By Mark Kiemele

The last time the Sentinel met Celestine Aleck – Sahiltiniye – we had no idea that we were talking to an artist and a budding author.

She was brushing red paint onto a building on Newcastle Island – Saysutshun – the provincial marine park in Nanaimo harbour. It was in the spring of 2008, a few years after Snuneymuxw First Nation had signed a management agreement for the island with the BC government and the City of Nanaimo.

Celestine had been the first person hired by her nation to give interpretative tours and answer questions from the thousands of visitors to Saysutshun. Little did we know of the knowledge that she carried or the stories that she would tell.

She was only a young woman painting a building red.

Today, Celestine is telling her stories to readers across North America. The author of eight books from Strong Nations Publishing, she is also the cultural support worker for Snuneymuxw, bringing elders and youth together. Her own story is not in a book yet, but it is well worth telling.

“I always wanted to write books,” she says. “I’ve been an artist and carver for 30 years. Poles and carvings were our history books years ago. I learned from elders that you cannot write on paper because you could lose it. You have to write on your heart.”

Celestine grew up with her Snuneymuxw parents in Victoria and moved home to Snuneymuxw as a teenager. After high school graduation in 1994, she went back to school in order to become a Hul’qumi’num language instructor, taking part in a program at Thuq Min at Shell Beach on Stz’uminus First Nation.

She grows quieter as she talks about those powerful days of learning her language, of living in two worlds.

“I had been fortunate to be around elders, hearing stories, learning traditional names. Stories are lessons and I had to take time to mend myself,” she says of the time after the language course ended.

With her newfound knowledge, she thought about the stories and the lessons told to her by many elders, among them her grandfather Ronald Aleck and great-grandmother Hazel Good.

Then, just at the right time, came the influence of a strong woman, Nancy Seward, who works in the Snuneymuxw education department.

“Ten years ago, I was encouraged by Nancy to take the Newcastle Island job. She has been one of the great supports in my life.”

The past few years saw Celestine concentrating on the hard work of being a single mother while taking care of her parents. Then along came anotherpowerful woman in Terri Mack of Strong Nations Publishing in Nanaimo.

“I met Terri and she told me that wanted Coast Salish stories. I wrote the drafts of four fiction and four non-manuscripts in eight days.”

As she stands by a display of those books in the Strong Nations store, she is both humble and quietly proud of her achievement, especially by the fact that they are being read and heard by children in schools.

“These stories give kids a chance to know who they are and where they come from,” she says of the experience of her readings and telling stories to classrooms. “I hope to encourage youth that anything is possible…

“Living in two worlds is a balance,” Celestine says. “We have to follow rules that have been here since the beginning of time.”