traditional pit house. Community members, chief and council, and students from the Skeetchestn Community School were all on hand to celebrate the announcement.

“This is great for kids, as they are claiming and lifting up their own culture and being very proud of it,” Minister Miller explained. “It’s great to see that in action. It’s great to see kids drumming and singing in their language, because, as I mentioned — in the not-too-distant past, this was something that was ripped away from them.”

Skeetchestn Indian Band Kukpi7 Darrel Draney acknowledged a Vaughn Warren carving outside of the Skeetchestn Health Centre as part of the inspiration behind the museum. The sculpture is a remembrance of missing and murdered indigenous women and girls — the Cultural Spaces in Indigenous Communities Program will help provide funding for safe spaces for vulnerable folks to reclaim their heritage and culture.

“What I really want is to make sure our youth — this isn’t ours. We don’t own this, our youth own this,” Kukpi7 Draney explained. “We just have to give it back. That belongs to them. That story belongs to the youth, and we need to hand that over to them. That’s what I want out of this.”

The band plans to build the new museum near the health centre, just off Highway 1. Kukpi7 Draney says work on the museum will begin after his community finishes some important infrastructure work planned for the spring.