AAW Goes to the Lambton College Pow Wow

On April 4th the Grade 5/6 and 6 classes travelled to Lambton College in Sarnia for the annual Pow Wow.  This was an event that our classes were very excited to attend.  Some students had been to Pow Wows previously at Bkejwanong or Aamjiwanaang while others were looking forward to a new cultural experience.

The week before we left we reviewed a slideshow created by Gretchen with some background information on Pow Wows as well as Pow Wow etiquette.  It was important to me that our students knew how to behave and interact appropriately in order to be respectful of the dancers, drummers and cultural experience as a whole.

Our students had also become familiar with Pow Wow dances through dance and music classes earlier in the year.  If you're interested in introducing Pow Wow dancing to your classroom check out the Pow Wow Sweat video series on YouTube by clicking HERE.

When we arrived at Lambton College our students were so excited to head to the arena and check out the vendors, the drummers, the dancer's regalia, and of course the food, before the dancing started.  Once the Grand Entry began I was again thankful for Gretchen's slideshow as the students had acquired appropriate knowledge and understanding of the ceremony and proceedings that they were now a part of.

Over the course of the next hour or so many students took advantage of the opportunity to join in with the group dances while others chose to observe.  Either way, I was happy that our students had the opportunity to take part first hand in such a culturally rich experience that many would not have had otherwise.

If there is a local Pow Wow close to your school I would definitely recommend taking your class as it is a culturally rich experience that all students can benefit from and enjoy!

P.E. McGibbon off to the Pow Wow at Lambton College

With the news and anticipation of the 27th annual Lambton College Indigenous Pow Wow approaching, the team saw this as an opportunity to provide our students as well as ourselves with an authentic experience. Jen and I had familiarized our students with traditional Pow Wow dancing by engaging in Pow Wow Sweat (if you haven't checked out these YouTube videos by The Style Horse Collective yet, you're missing out!). 

Jen and I brought our grade 1's and 2's from P.E. McGibbon to the event and were overwhelmed by the knowledge that guided us into the new athletics centre where the PowWow dancing arena was formed. The most impressive aspect of the Pow Wow was the amount of knowledge its participants were able to seek out by walking around and speaking to Indigenous People to gain first hand knowledge on cultural practices such as beading, regalia, and symbols. 

Our students hurried to grab front row seats and immediately picked out dancers doing the fancy shawl and chicken dance. The most heartwarming part of the day was the inclusive environment established as attendees were invited to become participants. Every single one of my students jumped (literally) at the opportunity to join in the dancing arena. The rich cultural experience I gained alongside my students came from not only familiarizing ourselves with Ojibwe culture and dance but most importantly, taking that risk to try something new and foreign to us and coming together in that experience that we share and appreciate. 

Do Better When You Know Better

At PE McGibbon we have video announcements which means there is a lot of media. The student announcement team uses video, images, audio recording, and music to share information. At the end of our announcements we always have the land acknowledgment followed by O Canada.

One day as I was listening to a student's voice read the land acknowledgment over an image of the Canadian Flag and I thought to myself, "This doesn't seem right." I wondered if there was a more appropriate and authentic way to share the land acknowledgement with our staff and students. When I sat and reflected on what the land acknowledgment really said, it made me think about Treaty 29. My school is on Treaty 29 land and it seemed like the only time we talked about this was during Treaties Week. I know we could do better.

I talked to Gretchen about the idea of making some land acknowledgment videos with images of Treaty 29 and Aamjiwnaang. The purpose would be to acknowledge the indigenous groups who lived in the Sarnia area before the treaty, the treaty itself and the current Aamjiwnaang community. She agreed it would be a good learning opportunity and I got to work making some new videos.

Below are some of the examples we created to share with our staff and students. We created these videos using Apple Clips.

A Morning at Bkejwanong

Chi-Miigwech to Minogiizhgad for sharing Ojibwe language with us related to our experience this morning.

What a privilege.
This morning, Jen, Ally & I were invited by Gretchen and Minogiizhgad to his home at Bkejwanong in hopes that jigaa ninaatigo waaboo (the sap is dripping). We were joined by Language Consultants and Ojibwe Language Teachers from the the Lambton Kent District School Board. We began with a walk through the ninaatigo kaan (maple tree bush) while Minogiizhgad shared stories of Nanabush (or Nanaboozhoo) and the his discovery of maple sap as another form of Mother Earth's medicine for her people.

We even had an opportunity to explore, feel, and choose a tree to tap ourselves.

What humbled me most is realizing what makes the Anishinaabe culture so beautiful is that in everything there is meaning. All practices and interactions are done so with intent and purpose. As Jen and I taste tested the maple sugar that was created after skagamezigeng (the process of boiling sap), Minogiizhgad looked at Jen and I with a smile and said, "those smiles on your faces, there is the medicine".

