During the early months of the pandemic this year, Heritage Saskatchewan embarked on a project to visually and verbally document how people were adapting to the first phase of COVID-19.
Throughout the spring and summer, the organization co-ordinated a project called COVID-19 Culture: A Living Heritage Project of the Pandemic in Saskatchewan. With the help of six community co-ordinators, 41 interviewees were selected and asked about how their lives had changed and how their culture, heritage and traditional knowledge helped them cope.
“The project utilized existing relationships developed over the past several years of community engagement work for Heritage Saskatchewan to identify storytellers, historians, folklorists and filmmakers to collect ethnographic interviews from Saskatchewan people,” Kristin Catherwood, director of living heritage, said in a news release.
The project resulted in the publication — created in partnership with the Saskatchewan History and Folklore Society — of a special edition of Folklore magazine. Raw interview data and transcriptions were also donated to the Provincial Archives of Saskatchewan (PAS), where they will remain for future generations. They will be available on the PAS YouTube channel in early 2021.
“When I look on this project, what I’m really struck by is how connected we really are,” Catherwood said in a YouTube video. “No matter what our background is, we all experienced the same abrupt change to our lives.”
Hutterite heritage
Mary-Ann Kirkby, journalist and author of I Am Hutterite, was one person interviewed for the project.
During quarantine at her Prince Albert home, Kirkby’s Hutterite background kicked in and, during the evenings, the family engaged in long conversations mixed with games of Scrabble and Rummy to pass the time.
In June, Kirkby was heartbroken to learn of major COVID-19 outbreaks on Hutterite colonies across the Prairies after nearly 1,500 Hutterites attended a funeral for three boys in Alberta.
“It was a tremendous tragedy that absolutely was like a fire through the hearts of Hutterite communities,” she said.
Kirkby spoke on CBC’s The National and wrote on her blog as negative comments about the Hutterites appeared online. She directed her criticism toward the religiously-orthodox Hutterite men who ignored safety protocols. While some leadership had failed, she noted that any form of discrimination was unacceptable.
“Somehow, in these minority groups, one person defines them all. And that’s where we really have to watch ourselves, not to do that,” Kirkby added. “We can fight back, we can say, ‘You’re breaking the law and I’m really, really upset at you,’ without being racist about it. And that’s the important lesson in this.”
A Nigerian perspective
Jane Ibisiki Tamunobere is from Nigeria and came to Saskatchewan for university. Now in her 30s, she works at a long-term care home in Swift Current.
She recalled her childhood of 20 years ago when her mother, sisters and six other families went into lockdown when the northern states of Nigeria began instituting Shariah law.
“We had to get carried away to stay in a different place and were locked in for a while, and so I experienced a little of a lockdown, but not in a pandemic situation,” Tamunobere.
During the pandemic’s early days, Tamunobere started a YouTube channel and posted videos about cooking, cleaning, and life as an immigrant in Canada. Through this, she reconnected with old friends, while her family saw her through fresh eyes.
“He (her dad) saw my face for the first time through YouTube, and he was not sure it was me,” Tamunobere said. “My dad calls me on the phone and goes, ‘You look different young lady! That’s you?’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, that’s me, daddy.’ So for more, it’s like a journal for them to just watch and see who their daughter is now. You know, I haven’t been home since I left.”
