Treaty Recognition Week

Since 2016, the first week of November has been recognized as Treaty Week. We wanted to create awareness about the topic for our staff, students and school communities. We recognized that treaties are a complex topic and in order to make them accessible to students we needed to simplify without losing the importance of the information. We decided to make short videos with treaty information and facts that would be shared daily throughout the week. One of the ways we simplified the idea of a treaty for younger children was to present it as a promise. Chantima and Jen teach primary grades so they focused on the importance of keeping promises and what can happen if a promise is broken. They started the conversation by watching an episode of Franklin the Turtle called "Franklin's Promise", and then had classroom discussions about the importance of promises between people. Then, they connected those ideas and feelings to treaty relationships between the British Government and Indigenous People.

Below is the first Treaty Recognition Week video that was shared with their schools.

We also found a bunch of resources on our school board's elementary program blog. Gretchen curated a great list to support teachers and students. Click here to check out her resources!