The executive director of Cochrane’s Ininew Friendship Centre is very philosophical about vandalism done to a sacred place.
Last Friday, Susan Nelson and a group of other people discovered the damage at Ininew’s ceremonial site at Greenwater Park.
At first, she thought ribbons that had been tied to trees along with tobacco had been blown down by the wind. Then she noticed some in the firepit.
“Once I’m looking at this pile in the firepit, I look and notice all the screen windows are off of the hut; the roof, the one side is gone,” she relates.
“That hurt and anger, we don’t want to carry that,” Nelson adds. “Let’s use this as a teaching tool. This happened, yes, and it was not good, but let’s turn it around and make something positive out of it.” She says an offer of tin to help fix the roof and positive feedback to her Facebook post brought her to that point.
Game cams have been put up at the site, to act as a deterrent or record anyone else willfully damaging the sacred area.