Board compromises: School library named in honor of Big Bear

Page 9

The good news is that the Lloydminster public school board has decided to name part of its new school after Big Bear. The bad news is that the board could have gone a lot further.

With the newest elementary school in the city which staddles the border of Saskatchewan and Alberta scheduled to open next September, the local school board, operating under Saskatchewan's education legislation, needed a name for the new building. The board made it known they wanted submissions from the public and the response was impressive - 30 suggestions were forwarded for the seven-member board's consideration.

During the course of several meetings, those suggestions were narrowed down to five finalists. One of those finalists was Big Bear, a Cree leader during the time of the colonization of the region who is remembered for his wisdom and integrity.

Cree artist Norman Moyah was the person who put the name of Big Bear forward. Several other area residents got behind Moyah's idea, including Sage reporter Pamela Sexsmith Green.

Green provided a lot of background information for the board and attended a couple of meetings to lobby for the idea.

"I went through the phone book and looked at all the school names and the all the names of public buildings, arenas, parks, you name it," she said. "I noticed right away that everything everywhere around town was named after a white man."

Green said she had Dr. Donald Duncan, the director of education for the Lloydminster Public School Division, in her corner as she pushed for the acceptance of Moyah's nomination. Although she sees the board's ultimate decision to name the school after a retired local educator while naming the learning resource centre in the new school after Big Bear to be only a "semi-success," Green is grateful to Duncan for the leadership he provided during the decision-making process.

"Without Don Duncan's enlightened support and drive to push this thing through, it wouldn't have happened," she said.

The original push was to name the school after the Native leader, but two members of the board who probably would have voted that way weren't at the closed meeting where the decision was made. Colleen Young refused to attend because she doesn't believe in closed meetings. Dr. Raf Sayeed was out of town.

Green can't help but suspect that the majority of the remaining board members took advantage of the absense of those two to avoid making a decision that might have angered the majority of non-Aboriginal voters.

Norman Moyah calls the compromise a "mixed thing."

"It's a nice gesture, but at the same time, it's difficult to follow along when it wasn't a public meeting," he said. "It seemed like everybody was for it for awhile but along the way the idea fizzled."

Moyah said the watered-down gesture to Native people in the region is consistent with the history of Native/non-Native relations in the city.

"They call it 'White-minster, eh," he said. "But, this is a big deal. Big Bear's name is being put on a place of knowledge. That's a step forward. I'll settle for it. It works for me."

Duncan admits there is a history of antagonism between the races in the border city. He said a lot of local non-Native residents still remember the Frog Lake Massacre which mainstream historians have painted as an attack by Cree people on settlers. Duncan and local amateur historian Keith Davidson were able to convince the board that there's always two sides to a story, even in this case.

Nine people died when Native/non-Native stress erupted into violence in March of 1885. Big Bear eventually was sentenced on four criminal charges related to the Frog Lake incident and served time in Stoney Mountain Penitentiary. Davidson told Sage it remains the only recorded instance of Cree people attacking Europeans, something a neutral observer might see as remarkable considering the cultural damage and economic destruction the Crees suffered as the result of the newcomers' actions.

Davidson also hinted that researh he is doing will reveal that the history books are telling a rather biased version of the violent confrontation and that Big Bear's role in the violence was minimal at most. In the process of writing about his research for publication, he was reluctant to share details at this time.

Resentment of the events of 1885 still lingers in the non-Native community, Duncan said.

"There are still a lot of unresolved issues related to the troubles of 1885," he said. "But we have to remember that history is viewed by different people through different filters. Today, with our sense of justice as it is now, I don't think Big Bear would been charged let alone convicted."

Duncan, who's originally from Ottawa, noted that Lloydminster has a history of intolerance. Founded in 1903 by the Barr Colonists who followed the lead of an Anglican minister named Barr, the settlement's history shows that even non-British, non-Anglican European and Americans weren't welcome in the community. Their attitude towards the Indigenous people of the region was less than friendly. He also acknowledged that attitudes of intolerance remain to this day, something he believes paints the board's decision in a favorable light.

"It's hard to escape your social context in local government, but sometimes you have to rise above it and take the political initiative which is what our board did, to their credit," he said.

Moyah said the Cree people feel built up and then let down and feel the gesture is tainted by its appearance as a half-measure. But the school kids and the Cree community will find their own way around the problem.

"Oh, I hear they'll be calling the school Big Bear, anyway," he said.