THE BATTLEFORDS — Donald Meriam, event organizer for the June 23 Gender, Diversity & Equality Masquerade Ball has put months of love and tears into BATC’s first-ever LGBTQ2+ event.
“This event will bring our city the proper LGBT-based education it deserves, to be able to teach traditional two-spirit teachings, LGBT sex education that’s so needed within our communities, LGBT history and the struggles of making our voices heard,” Meriam said.
The event includes dinner, dancing, live music, a silent auction and speeches from guests and dignitaries from across the province, and is being held June 23 from 5:30 p.m. to 12 a.m. at the Western Development Museum in North Battleford.
The event will feature an exhibit of LGBT-based objects from Saskatchewan, photos collected from the USask Neil Richard’s collection and artifacts from WDM’s LGBTQ+ collection.
NDP MLAs Betty Nippi-Albright and Nathaniel Teed will be speaking, along with Jazz Moise and Councillor Trina Albert from Sweetgrass First Nation. Melissa Squire has designed gender-neutral clothing for the event, and Hilberg and Berk have donated earrings and necklaces from their prism collection.
“I’ve been to the university and sat down for hours going through photos, articles and books … tearing up seeing all these beautiful photos I had never seen before of protests in Saskatoon and Regina from the Doug Wilson Era of the 1970s,” Meriam said, having worked with BATC since April 2022.
“... (they) approved it without hesitation, knowing that I’m helping to open BATC to the LGBT community,” Meriam said, describing crying after the board approved the event, knowing that he’s helping to open BATC to the LGBT+ community.
“I wanted to see BATC involved more in the LGBT community, bringing in education to Atoskewin and taking that education and training out to our seven communities to honour the history of our peoples”
