By Edward Hill  Communications Officer 

Aboriginal Relations Coordinator GregSam

At the Saanich Tribal School, Greg Sam drums and chants in that deep rhythmic cadence of Aboriginal song. Kids seated nearby play a round of the ‘bone game’, a contest of psychology and luck.

The Coast Salish game of antiquity is easy enough to learn, and underscores Sam’s broader goals: keeping Aboriginal people connected with their history, culture and traditional values.

Sam, an elder with the Tsartlip First Nation, is a speaker, storyteller and ceremonial master, a man-about-town bridging the gap between native society and the wider world. Now, the man with an infectious smile is Royal Road University’s inaugural Aboriginal Relations Coordinator.

Sam says coming to RRU was an easy choice. He already taught on campus several times, leading workshops with corporate and government groups on Aboriginal communal culture and law. Principles remain the same, but his new role reaches across the RRU community and into Greater Victoria First Nations, specifically the Esquimalt and Songhees bands.

RRU has established numerous working relationships with British Columbia First Nations, including: extensive First Nations economic development with Centre for Non-Timber Resources; an e-learning agreement with northern B.C.’s Yekooche First Nation; Nisga’a Lisims economic development with RRU professor Brent Mainprize; and a one-year secondment of RRU librarian Dana McFarland to assist the Hul’qumi’num Treaty Group in Ladysmith with its extensive document archiving project.

Sam’s role will help develop deep relationships with local First Nations, and to connect ongoing work at RRU with aboriginal interests and priorities. It is a two-way street. Sam will also help educate faculty and staff on concepts of reconciliation, and aboriginal perspectives and beliefs.

“I applied with the idea that all the things we are doing now will continue on,” Sam says. “But now we are looking at cross-cultural awareness with all departments to better work with the surrounding Coast Salish communities.”

A father of five, Sam, 60, was born and raised on the Tsartlip reserve near Brentwood Bay, and is son of the legendary Dr. Samuel Sam, a leader, traditional healer, drug and alcohol counsellor, and recipient of the Order of Canada among other honours.

As a young man, Greg Sam found clarity and purpose through sports, native traditions and values. He embraced the importance of respecting his community and elders, of education and philosophy handed down for a thousand generations, and of speaking Coast Salish languages. He rejected the bitterness and anger that came out of time at the Mission Indian Residential School in the early 1960s, and from a hostile mainstream society with little interest in native people.

“I started to enjoy life. I began listening to native values and native teaching,” Sam said. “Where I am at today is a result of listening to elders and my father. Listening to native values is where success begins. … It strengthens our role and purpose in life.”

Greg Sam teaching kids First Nations games and heritage at the Saanich NativeSchool

Like his father, Sam became a drug and alcohol counsellor. Through the 1970s and 80s he worked with 52 bands across Vancouver Island, tempering contemporary health care with traditional healing — singing, drumming, sweat lodges, elders’ teachings, ritual bathing, and meditation.

During that time he found his voice as a communicator and teacher, facilitating countless seminars and meetings between natives and non-natives. His reputation as a bridge between two worlds allowed Sam to become a key player in creating the first positive links between the Victoria Police Department and Greater Victoria First Nations.

Soon after meeting Staff Sgt. Kevin Worth in 1996, Sam had 23 Victoria police officers jumping in the ocean for 6:00 a.m. bathing rites, playing sports, and soaking up ancient longhouse customs at the Tsartlip reserve.

In the sweat lodge, First Nations elders and police officers spoke as bare equals, almost unheard of in both communities. “Frankly there was a lot of bad blood between police and First Nations,” said Worth, now retired from the Victoria police. “The sweat lodge is a very special experience. It was a real honour to be invited. We forged a good future there.”

That experience resonated through the Victoria police, Worth said, and led to the concept of a Unity Feast, an acknowledgement of past wrongs and the start of a new relationship. After a year of work, the massive 1,000-person celebration came together in August 1999, with elders, police and politicians, and Sam in the middle of it all.

“Meeting Greg Sam was the tipping point for the Victoria police department,” Worth said. “Before that we had no good relationships with folks in the First Nations community. Greg was the first by the force of his personality.”

Indeed, Sam’s skills at open dialogue and forging relationships made him a natural for the Royal Roads fold. Deborah Irvine, RRU’s vice-president, University Relations, says Sam's appointment is indicative of the university’s commitment to forging strong, positive connections with the greater community.

“Greg’s work reinforces our need as a university to continue to learn, to value diversity and respect traditional knowledge, even as we seek to develop and expand new ideas and innovation,” Irvine says. “The whole campus is excited about Greg being here, and the expertise he can share with us. It opens our doors to a wider and richer world.”