Áma scgap is an Ucwalmicwts word for good evening. I am from the Lilwat nation band in the Lower Mainland and am proud to represent my community and school as this year’s Indigenous valedictorian.
Today is more than a graduation. It is a celebration of our ancestors, our families’ sacrifices, and our own determination. It is a moment that our communities fought for through generations of resistance, through language loss and language revival, through systems that were never built for us but which we are now changing, one step at a time.
By gathering together here today and celebrating our success, we are honouring our culture, language and our nations.
To our families, whether they are those who raised us, stood beside us, or came into our lives later, thank you for holding us up when we were tired, for reminding us of who we are when we were unsure, and for loving us through it all. Your love is strongly woven into our every achievement like inner cedar bark.
To my fellow graduates, we are not the end of a story, we are the beginning of a new chapter. We are artists, engineers, educators, healers, and leaders. But no matter where we go from here, we carry our teachings. We walk forward with humility, with pride, and with a deep understanding that our success is never just individual, it is collective.
I carry with me the teachings of my Elders, the laughter of my cousins, the strength of my Kwékwa7s, and the dreams of every ancestor who never got to walk across a stage like this. To them, I say: kúkwstumckacw (kook-shtoom-kach), thank you.
And let us never forget where we come from because in knowing who we are, we will always know where we are going.
