When Enderby's Gloria Morgan found out she'd earned a 2024 B.C. Reconciliation Award — an achievement she calls "the apex of something" in her life — two thoughts took hold of her.
"I sat here and looked at the mountains for a while, at the Enderby Cliffs, thinking 'it's almost like I climbed those cliffs by myself,'" she told The Morning Star shortly after the award winners were announced earlier this month.
"And then the second thought that went through my head is that my dad would be so proud — oh, now I'm going to have tears."
Morgan's father, William Edwards, was Kukpi7 (chief) of the Splatsin First Nation in the 1950s and '60s. Morgan followed in his footsteps, becoming Splatsin's Kukpi7 in 2001 and serving two terms.
2024 is the fourth year in which Reconciliation Awards have been bestowed. It's a rare honour; only four individuals from all of B.C. were given the award this year.
"I'm humbled," Morgan said. "There are so many great people in our province who've worked so hard towards reconciliation, and my heart is just overwhelmed."
Receiving the award was a somewhat surreal moment for Morgan, who as a girl "didn't dare dream big," for reasons Canada continues to reckon with. Morgan's mother was taken to residential school. One generation later, Morgan and her brothers and sisters were also captured by the residential school system during the '60s Scoop.
But efforts to erase her Indigenous culture in residential schools only strengthened Morgan's resolve to overcome those childhood experiences.
"Coming from that, it made me want to do more. I knew there was more, and my whole life I've tried to do more."
While it will take "generations" for herself and her siblings to heal from residential school trauma, Morgan, now 70, has not let her past prevent her from striving for reconciliation for her community.
Sometimes, moments of reconciliation rise up like the steam from a hot cup of tea.
Living in Enderby, which is right next to Splatsin First Nation, Morgan has noticed that while the communities are close in proximity, there is a distance between them, a gap in the cultural fabric that sees Splatsin people working almost exclusively on the band, and non-Indigenous people almost exclusively in Enderby. Morgan's sister broke that mould, working at the Red Basket grocery store (now Askew's) for many years, "and people just loved her."
One thing Morgan did to bridge this gap between the communities when she was Kukpi7 — well before reconciliation was even a word that was used — was to invite some of the ladies from Enderby over for a cup of tea.
"We invited them out, we had our herbal teas and bannock and had a wonderful afternoon with them, and they invited us back," she said. "And that was just the beginning of trying to bring our communities together."
Morgan agrees with former Indigenous senator Murray Sinclair that education is a key to reconciliation. Sinclair, who led Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, died at the age of 73 on Nov. 4, one day before this year's Reconciliation Award recipients were announced.
Morgan has taken on the role of an educator, working as an Elder Knowledge Keeper for School District 83 and teaching grade one students about Indigenous history. She made an immediate impression on the young students, some of whom asked her if she could come back every week.
Morgan is also one of five members of the Elders and Knowledge Keepers Council for the B.C. First Nations Justice Council (BCFNJC), which was formed earlier this year.
"(The council is) trying to create not an alternate system of justice, but parts of the system that will help in ways that haven't been done before, because we still have an over-representation of our people in prisons and in the courts, and children in child welfare," she said.
The BCFNJC is looking to enact justice system reforms that include increasing cultural safety training and Indigenous representation in positions of authority; implementing third-party oversight regarding Indigenous people and the justice system; and standardizing and increasing access to Gladue reports (which provide the context of an Indigenous offender's unique circumstances) in the system.
Morgan is well suited for the role, having served as an RCMP officer for 11 years before practicing law prior to her first term as Splatsin Kukpi7.
On a day-to-day level, Morgan says reconciliation is about getting the truth out. She was recently asked to speak to members of a local organization who were against doing a land acknowledgement. After hours of research, Morgan came up with a carefully honed set of facts to share with them. Among the things she told them about was the lack of treaties in B.C., and the Indigenous rights that have long been enshrined in the Canadian Constitution.
"People are not educated, they don't know the truth," she said. "I want to make changes. I want to transform. I want to, in a really good way, tell the truth, because as so many Indigenous leaders in the country have said, and non-Indigenous people have agreed, that you have to know the truth and understand the truth."
Morgan and this year's other BC Reconciliation Award recipients will be recognized in a ceremony at Government House in Victoria in 2025.