We ended our morning inside one of the most intricate structures I've experienced, the Bkejwanong Teaching Lodge. The physical work that went into the Lodge is evident in every log, branch, and hand-stripped piece of bark that brought to life a design that was studied and recreated by a piece of film discovered of a Potawatomi family building their own lodge in the 1930's. An Ojibwe Language teacher who took part in the building of the Bkejwanong Teaching Lodge shared that the experience gave the Bkejwanong men a sense of purpose and community that will forever connect them to one another. The Lodge is used for ceremonial purposes and has become a prominent setting for the people of Bkejwanong to gather, embrace, and share. 

Chi-Miigwech Minogiizhgad and Gretchen as well as our fellow learners this morning for an experience the deepened my understanding, admiration, and gratitude. 

Visit from Joanne Robertson

On February 5th the junior students at A.A. Wright were so lucky to have Joanne Robertson visit us.  Joanne is AnishinaabeKwe and a member of Atikameksheng Anishnawbek.  She is the founder of the Empty Glass for Water campaign to bring attention to the drinking water crisis in Indigenous communities across Canada.  Joanne is also the author of the book "The Water Walker".

This is a fantastic true story about an Ojibwe grandmother (nokomis) named Josephine Mandamin and her love for water (nibi) and the need to protect it for our future generations.

Joanne spoke with us about the importance of fresh water and the water walks that she has been on in an effort to raise awareness of this cause.  Our students were so taken by the distance that Joanne, Josephine, and the other Water Walkers walked in an effort to spread their message.  They were also excited to learn that the Water Walker's visited Walpole Island and prayed for the St. Clair River a couple of years ago.  To learn more about the Mother Earth Water Walk you can visit their website HERE.

Not only was Joanne a fantastic presenter with a great message for us she also was gracious enough to help us out with our Words of the Week videos for February.  Our team decided to pull words from Joanne's book to focus on.  To access these videos and PDF word wall cards click HERE.

Also, as we know water is a theme that weaves its way through each grade of the Ontario science curriculum.  To learn more about how to incorporate this learning into your lessons, as well as watch a fantastic book review of "The Water Walker", please check out Gretchen's blog post HERE.

Family Event: Shaker Making at A.A. Wright

As a result of the Calls to Action in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission we have been working on inviting community members from Bkejwanong (the First Nation closest to A.A. Wright) into our school to share Indigenous ways of knowing and learning in meaningful ways.  Recently, we invited Cecil Isaac to come in after school and lead some of our families in shaker making.

We started our event by sharing a meal together.  This is always a great opportunity to share, chat, and build a sense of community with our families.  After we had finished eating Cecil began to walk us through the process of creating our deer hide shakers.

The first thing that we needed to do some soak the hide overnight the night before so that it would be pliable and ready to sew on shaker making night.  We cut the hide out in advance to save the students and their families the hassle on the night of.  We used a leather punch to create holes around the edges and then our students and their adults used sinew to sew the two pieces of hide together.  Once this was done the kids packed their shaker with sand to give it shape as the hide dried.  The last step for the evening was to put the dowel handle in and wrap sinew around it to keep it in place while the hide dries.

It was so fantastic to see some of our families coming together, working on a common task, and creating a traditional Anishnaabe instrument.  We are all looking forward to night two where we will come back to together remove the sand, and fill our shakers with beans.  After we fill our bellies with another shared meal first, of course.

Check out the pictures below from shaker making night 1!

Sarnia Lambton Native Friendship Centre

Jen's Reflection

When we started this project and thought about potential connections, the Sarnia-Lambton Native Friendship Centre was a must. It is only a few blocks away from P.E. McGibbon which makes it easily accessible for our school community and we see it as a valuable resource for ourselves, and our students. Problem, we had no idea who to contact or how we should go about making contact. It was a barrier we made for ourselves that didn’t need to exist. We did what a lot of us do, nothing, because we were unsure. So, we reached out to Gretchen and asked her first. She suggested we connect with Nancy Peters. Nancy is the Cultural Resource Coordinator at the SLNFC. 

Chantima and I decided we would pop over to the SLNFC and see if we could meet Nancy. When we were walking to the doors of the SLNFC, I looked at Chantima and said “Are you nervous?” and thank goodness she said, “Yes”. I was not alone in my nerves and general feeling of discomfort. Why was I feeling this way? I think Chantima and I realized we were entering a space of unknowns. That is a scary place for an A-type teacher. But, I’ve learned throughout this project that I need to push myself to be uncomfortable. If I don’t, I’m not going to take risks, reach out, or learn things that will change how I think. Fast forward, the meet and greet with Nancy was wonderful. She welcomed us, our project, and was willing to support us in our journey. 

