School district is renamed

The North Okanagan-Shuswap School District is changing its name.

The school district announced Wednesday it will adopt a new Secwépemc name as part of ongoing reconciliation efforts.

The new name for the district is Kwsaltktnéws ne Secwepemcúl’ecw, which translates to “We are all connected (people, animals, sky, land and water) on Secwépemc land.”

The phonetic pronunciation of the new name is KWA-SEELT-K-NAWS NAY SUH-KWEP-MUK-OO-LOO.

An event was hosted by the school district on Oct. 16 to formally announce the name change.

“When we think about place names, North Okanagan and Shuswap are both words that were made up by settlers to describe this place, a place that had a name for time immemorial before settlers came here,” said Chelsea Prince, director of Indigenous instruction.

“And part of reconciliation is making that right.”

Donna Kriger, the district superintendent, said the plan is to deliberately roll out the new name slowly in order to let residents get used to it.

“At first when I saw the whole long name I was like, 'Wow, we're gonna have to practice pronouncing it,'” said Amanda Krebs, chairperson of the school district.

“But the more I think of it, that first word is so nice because it connects all of us to the land, I think it's [a] very forgiving language, which is a blessing.”

Along with the new name, the school board has debuted a new logo that was also developed in partnership with local First Nations.

“The logo was actually part of what prompted the discussion around the name change of the district,” Kriger explained. “And so the logo itself is representative of reconciliation.”

Darrell Jones, chair of the Quelmúcw Education Council, said the name was chosen in consultation with the four bands who have traditional territory within the district and the local Métis Association.

Part of the struggle in picking a name for the district came from differences in dialect between the bands.

Adams Lake Indian Band, Neskonlith Indian Band, and Skwlax te Secwepemcu’lecw all use the Secwépemctsín Eastern dialect, while Splatsin uses the Splatsin Secwépemctsín dialect.

In the end, they settled on a phrase chosen by Splatsin language speaker Donna Antoine.

The first half of the phrase uses Splatsin Secwépemctsín dialect, while the second half uses Secwépemctsín Eastern dialect.

When asked if there were any plans to rename any of the regional schools, Jones said the district plans to take this “one step at a time.”