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Finding Success: Culture in the era of reconciliation

Sharing First Nations culture is key, and Delta is looking at how it can support those teachings
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Delta School District Elder Roberta Price teaches Grade 2 students at Devon Gardens Elementary how to make traditional medicine pouches. (Grace Kennedy photo)

Part three in a series looking at what the Delta School District is doing to support its Indigenous students. Read parts one and two here and here.

It was unusually quiet for a Grade 2 class at Devon Gardens Elementary, with the 18 students sitting in a circle on a carpeted mat. Each were looking up at a 63-year-old woman, clad in blue with a beaded medicine pouch around her neck and cedar boughs in her hands.

She was speaking to them about the importance of ceremony, the importance of names in First Nations culture. And then she introduced herself: “My name is Roberta Price. My heritage is I am Coast Salish. I am Snuneymuxw on my dad’s side, and that’s where I was born.”

“When they came to our lands,” she continued, looking around at the young faces gazing up at her, “they couldn’t say our names. They couldn’t say our language. So perhaps when they couldn’t say Snuneymuxw, they called it Nanaimo.”

Price spent the next several minutes talking about how she was taken away from her family, how she wasn’t allowed to speak the language of her people, how she spent 40 years searching for her identity. It was a heavy topic for young kids, spoken in soft, melodic tones.

She talked about meeting elders in her community, elders who guided her healing and supported her with love.

“I never dreamed that 40 years ago, that close to 40 years later that I would be walking in those elders’ footsteps today, sharing that same unconditional love with so many in so many communities,” she said. “So I hold my hands up in Coast Salish territory — did you guys learn that?” she asked, looking around at them again.

A little girl held her hands up, palms facing in towards her, and said, “hay ce:p q̓a,” in a soft voice. Price smiled, and sang the same phrase: hay ce:p q̓a. It means thank you, and is used as part of a greeting.

Then Price spoke: “I hold my hands up to those elders for teaching me, for praying for me, for taking good care of me and loving me unconditionally. I hold my hands up to those elders.”

Incorporating culture

The morning went on, with Price teaching the class how to make medicine pouches and the students’ quiet circle dissolving into a chaotic and creative mess. It was part of Price’s work as an elder in the Delta School District, which she has been doing officially since 2012.

For Valérie Sutter, whose Grade 2 class was busy making the leather pouches, it was an opportunity to get authentic teaching for her students.

“The curriculum wants us to bring in some First Nation cultural content and all of that, but I’m French,” Sutter said. “To me, I’m learning with the kids in a way because I don’t even come from this continent.”

Sutter’s class is on the new B.C. curriculum, which incorporates more Indigenous content into the core courses. Over the year, Sutter has brought First Nations perspectives to her class by inviting district vice-principal for Indigenous education Diane Jubinville to speak and by having Price share her story.

“It’s different … to have someone from the community come to share some authentic experiences, instead of relating as a teacher some facts of the culture we may not even understand ourselves,” she continued. “So I like the fact that we can have an elder in the classroom.”

These kinds of activities are part of a revived interest in teaching First Nations culture to all kids — not just Indigenous students.

It’s taking the form of curriculum reform on the provincial level, and new positions for Indigenous people to work as cultural facilitators at the district level.

“There’s a lot of things that have been done to First Nations that we never asked for,” said Juanita Coltman, K-12 policy manager at First Nations Education Steering Committee, a provincial advocacy group. “Our land was taken away. Our children were taken away. Our language and culture was taken away. We were told to assimilate.

“And that’s why we’re in an era of reconciliation, because we need to undo the past. And it’s going to take everyone to do that work.”

Moving past the past

The idea of having Indigenous culture taught in schools is not new — the 1986 Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples said that the “accommodation of Aboriginal culture and identity should be regarded as a core responsibility of public institutions” — but how it has looked over the years has changed.

Delta school trustee Rhiannon Bennett, a member of the Musqueam First Nation, was a student in Delta during the late 80s and 90s. She recalls being in her Grade 10 social studies class at Delta Secondary, learning about Canada’s relationship with colonialism. In her textbook, there was an activity where students had to write a pro and con list for contact between First Nations and the Europeans.

