If it was tragedy that first brought Linda Epp to Whistler, it’s triumph that’s sending her on to the next step in her career.
Indigenous activist and arts booster Epp is leaving the community she has called home, off and on, for nearly a quarter-century to work as job placement coordinator and recruitment specialist at Vancouver’s Native Education College, the same campus she graduated from in her 30s and found her first real sense of belonging as an Indigenous woman.
“Because I was brought up in a Canadian-German Mennonite family, I didn’t know smallpox happened. I didn’t know all this stuff,” she said. “It gave me a desire to learn more and be surrounded by my culture. That’s what I need now and I think that’s why this opportunity opened itself to me. Now I’m back at the Native Education College and I’m helping other Indigenous students.”
A Sixties Scoop survivor, Epp and her twin sister were separated from their birth parents and placed into foster care, where they were adopted by a white couple and raised to deny their First Nations heritage, Epp said, telling people they were Filipina. Leaving her abusive home at 16, it wasn’t until Grade 12 that Epp learned what nation she belonged to: the shíshálh (Sechelt) Nation.
“We both struggled with our cultural identity,” Epp said of her and her sister. “They wanted to take the Indian out of the Indian, and that’s what they did.”
By the time she landed in Whistler in 1997, Epp was working as an exotic dancer in Vancouver, and, after a string of deaths of people close to her, she said she was headed down a bad road.
It was friend and resort restaurateur Kike Redondo who urged Epp to relocate to Whistler to work at his now-shuttered Greek restaurant, Kypriaki Norte.
“I stayed with Kike for a week until I found a place in Alpine,” she said. “It changed my life, because I was going down a dark road. Whistler has changed my life.”
In the intervening years, Epp has made a remarkable transformation, and her laundry list of accomplishments is almost too long to mention: raising awareness of Canada’s Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women through the founding of Whistler’s Sisters in Spirit Vigil and local Red Dress Project. Successfully lobbying for Indigenous singers and drummers to lead the convocation procession as Capilano University, where she worked as a First Nations student liaison. Delivering a speech at the 2019 Indigenous Women Leader’s Summit as well as a TEDx Talk at Quest University the year before. Penning a children’s book called Hang Me A Red Dress detailing her friendship with a local girl that addresses issues of Truth and Reconciliation.
“I just like to make [things] happen,” Epp said, before noting that she plans to continue organizing the Sisters in Spirit Vigil every October.
“I’m going to be leaving physically out of the community, but a lot of my heart is still going to be here.”
Straddling both Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities, along with her previous work for the Lil’wat Nation, Epp has served as an important link between two historically disparate worlds, explained Maureen Douglas, executive director of Arts Whistler, which has supported the vigil over the years.
“Any folks bringing Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities together, there are people both on the Indigenous and non-Indigenous side who have that more open view, that open heart, who maybe see that future of collaboration together a little clearer, and who become bridges,” she said. “They’re referred to as that: so and so is a real bridge person, and that is absolutely Linda.”
Along with her advocacy work, Epp is a major supporter of Whistler’s arts scene, appearing in several local plays over the years and continuing to serve on the board at The Point Artist-Run Centre. (She is a talented singer and plays a mean ukulele, too.)
Most recently, Epp has been battling a number of major health scares, since being diagnosed with a brain aneurysm in late 2019. As she was readying for brain surgery, doctors discovered she had breast cancer and, on top of that, she had to have emergency eye surgery on a detached retina. She said it was Whistler’s continued support that got her through the ordeal.
“Whistler has just been there for me. It’s given me the strength—especially with the health stuff,” she said. “If I was in Vancouver, I don’t know. The Beacon did a fundraiser for me, [former Whistlerite] Angie [Nolan] did a GoFundMe. It’s just having the community here, the relationships and the acceptance.”
And yet, even with the litany of issues she was facing, Epp still found time to help those around her.
“When she was going through her worst, I was having a difficult time and she really rose to that. Those were times when she was helping me that she seemed to be able to really gather strength and still give something. She always has something to give,” said friend and musician Susan Holden.
“You can’t help but be inspired.”
