Being a Good Guest

---

"As we prepare for our longhouse event, I have been thinking a great deal about visitors, about what it means to welcome someone into a sacred space, and about the responsibility that comes with receiving that welcome.

Over the years, I have had many people come and spend time as guests on and in my territory. Each time, I have been intentional about sharing something important with them: being welcomed once does not mean the door is always open. Access to our lands, our territory, and our sacred spaces is a gift that is given, not a right that is assumed or carried forward. Just because someone has been granted access one time does not grant them a permanent easement.

I want to share a few stories that have been sitting with me lately, because I think they speak to something much bigger than any single moment.

A few years back, when my friendship with Sean Burke was just beginning, I invited him down to a traditional jam session at our community school. The drums, singing and dancing has always been something special in our community, and I wanted to share that space with him. Afterward, I took him on a tour of our community. I remember saying to him, "You are going to get to see the true beauty of my community, but please do not come down here without being invited." I wanted him to experience the richness of where I come from, and I also needed him to understand that the experience was mine to offer and his to receive with care.

Over the past few summers, I have had the joy of inviting my chosen sisters to a river that holds a very special place in my heart and in my family's story. This river belongs to my mom's home community in a way that goes deeper than ownership. It is woven into who we are. I invited Danielle Guerard and her family down to the river, and I invited Kim Trottier as well, and with each of them I shared the same thing: "This is a beautiful river. This place is special to my family. Please respect this place, and please do not come down here without me present." It was not a warning. It was an invitation into understanding. I wanted them to know what they were stepping into, so they could receive it with the respect it deserves.

In recent weeks, as the weather has warmed and the days have stretched longer, I have started to see the recreational vehicles come out again. Not long ago, while I was on my way to pick up my nephew and his girlfriend, we came up behind a group of motorcycles making their way through one of our main roads. They drove right past our no trespassing signs without a second glance. Watching that happen was disheartening. I understand why people are drawn to come through. My community is beautiful. The drive through our territory is picturesque, and the land has a kind of presence that pulls people in. But beautiful does not mean open to all. It is meant for our community, and when people bypass those signs, they are not just crossing a line on a map. They are crossing something far more significant.

My mom shared a story with me that has stayed in my heart for a long time. She had the opportunity to travel to New Mexico with my sisters and my nieces, where they were granted access to an Indigenous community. As part of that welcome, they were asked not to take photographs. It is a simple and deeply reasonable request. But some people in the group did not honour it. They took pictures anyway. The locals noticed, and they were not pleased. Those visitors were asked to stop immediately. What strikes me about that story is not the conflict itself, but the contrast within it. On one side, a community extending a sacred invitation. On the other, visitors who received that invitation and then quietly decided that its conditions did not fully apply to them. That kind of disrespect is easy to brush aside and hard to undo.

As I think about the space we are preparing to enter together for our longhouse event, I want to be clear about what we are stepping into. This is our sacred home. You are being granted special access to a place that very few people outside of our culture have the privilege of entering. This is a place where our community comes to gather, to heal, to share meals, to sing, to dance, to pass on knowledge, and to carry our culture forward from one generation to the next. This place was nearly taken from us. That history lives in these walls, in this ground, in the people who gather here. It is exactly why we hold it so closely. Please enter with care. Please enter with good intentions.

I hope no one mistakes my protectiveness, or the protectiveness of my community, for hostility. It is not hostility. It is love. Our peoples have always been this way about our lands, our privacy, and our culture, and we have had every reason to be. Colonization has taken so much from us. So much land. So much language. So much life. What remains is precious, and it is ours to tend and protect. That is why we hold it carefully and ask that those we welcome do the same.

So I am asking you to come with an open mind and an open heart. Come with ears ready to listen and a spirit ready to receive. Come prepared to honour what is being offered without reaching for more than you are given. Please respect my community. Please respect my lands. Please respect my home.

Please do not enter our community without permission. Please do not take photographs of our homes. Please treat our traditional home with the utmost respect."

Huy ch q'u | Thank you 

Wholwolet'za | George Harris Jr.

---

As we prepare to gather, we also want to offer a few gentle guidelines to help protect the space and the people within it.

Photography is welcome throughout most of the event. However, there will be no audio or video recording during Len’s session. At times, emotions may surface, and we ask that you please refrain from taking photos of individuals in moments of vulnerability.

There will be cultural workers present to support those who may need care. We ask that no photos be taken of them as they hold this role.

We also ask that you remain within the longhouse space and do not wander into the broader community. Photography outside of the longhouse is not permitted.

Everything else is open for you to capture and remember. We invite you to do so with care, respect, and awareness of the space you are in.

Thank you for walking alongside us in a good way.

In learning,Kim