Community mourns loss of Elder Edie Frederick

There has been an outpouring of messages of grief after a Lheidli T’enneh elder died in a collision on the weekend.

Edie Frederick was the passenger in a taxi that collided with a pickup truck on Massey Drive Sunday afternoon.

It happened soon after the death of her mother, Elder Josie Paul.

Lheidli T’enneh First Nation closed its offices Monday.

“We understand the importance of coming together as a community during times of loss,” reads a statement at www.lheidli.ca. “We encourage all those who knew this individual to offer their condolences and support to the grieving family during this difficult time.”

Lheidli T’enneh First Nation will hold a Community Grief Support Night on Wednesday, Sept. 18 from 5-8 p.m. at the House of Ancestors. Council meetings scheduled for Thursday, Sept. 19 and Friday, Sept. 20 were cancelled.

Friends took to social media as the news spread.

“Our community has lost two elders within less than a week,” wrote musician Kym Gouchie on Facebook. “A mother and daughter who were our dear friends. They were language keepers and knowledge holders. They were matriarchs in our nation and the backbones of their families.”

Frederick’s passion was for preserving and sharing her people’s language.

“I had the pleasure of working with Edie for several years during my tenure at Lheidli T’enneh First Nation,” posted Jason Morgan of Carrier Sekai Family Services.

“Her passion for language revitalization was remarkable. I greatly admired Edie’s dedication to her community’s language and her expertise as a fluent speaker. Her impact on education will be profoundly missed.”

Frederick and her husband Robert were the University of Northern British Columbia’s first elders in residence.

“I get to teach about Lheidli and the history and the language and the land. I get to teach everything about Lheidli; and that’s not written in books,” she told The Citizen in 2015. “There’s nothing on Lheidli that’s in textbooks so I get to teach this groundbreaking lesson and it’s a great honour for me to do that.”