Arts Ambassador

SPONSORED BY COMOX VALLEY AIRPORT YQQ

Mary Everson has been an advocate for Kwakwaka’wakw and K’omoks culture in the Comox Valley for more than 60 years.
The daughter of the late Chief Andy Frank and Margaret Frank, Mary has helped promote indigenous culture in the K’omoks First Nation and the greater community. Through story-telling in School District 71, she teaches the K’omoks history to students.
“My father used to do it for the school district and also for the Girl Guides, and the Scouts. I guess I picked up a few things. I remember bringing my father to school as my show and tell,” said Everson, a mother of eight, grandmother of 13 and great-grandmother of three. “I want a seed for them (students) to be able to grow something that finds out who they are, as an individual, because we’re all different. We’re not the same. Even kids in the same family are not the same.”
Mary and her husband, Wayne Everson, have been married for 53 years. Their eldest child, Rob, is the hereditary Chief of the Gigulgum Walas Kwagiuth. Their family started the Kumugwe Dancers to raise interest and involvement in the culture.
“I was raised in the culture from the time I was born,” Mary said. “It was paramount for me to be able to pass it on to my kids, and now my grandchildren. I’m still doing this, and I’m in my 70s. No retirement for this lady.”
Besides schools, she speaks with the Probus and Rotary clubs, and with Elderhostel International.   Everson has also served on advisory boards and committees, including the Aboriginal Education Council and Head Start. For the past 10 years, she has been president of the Kumugwe Cultural Society. She has also helped to preserve the K’omoks Big House, which her father built in 1959.
Mary is one of the Elders in the community who speaks Kwakwalla.
“I’m not as fluent as I used to be as a child, but I remember a lot of stuff,” she said.
Things need to be passed on down, which is really important. That’s how your identify is always alive.”