Several hundred community members attended Gihekdagye-BRISC Friendship Centre’s National Indigenous Peoples Day celebration at Earl Haig Family Fun Park on Saturday, June 21, 2025.
The event was held in partnership with Brantford Native Housing, Woodland Cultural Centre, Métis Nation of Ontario, Niwasa Kendaaswin Teg, Child and Family Services of Grand Erie, Aboriginal Health Centre, Brantford Public Library and the City of Brantford.
During the eight-hour event, families of all ages came together to beat the heat and cool down in the park’s pool, lazy river or splash pad. In between jumping from one source of water to the next, many took the opportunity to grab a bite to eat, sit down for a picnic or play a round of mini golf.
Out in the parking lot, several service organization booths had the chance to interact with visitors, hand out program information and free swag, or and various craft activities. While exploring the area, attendees also had the opportunity to support vendors like Tanya’s Dream Catchers, have colourful tinsel woven into their hair, or run around on one of the inflatable interactive play systems.
The event also featured several speeches, as well as dances, both Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe, from First Nations dancers like Eddy Thomas and Daniel Secord of Springcreek Dancers.
Michael Doxtator, a member of the board of directors for Gihekdagye-Brisc Friendship Centre and a First Nations historian, said the day marks a significant moment in history.
“Brantford is the centre of Canadian culture. It’s where it all started back in the 1860s, and it needs to turn around and actually become the cultural mecca of the whole country again with creativity, arts, and theatre, all those practices, as well as building a local economy based on creative industries,” he said. “When we talk about Brantford as being the centre of Canadian culture, that begins with what the idea of what happened here, which actually, is one of the reasons why there is a Canada today; it’s because of the events like the adoption of Canada in the Longhouse in 1869, the formulation of Canada Day on June 21, 1880, which later became Governor General Roméo LeBlanc’s cue to make June 21 ‘National Aboriginal Day’ back in 1996.”
Doxtator said the event was an opportunity for the community to celebrate and recognize the Indigenous people and their ways of being, especially given the city’s proximity to Six Nations of the Grand River and the large urban Indigenous population within Brantford itself.
“Today is really a celebration where we get to welcome our cousins from the Canadian Rafter to come and celebrate Indigenous families,” he said. “We have people having fun and frolicking around the grounds and watching some cultural activities taking place in the park, and we have the the service organizations out in the parking lot, with all their displays and their tables that offer information about the services that they represent, and it’s just been a great turnout.”
Kimberly De Jong’s reporting is funded by the Canadian government through its Local Journalism Initiative.The funding allows her to report rural and agricultural stories from Blandford-Blenheim and Brant County. Reach her at kimberly.dejong@brantbeacon.ca.
