Janice George fixes her mind’s eye on two worlds. In one, she sees her ancestors, the grandparents whose faces she doesn’t know but whose words guide her. In the other, she greets her grandchildren’s grandchildren, the future generations who will turn to her words for guidance. The responsibility is hers, she says, “Because they mean something to me now.” She runs her hands over the red scarf around her neck.
“They’re going to know what I did today. They’re going to look back and say, ‘Chief George did that. That’s what Chief George said.’”
If these words are spoken once George herself is an ancestor whose face is remembered with less detail each decade, it will be because she worked for it. As the 53-year-old curator and textile artist speaks about museums, weaving, the Olympics, Chepxim, and even dietary restrictions, she locates herself in the job that integrates everything she does: her responsibility as a hereditary chief among the Squamish.
Chepximiya Siyam is the name and, with it, the chieftainship George inherited from Chepxim, a man who, seven generations before her, established a village on the south shore of English Bay at the mouth of False Creek.