Throughout our initial conversation with Nancy, Chantima and I recognized she could be a key person in helping us shape our overall learning theme for this project. We had started Ojibwe Word of the Week with greetings and were using them in our schools but, what next? Where do we go after greetings? We needed another meeting!

We arranged another meeting with Nancy and thankfully Allie was able to attend as well. At this meeting we wanted to brainstorm ideas for where we were going to go with our learning. Our main focus was the Word of the Week because November was fast approaching and we had no clue what to do. We wanted the Word of the Week to be connected to deeper learning so we started brainstorming different ideas. We started with seasons and celebrations. We could do pumpkins, snow, winter, etc. But then, we looked at Nancy and said, “Is this really authentic to learning your culture?” In that moment, we recognized that our conversation about trying to find deeper learning had shifted to fitting Anishinaabe language and culture into our teacher box. This is one of the biggest dangers I see for educators. We take things and warp them into our teaching world. We make them fit our unit plans or timelines and lose authenticity. We needed to do better. 

So, we asked Nancy where would she start with students that were not making connections to Ojibwe Word of the Week and Ojibwe people themselves. Our students were hearing Ojibwe words every day but did not realize Ojibwe was a language spoken in our area, by Ojibwe people, before newcomers arrived. How could support them making these connections? 

As a group, we landed on storytelling. We would start with Turtle Island. Then, the Ojibwe Words of the Week would come from the story. We would choose four animals from the story (loon, turtle, otter, muskrat) and as Allie said “Feed the students breadcrumbs”, so they would build some schema for the Ojibwe story they would hear that month. We had a plan! Each month we would arrange a guest speaker to share a story and pull words from the story to be used for our Ojibwe Words of the Week. It sounds like a daunting task, but the more connections we make, the easier it becomes. 

We left our meeting with Nancy feeling inspired and excited about our new direction. Stay tuned to see how it unfolds.

Word of the Week - A Work in Progress...

Allie's Reflection

Introducing the Ojibwe Word of the Week was a concept that started in both of our schools (P.E. McGibbon and A.A. Wright) during the last school year.  Luckily, this meant that we had a base to build upon this September when we began to roll the program out again.

This year we were deliberate in the words that were chosen for September.  The thought was that by focusing on greetings we would be providing our students with words that could quickly be used in their everyday conversations.

Many students have taken to it quite quickly and it is pretty incredible how often you can hear boozhoo, miigwech, and most recently, baamaapii being used around the school.  Teachers also seemed to be thankful to be given word wall cards for their own classrooms.  All in all it seemed as though all things were going well.

However, after recently surveying a random sample of students at both of our schools we realized that many kids were missing the pretty basic connection between the Ojibwe words they were beginning to use and the fact that it was an actual First Nations language spoken in close proximity to where they live and go to school.  This was a pretty clear message to us, as educators, that there was still a need for more teaching in this area.

Another aspect of our word of the week project that has been very eye opening and interesting to me has been how the Ojibwe language and the English language DO NOT mesh seamlessly and more often than not there is no literal translation from Ojibwe to English.  A great example of this is how Mino Giizghad (Indigenous Education Lead) explained to us the context in which the word miigwech was traditionally used.  Another example of this is how there was no word for “opossum” or “phragmite” because these are both species that are not native to this area.

While we have made some great first steps in the first month of school we obviously still have a lot of work to do - stay tuned! Baamaapii!

Making Connections - First Steps

Chantima's Reflection

Throughout the beginning of this journey, my nerves never got the best of me.... until today. My home is directly across a small river from Bkejwanong (Walpole Island First Nation). Our local Sarnia-Lambton Native Centre is approximately three blocks away from my home school. Even though the geographical proximity of my life is convenient to two local First Nations (Bkejwanong & Aamjiwnaang), I was full of doubt as Jen and I pulled into the Native Friendship Centre. Through Gretchen, we were directed to Nancy Peters, the cultural resource coordinator.

Although I was aware of my call to action through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission as an educator, I do not yet feel knowledgeable enough nor comfortable enough to implement learning resources to the students in my class. The starting point, I knew, was to first develop these resources. Taking that first step to making a cultural connection in the community honestly felt uncomfortable. However, it was a step that needed to take place to begin my journey of enlightenment regarding indigenous culture, that I grew up surrounded by, and our true Canadian history which has not been readily available to me in my own education.

Meeting and talking to Nancy as well as the centre's youth coordinators left me with a completely different feeling; one of motivation, hope, and support. When Jen and I shared our goals with them, it was clear through a simple initial conversation that this team was in full support of building bridges throughout our local communities to learn in unison. Taking that leap of faith to build relationships shows your willingness to learn and grow. In order to make progress, you have to be vulnerable and find comfort in discomfort.