Food and music will fill Hollinger Park on Wednesday.
June 21 marks the 27th celebration of National Indigenous Peoples Day in Canada, and Hollinger Park in Timmins will be full of music, food and celebrations of Indigenous culture.
“Everyone is welcome to come and celebrate with us,” said Caitlyn Kaltwasser, a member of the Timmins Indigenous Organizations Committee. “We are a family event, and everybody can just come and have fun and celebrate Indigenous people.”
The day starts at 5:45 a.m. with a sunrise ceremony, which would traditionally include the lighting of a sacred fire, but due to the fire ban, the ceremony has been adapted.
“It will be doing something symbolic of that with no fire,” said Kaltwasser.
Vendors, artisans and community partners will be set up at 11 a.m. and things kick off with an opening prayer and remarks at noon.
“There will be some teachings happening in the teepee and there will be artisans and vendors there,” she said.
Kaltwasser said the menu of traditional foods is expanding this year.
“Last year we had some geese, this year there are a few more items on the menu,” she said. “There’s also a barbecue that will happen all day.”
Due to the fire ban, the plans for one menu item had to be shifted.
“There still will be bannock, just not on a stick,” she said.
Live music will also be featured throughout the day, including fiddlers and drummers, both local and from up the James Bay coast, with recent Summer Solstice Indigenous Music Awards country album of the year winner Jim Jacobs, hitting the stage around 5 p.m.
National Indigenous Peoples Day was first recognized in 1996, and in 2009 Indigenous Heritage Month was first recognized in Canada.
The City of Timmins is recognizing Indigenous Heritage Month by lighting up the headframe with a turtle image, based on the mural work of Shaun Hedican, who was the principal artist for the mural in the Timmins Museum.
Hedican, who was from the Eabametoong First Nation, died in early April at the age of 44, after battling cancer.
The headframe will be lit for the rest of the month.
The celebrations in Hollinger Park are a chance to learn more about Indigenous culture.
“I find that people want to learn, people want to see what Indigenous culture is all about,” she said. “Just being together, laughing together, that’s what our culture is all about.”
There will be prizes for those who attended as well and more information is available on the Timmins Indigenous Organizations Committee Facebook page.
