Kym Gouchie was honoured with the 2022 Jeanne Clarke Service Award for her ongoing work to preserve Lheidli T’enneh history, culture, Dakelh language, and music through her music and art.

A prominent Prince George musician and a Victoria author born in Prince George are the latest recipients of the Jeanne Clarke Local History Awards.

Kym Gouchie was honoured with the 2022 Jeanne Clarke Service Award for her ongoing work to preserve Lheidli T’enneh history, culture, Dakelh language, and music through her music and art. Her grandmother, Mary Gouchie, won the award in 2020.

“I feel that I am truly living in her footsteps and honouring her legacy,” Gouchie said in a release from the Prince George Public Library, the host of the annual awards. “I am standing here because I am a cycle breaker and I want something different for my life, for my children, for my grandchildren, for my great-grandchildren. And so, I believe that’s what inspires me to do the work that I am doing and to share these messages through music.”

The 2022 Publication Award went to Wendy Proverbs for her novel Aggie and Mudgy: The Journey of Two Kaska Dena Children. Proverbs’ novel focuses not on the sisters’ experience in residential school, but on the harrowing 1,600-kilometre expedition that took the sisters from their home in Daylu (Lower Post) to Lejac Residential School on the shores of Fraser Lake. The girls, aged eight and six, travel by riverboat, truck, paddle wheeler, steamship and train. Aggie and Mudgy offers a glimpse into the act of being physically uprooted and transported far away from loved ones.