[Editor’s note: This story was written based on interviews, previous news coverage, interviews by other media, footage from council meetings, and personal observations from more than a dozen trips to the townsite throughout the last two years.]
This is the future of Lytton.
Wearing a hard hat, a reflective vest and a broad smile, Romona Baxter runs her hand over the surface of a massive, planed log rising out of the plywood floor on which she stands.
The log’s base is carved with a pictograph design and, as she feels its rough edges, Baxter imagines young children making rubbings of the design using pencils and paper. The log and others rise into the building’s roof, providing the bones for the building taking shape around her.
“This reflects who we are as a people and our land,” says Baxter, the longtime executive director of Nzen’man’ Child and Family Development Centre and the driving force behind the $16-million project. The sounds of kids won’t be heard for a while yet and the building still needs walls, stairs and paint. But when it’s complete, the Nzen’man’ Birds Nest will have room for 60 kids and community spaces for Lytton residents of all ages.
Romona Baxter’s day job is leading a Lytton-area child-care society, but she has also initiated conversations about the future of local governance in the region.
Photo for The Tyee by Tyler Olsen.
Two miles north of the village of Lytton in a bustling neighbourhood untouched by the area’s devastating 2021 fire, Nzen’man’ stands as a testament to what is possible. From its towering logs to its panoramic view of the Stein Valley to its spaces for coffee-drinking parents, socializing preteens and fingerpainting toddlers, the building hints at a new era for a community that has existed for thousands of years.
For Baxter and many others, Nzen’man’ is a beacon: an example of reconciliation in action, an economic engine and a sign of Lytton’s renewal and diversity.
It’s a hopeful future, and a welcome one. But it’s also hard not to draw a contrast between Nzen’man’s rising walls and the debates about the future of Lytton’s core townsite just up the road.
Five years after the fire, the future of the village is the subject of intense local debate. A smattering of homes has slowly risen from a vast plain of gravel. Progress is happening, even if it is slow and tedious. But trauma lingers, and many Lyttonites are concerned that new federally funded buildings will become unaffordable white elephants. On top of it all, a recent auditor general’s report shone a light on the imperfect relationships between the local municipality and surrounding First Nations.
Lytton’s Main Street was once the centre of community life. Five years after they burned, the government and commercial structures that formed its core have not yet been rebuilt.
Photo for The Tyee by Magdalena Nodzykowska.
The recent past and the legacy of jurisdictional boundaries imposed long ago could be a recipe for heartache and toxicity. But in a close-knit community linked by trauma and personal history, locals of all backgrounds are suggesting that maybe it’s time to stop colouring within the lines established by Victoria.
If Lytton is hampered by its tiny size, and its recent past, maybe the solution is to redefine the village entirely. In the context of seven millennia, five difficult years isn’t so long.
We’re still here
When it comes to understanding Lytton, outsiders need to know two things from the outset: the broader community of Lytton did not become an uninhabited no-go zone on June 30, 2021; and “relocation” is not happening.
The village of Lytton sits at the confluence of the Thompson and Fraser rivers and is one of the longest continuously occupied settled areas in all of North America.
Five years ago, flames tore through homes and lives, killing two people and destroying 90 per cent of structures in the village of Lytton, and dozens more on an adjacent Lytton First Nation reserve and in rural areas to the north of town. The flames levelled the police station, the village office, the hospital, the grocery store, the legion and various other community outposts. The fire forced the evacuation of the village’s entire population for months.
But the community of Lytton — as locals think of it — is much larger, and much of it survived the 2021 blaze. A half-dozen First Nations north and south of the village remain home to more than 1,000 people, many times the former population of the village. The largest is the Lytton First Nation, which has more than 2,000 members, including about 750 who live on-reserve. The village itself isn’t a white outpost in a region of First Nations; the last census revealed that nearly 40 per cent of residents are Indigenous. At the area’s high school, Kumsheen ShchEma-meet School, all but two of the 77 children have Indigenous roots .
And while a significant number of those evacuated in 2021 have not returned, many others relocated to other housing in the…
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