WARNING: This story contains blasphemies, details and images of swastika.
Marlene Roy had just concluded meetings in her office on Sunday at Fort St. John when she was sent photos of swastika and blasphemies painted in the building.
Seeing those images, he said, was “horrible.”
Roy is Executive Director of the Treaty 8 Association, which provides advice services to the first six nations in the Northeast of BC
“It is annoying that there is still that kind of mentality,” he said.
To make things worse, he said that while the staff was working to clean the graffiti, someone passed and shouted: “Heil Hitler.”
CBC News has contacted the RCMP on the incident.
The graffiti is being sentenced provincially, with the Minister of Indigenous Relations of British Columbia, Christine Boyle, calling the spray painting “racist vandalism.”
Boyle says it is important to rely on hate acts, adding that Treaty 8 is a “critical part of BC’s work to advance reconciliation.”
The mayor of Fort St. John, Lilia Hansen, described “unacceptable” vandalism in an open statement, saying that it is against the confirmed values in the community.
The Jewish human rights group Brith Canada says that it shows how the swastika is being used against a variety of racialized groups, and requires a national prohibition of the public exhibition of the Nazi party emblem.
That group says that when the swastika Nazis appear in streets, buildings and in our communities, they send a message that is directed to everything Canada represents.
“The recent use of the Nazi swastika to disfigure the building of the Treaty 8 Association in Fort St. John, BC, is another more marked reminder that the Nazi swastika represents the worst of society,” said the group in a put to X.
Roy said that, unfortunately, he is familiar with racist feelings in the form of anti-indigenous language in his community.
The solution, he said, is talking against her and educating others about different cultures and history.
He is encouraged by the support he has been receiving, saying that several people have called with words of solidarity and offer murals on the wall to try to avoid future incidents.
“People need to speak and be heard,” he said. “It’s just Bs, you know?”
