The Adams Lake Indian Band near Chase is celebrating the expansion of its local school.

Starting in September, the Chief Atahm High School and language centre will be open, to house students up to Grade 10, and eventually it will house students up to grade 12.

Principle Robert Mathew says the school is unique among First Nations in B.C. for its Secwepemc immersion program.

“The language program on immersion is hard work and expensive, it’s very hard to train teachers. We’re very fortunate that we have local people here who are teachers who learned the language. And we’re also very fortunate that we have elders who have learned how to teach, so we team-teach. Other places aren’t that fortunate,” Mathew says.

“Over 25 years, we have learned how to do all of it ourselves. To do all the learning resources for every subject, from the desktop publishing the digital material, the online, all of the skills we have in house. But, we needed a house.”

The federal government contributed $2.7 million dollars for the school’s expansion, and Mathew says members of the First Nation fundraiser for hundreds of thousands of dollars more.

The federal Minister of Indigenous Affairs says a new school on the Adams Lake Indian Band shows a new way of doing things.

Seamus O’Regan was in the community for the unveiling of a new high school and language school, and says language and culture need to be carried on.

“It’s really how we go about it these days. I think the days of the federal government coming in from Ottawa and imposing solutions, which is building buildings and walking away, it’s gone. Now we work with communities from the ground up, they develop a design with us, we take our lead from the parents, and we enable the community.

O’Regan says Indigenous students are now being funded the same as non-Indigenous students, and says schools are given $1,500 per student.

Mathew says enrolment at the Chief Atahm School has bounced from as low as 46 to as high as 86, for different reasons. He says there will nine new students in September, and says the school hopes to eventually get to between 80 and 90 students in an average year with the new expansion.