The Power of Play, founded by Squamish’s Reza Marvasti, an organization which builds sustainable playgrounds for kids in hard-hit areas around the world, has recently launched a division focused on creating playgrounds for children in Indigenous communities closer to home, such as for the Lytton First Nation and the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in the U.S.
Home for hundreds of the members of the Lytton First Nation is on its 56 reserves outside the Village of Lytton boundaries. The community’s population is currently scattered while they wait for the OK to return.
Dr. Rosalin Miles, a Lytton First Nation community member and UBC Indigenous scholar and research associate with Indigenous Studies in Kinesiology (ISK) at the School of Kinesiology, has a family home and a rental home in the Village of Lytton. Her tenant had about 10 minutes to flee and had to leave almost all her belongings behind, Miles said. Other folks Miles knows lost their homes, pets and belongings. “It is really needed right now,” Miles said of a playground. Marvasti and Miles work on the philosophy that playing is central to children’s mental health and development.
“We believe that playfulness helps with meditative thinking, problem-solving and it also brings family together. It is aligned with a lot of the community-based research that we do at UBC,” Miles said.
She said one of the tragic parts of the Lytton wildfire is that children who live on the west side of the river had to watch from across the water as the town burned to the ground on June 30.