“So, my pro-list was rather empty. And my con list was rather full,” Bennett said about the assignment. She remembers an exchange student in the class having the opposite: a full list of pros and an empty con section. The teacher asked the two of them to put their lists on the blackboard.

“I was like, ‘Yes. I’m going to tell them’,” she said. “So I’m writing all these cons: made them learn English, took them to residential schools, put them on reserves. Like, all this stuff. All on the con list.

“And I looked over at the … exchange student, and seeing all those things that were on my con [list] in her pros was such a defining moment in my growth,” she continued. “I don’t know what the rest of my class thought about that, but that was 20 plus years ago and I still remember standing at the chalk board writing it all out.”

Diane Jubinville, who was sitting in the room listening to Bennett, smiled.

“Was that the beginning of your activism?” she asked.

“No,” Bennett said, laughing. “I came out of the womb like this I think.”

In another instance, Bennett recollected the rage she felt at seeing the word “squaw” in one of her English 11 textbooks.

“I remember … taking it to my teacher and him shrugging, going: ‘That just means this in the dictionary.’

“But I’m like, ‘Underneath it, [it says] “also slur”,’” she said.

Changing attitudes

His ambivalent attitude towards the derogatory word was a problem for Bennett — and attitude is what many other people identify as a problem when sharing First Nations culture. Price has seen it during her 32 years teaching about culture in schools.

“I wasn’t a welcome person to come into the schools, because of the attitude and the bias,” Price said. “Some of the schools would walk me to the classroom, to the front door. And not in a friendly manner.”

“I wanted to scream,” she added. “I’m not here to steal your chalk and brushes. I’m here to talk about First Nations.”

But now she’s seeing a shift in how people view Indigenous teachings.

“Part of that attitude change I really felt was that the older ones had to retire. The older ones with that … view of what we call the colonialism, that kind of view of who Indigenous people were,” Price said. Now, teachers and staff are “the fresh, younger, new faces from all different cultures,” with open minds and open hearts.

These are teachers like Sutter, who welcome First Nations culture into the classroom with crafts and lessons. But there are other ways educators are embracing Indigenous culture: with camps for Indigenous students, Indigenous math games in high school courses, a collaboration with the Tsawwassen First Nation to bring teachers to their longhouse to learn about reconciliation and residential schools.

Finding identity

The resources are intended to work towards reconciliation for Indigenous and non-Indigenous students. But it’s also part of a multi-pronged approach to improve graduation rates and academic success for Indigenous students.

“That’s where identity comes from. It comes from your culture and language,” Coltman said. “If kids don’t have a strong sense of who they are and where they come from, then they’re going to flounder in the school system, because you don’t know who you are.”

Coltman acknowledged there is an important role for community in promoting and sharing Indigenous culture, but a large part of it still needs to come from schools.

Jessica Le Brun, an Indigenous success advocate at Delview Secondary, explained why.

“My grandmother did have ancestry, but we weren’t allowed to talk about it,” she said. It’s a common theme among many residential school survivors, who often didn’t teach their language and culture to their children.

“When we share what nation we’re from, I’ve seen students say, ‘Oh, I don’t know,’” Le Brun said about the Indigenous program at Delview. “And I’ll say, ‘You know what, neither do I. My grandmother wouldn’t talk about it.’

“But I had to respect that,” she added. “So I think it’s fantastic that we have programs, and people like myself … there to reach out to our Indigenous youth.”

For many, the cultural programs coming into Delta schools are a needed support. But it’s not there yet — there is a lot of work to be done to bridge gaps that have been generations in the making.

But still, for people like Price who have been working to bring First Nations culture into schools for more than 30 years, it’s a step in the right direction.

“I really feel it’s going forward,” Price said. “Sometimes it feels ever so slow, but really ever so swiftly.”

Bennett, who was sitting with Price while she spoke, nodded. “We’re not there yet, but we’re going.”



grace.kennedy@northdeltareporter.com

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