Departmental field trip: A history of Vancouver and Stanley Park through Indigenous eyes

As part of the Department’s commitment to reconciliation and Indigenization, undergraduates, graduate students, faculty, and friends recently joined Talaysay Tours for a powerful and informative visit to Stanley Park.  Two guides, both members of local First Nations, described the Indigenous settlements that existed on the park site and the character of communities across the unceded territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) nations, on which Vancouver is built.  The conversation included details of pre-contact and contemporary landscapes, cultures, and ecologies, local foodways, land-based pedagogies, environmental degradation, and the traumatic effects of the residential school system on Indigenous people.