Telling Our Stories:

    "Lexlexey'em"

Billboards have long been an easy source of income for Indian Bands. Although it has not been welcomed by the public. This has been, I believe, because it has been against the law to place an kind of commercial signage along the highways. This is a provincial law. Because Indian reserves are federal lands and therefore this particular provincial law did not apply, we could put up billboard signs. As I said, this exemption did not go over well with the general public, especially land owners adjacent to the highway who probably would like to bring in extra income from such signs.

The first sign ever put on reserve was a motel billboard, I can’t recall the name of the motel now. However, the deal was made directly between the council and the motel and did not include DIA. George Abbey was the chief at the time. This did not go over well with DIA. They called this arrangement a “buckshee lease” and therefore was not legal and not enforceable. That was one of the first times the Band attempted to go on its own with a business venture. DIA was not going to allow this, they were very much in control. So, the sign did not stay up very long. DIA convinced the motel that they could find themselves in a heap of trouble if they didn’t take the sign down.

It wasn’t till after we set up our own administration in 1972 that we would consider billboards again. I did not know as the band manager, at that time that DIA had been involved in having the first billboard removed. All I knew was that DIA certainly was not giving us enough funding to effectively run our band. I was constantly thinking of ways to bring more money to the band. I don’t remember if I had made the call or if I was approached by the Sandman Inn to put up a billboard on our reserve. Yes, the famous Sandman sign.

As I mentioned, many people from town did not much like the idea that “the natives” could get away with doing some things that they could not. Billboards on reserve was only one of them and the manager or editor of the Williams Lake Tribune had taken special exception to our billboard. He made it his mission to fight the band on this issue through his newspaper. On a weekly basis he would write his editorials extolling the evils of the “Sandman sign” at Sugar Cane and how Indians shouldn’t be allowed to do this if it couldn’t be done by anyone else along the highway. He even kept suggesting that someone should take that sign down if we didn’t. Then someone, or I believe that it could have been himself, took a chainsaw in the middle of the night and sawed the sign down. However, Sandman Inns would not be intimidated as easily as the first motel. The sign was repaired.

Almost immediately, the newspaper editor began his haranguing again. He would make such suggestions as “someone needs to take a few sticks of dynamite to that sign.” He kept that up until, you guessed it, some one tied some dynamite around the sign posts in the middle of the night and blew up the sign. Of course he immediately makes that the front page of his newspaper, coming across as if he had nothing to do with it. Again, I have to give credit to Sandman Inns, they didn’t give in. This time Sandman made the posts out of small culvert pipe and filled them with concrete. Mr. Editor of the Williams Lake Tribune finally gave up his crusade and do you want to know why? Because we are still here, as we have been for thousands of years, and he is gone to where ever in hell vindictive editors go.

Return to Sugar Cane Stories