A psychotherapist who spent many years living and working in the Cariboo Chilcotin has written a book exploring her own journey with racism.
In Crossing the River - An unsettling memoir, Sandra Hayes-Gardiner wrote there was something in her, a mixture of curiosity, admiration, and respect for First Nations people, combined with judgment and superiority.
Sandra was born in The Pas, Manitoba in 1947.
The Opaskwayak Cree Nation was nearby, but on the north side of the Saskatchewan River.
A bridge connected to the two communities.
Holding up a copy of her book with a photograph of the bridge on the cover, she said that was why she named the book, Crossing the River.
"The communities were divided by more than a river," she said. "They were divided by racism, language, prejudice, power and everything."
After graduating from university, Sandra returned to work in The Pas in 1971 for the Department of Indian Affairs and was involved with removing children to go to residential school.
"It appalled me in lots of ways that it did not occur to me that there was anything wrong with that," she said. "I really believed, along with the department where I worked, that that was a good thing. That we were doing a favour for the First Nations people because we were offering them education."
Looking back she said she never asked why First Nations children did not attend school with her growing up.
"It never occurred to me to think that tearing away these kids from their homes would have lasting generational affects.
In writing the book, she wanted to sort out why she wanted to work in Indigenous communities and to acknowledge her own racism in the process and what she had learned.
Originally she never planned to publish a book.
As a psychotherapist by profession, she was writing to leave a copy for her three children.
An editor thought otherwise and told her 'having a white settler acknowledge their own racism was a good thing for other people to read too.'
She started writing it 10 years ago and thinking about all that had happened to her growing up as well as her career, of which she spent 20 years in Williams Lake, beginning in 1979.
"I met Mary Thomas Philbrick from Sugar Cane in Williams Lake and she became my first Indigenous friend," she recalled. "I recently met her granddaughters Jenny and Shawna and we had a good cry."
One of the things she realized while writing the book was that she had carried guilt for a long time.
"I wouldn't say it's gone, but it has moderated or shifted."
Today Sandra and her husband Lyall Gardiner divide their time between Calgary and Canim Lake where they have a cottage.
On Wednesday, Aug. 7, 2024, Williams Lake First Nation will be hosting an evening with Sandra at 7 p.m. in the WLFN administration building at 2561 Quigli Drive.
She will present her book and invites everyone to participate in a discussion about reconciliation.
