West /
Understand
West is the direction of autumn, evening, knowledge, and reason. Here, a more ‘adult’ attitude towards the world is developed. Black and white become shades of grey as the learner embraces the act of ‘figuring it out’, without ever ‘arriving’. Here, there is the ability to demonstrate what has been understood, to contextualize it and repeat it back. To see the world as it is and how it got that way.
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This page is a collection of some major projects and moments that affirmed and shared our work in Indigenous studies. This collection is by no means exhaustive and does not include the week-to-week resources and curriculum we have implemented. Rather, it represents a handful of moments when we really experienced a deep connection through truth-telling. Sharing the truth with our students is only ever the first step. The hope is that, through education and greater community awareness, we can continue to affect real change on a larger scale.
This is the medicine wheel as it has appeared on our report cards at NCS. Here, each direction reflects the depth to which a student engaged in their learning and demonstrated it. The numbers within the four directions correspond with the categories and achievement descriptors below.
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“Educating Canadian elementary and high school students about [Indigenous] histories, cultures, and contemporary issues and the role of all Canadians in past and current [Indigenous]-Settler relations is crucial for catalyzing social and political change” (Restoule & Nardozi, 2019, p. 311).
Demonstrating Our Learning
The Long Grass Project
In 2015, our Administrative Assistant proposed to create an area that is both usable and versatile as an outdoor education space in the currently unused ‘long grass’ area of the school property. Initially the design was to build an outdoor classroom. This was the cornerstone to the current plan. We are now looking to build an outdoor theatre space, classroom and aboriginal awareness location. The overall planting of the area will be based on the Black Oak Savannah habitat that is native to the Rice Lake Plains area and the Medicine Wheel of the Alderville First Nation with whom we are in relationship. A long term dream is to have many stations where specific aspects of the Anishinabe way of life are explained and demonstrated. This will be an ongoing project that will continue to grow and improve the quality of programming we will be able to offer our students and the greater community. In the short term, the site could also provide a location for outdoor speakers, performances, and learning.
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Production: The Honour Drum 2017
Our principal worked closely with the class of 2017, composed of both Indigenous and non-Indigenous students, to craft the script for a production of The Honour Drum. This adaptation of the Tim Huff and Cheryl Beaver book was supplemented by histories of Alderville written by Ruth Clark. The production was performed twice; once for our annual Grandparent’s day celebration, and again during a Sunday service at a local church. The reception was amazing (Be sure to listen to the words of Dave, a grandparent of one of the performer/writers and member of Alderville FN, as he reflects on the production and his own cultural awakening at 01:02:00), although there were some on the Sunday who left the production because of the cultural elements included.
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Incorporating Sweetgrass into our Graduation Ceremony
For our graduation ceremony in 2017, we were gifted the use of the community centre in Alderville. Community members there also recognized our commitment to their children by allowing their drum to be used as the graduates proceeded to the stage. This led us the following year to collaborate with Melody Crowe, a Knowledge Keeper in Alderville, on a way we could recognize every graduating student for their work in Indigenous studies while at NCS.
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Sharing with me her teaching on sweetgrass, and giving me permission to share it at all future NCS graduation ceremonies, was one of the singularly most honourable experiences of this learning journey for me. Being recognized and trusted with this cultural teaching brought me to tears and I continue to share her words every year as I hand our graduates a braid of sweetgrass to symbolize their own learning journeys.
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Black Light Performance at Edifide Convention
The September following the Honour Drum performance, the black light portion, orchestrated by our former Indigenous studies teacher, Alison Young, was also performed live at the Teacher’s Convention in Ancaster. This was a wonderful opportunity to share our learning with the greater Christian School community. The video linked to the right was a video of the performance taken by a parent at the convention. The Black Light performance can also be seen (better quality) in the video above.
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Workshops: Indigenous Studies in Christian
Schools
2017 was also the year Alison Young facilitated the first of NCS’s Indigenous Education workshops at the Teacher’s Convention. Following her retirement, I took on this responsibility until COVID took the conference virtual. The presentation I gave, since updated with new information for other virtual presentations over the past year, can be found in the accompanying PDF.
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One Voice Expo in Alderville
Our reciprocal relationship with Alderville was again recognized in February of 2018 when the senior class was invited to participate in their One Voice Expo conference on pink shirt day organized by Alderville First Nation. We were recognized as a local school who actively worked to speak the truth in the hope for reconciliation. We were presented, along with the other schools in attendance, with a ‘piece of the puzzle’, one that takes collaboration across multiple communities to complete.
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Life Experiences: Unmarked Graves
The fruits of our learning journey took a somber turn in the spring of 2021. With the confirmation of unmarked graves at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School on Tk’emlups te Secwépemc First Nation in B.C., the realities of the Indigenous experience in North America hit the national consciousness like never before. The constant and public reminder of abuse and suffering was difficult for many to process and parents struggled to explain this history, omitted from their educational experience, to their children.
One NCS parent reached out to me and shared her gratitude for the work NCS had done to frame this tragedy and prepare her children for these realities:
Former Kamloops Indian Residential School on Tk’emlups te Secwépemc First Nation. Click image for CBC News article posted: 27 May 2021.
Hey Kevin,
I thought you should know (and would appreciate) my son’s response to the latest news on residential school burials. John is old enough that he catches pieces of news, so I made a point to mention it so we could process together. He wasn’t surprised. Residential schools were already something he was aware of because of the Indig classes at school. He was quiet, but said finally. “God is shining light in dark places. That will have to happen so we all know.” He gets the need for healing. Props to the teachers and the school. If power was taken in those horrible places, it is fitting the healing would start there. With youth.
-Beth
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(B. Kapteyn, personal communication, June 2021)