Everything Is Sacred – Motley Journal

A large outdoor mural in a Coast Salish artistic style. A young Indigenous girl with a flower in her hair wades in a dark pond surrounded by lily pads and cattails, while a stylized deer with decorative blue markings drinks from the water beside her. Beneath the surface, luminous blue salmon rendered in Northwest Coast formline design swim through the depths. A forest landscape is visible in the background. Text in the upper right reads "mék⁰scék əi x̌eʔ x̌eʔ — Everything is Sacred" in Halkomelem.

I pass this mural regularly. It’s at the north east corner of Templeton Street and Hastings Street in Vancouver. I couldn’t find any information on it. “Everything Is Sacred” is written in English and a language Claude AI identifies as Halkomelem, a language of the Coast Salish peoples.

It’s on the Hastings side of the Hastings East Rectifier Station. Hats off to someone (BC Hydro?) for making a bland public infrastructure building more attractive. Hopefully it also supported a local artist.

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