Festival offers guests its best

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It started 17 years ago with a salmon feast for the friendship centre's neighbors, and has developed into a three-day event that attracts as many as 50,000 guests each year.

The First People's Festival, held at the Royal British Columbia Museum in Victoria on Aug. 10, 11 and 12, was a real crowd pleaser, with 350 dancers, singers and drummers performing and another 30 artists showcasing their work.

"The festival has been described as a celebration of friendship and understanding, because it's part of our mandate to educate the non-Aboriginal community about First Nations people, show them in a positive setting," said Leslie McGarry, culture and community relations director for the festival.

"In the Mungo Martin House, which is a traditional Kwakwaka'wakw-style house, we had the three island nations of Vancouver Island doing traditional performances there. The Coast Salish people, the Nuu-chah-nulth people, and the Kwakwaka'wakw people performed in that house," McGarry said. Visiting First Nations performers, this year including an R&B singer, as well as 85 members of the Nisga'a dancers, took to the main stage to the delight of tourists taking in the sites of Victoria.

"We had a really good response from the people this year... People were amazed at how open the First Nations people were about discussing their culture," she said.

Storytelling was held in the First People's gallery in the museum and a family program was held with activities for children, each of the activities designed to teach some aspect of First Nations culture.

"We had spirit stones and friendship bracelets and Bentwood boxes, coloring stations with the salmon, the bear and the wolf. We also had something that I've developed to try to showcase the interior and coastal peoples-potlatch pouches.

"It's like a medicine pouch, but we use the traditional colors of the coast-the red, black and the white-and we have a mother of pearl button on the front of the pouch and the kids, while they are making it, are encouraged to think of somebody special to give it away to. That's why we call it a potlatch pouch. And the teaching behind the project is how important it is in the First Nations community to give, as opposed to receiving, and the fact that it is the way we gain our ranking in society as to what we give, not by the car you drive or the house you live in or how much money you have in the bank. It's how much you give back to your people," said McGarry.

One of the criteria for the artists market was that participants could only showcase work that was indigenous to their territories.

"So, we are trying to maintain cultural authenticity and integrity. So you won't find anything made in Japan, and you won't find a [coastal] person making dreamcatchers, because it's not part of our culture. The same way as you won't find an Ojibway person carving totem poles or masks. So we try to showcase how British Columbia celebrates the largest diversity of Aboriginal culture across Canada.

If you missed the festival this year, mark it down in your calendars for the second weekend in August.

McGarry doesn't promise bigger and better, just the same quality approach that's made the festival a much-appreciated part of Victoria's summer events.

"The simplicity of the style of presentation that we have here seems to be really well appreciated by the community. We're not about flash and panache here. We want the site to be very welcoming... What we try to do is provide a quality event."

There is no charge to get on the site, though donations are accepted.

"I just feel that that is a little closer to the way that our people are. You know, you offer your guests your best. And that's what we've been trying to do."