Onchaminahos School - a Cree Elementary School in a Northern Alberta Reserve

Having worked in elementary school and with children all my life,
 I am always interested in how schools especially in other jurisdiction operate.

I  had an opportunity to volunteer and visit the Onchaminahos School - an elementary school in Northern  Alberta

When our friend asked me if I would be interested in volunteering at an elementary school on this trip, I jumped at the opportunity to work with the children and to visit the school.









I visited and spent almost a day at an elementary school on a native reserve in Alberta.




Education in Canada is a provincial responsibility which means that each province looks after the education of its children.

A table was set up  with the Smudging container outside the office of the school

However, the native reserves are different. The aboriginal people belong to the First Nation which has a treaty with Canada, therefore, its educational system is different as it is looked after by the band council.

The school has about two hundred students.

A table was set up with a smudging container placed upon it.

Each morning, students will perform the smudging ceremony before classes start for the day.












All visitors to the school were required to sign in at the office. I did and told them the teacher's name and the class I was supposed to be a volunteer for the day.

It happened to be recess time when I was there, therefore I was ushered into the staff room and waited there.

Lots of posters depicting native cultures and traditions around the school

I had sometime therefore I looked around the school and noticed  there were a lot of posters and bulletin board displays depicting Cree cultures and values posted around the school.

The Cree alphabets displayed on school wall

The Cree language alphabets were proudly displayed on school wall for all students and visitors to see.

Positive messages with aboriginal people were posted to encourage students

There were many poster printed with positive messages for students encouraging them to achieve their dreams of being a somebody!

I volunteered at  a Gr. 4 class

After morning recess, I went into one of the Grade 4 classes and met with teacher. Mrs. Q. who welcome me warmly into her class.

Classroom walls were full of language rich displays

I loved the classroom! Mrs. Q has created a very warm, welcoming place for her students.


The classroom walls were filled with language rich posters and instructions which students could easily refer to when needed.

She reminded me of my wonderful teachers in elementary school and the great time I had when I was a student.

I helped out in a language and Math class.

 In the language class students were learning their spelling words through a couple of word games.

What I really liked was after the teacher demonstrated how the word game was played, students took turn going up to the front of the class and was in charge of the game themselves.


Students were polite, enthusiastic; they clearly enjoyed learning  and were engaged in the activity.

Students were served lunch at school

Then came lunch time! Lunch was brought in on a cart for students.

( I learned that working with the operating budget allocated to the school, the principal and the school try their best to  find mone within their budget to provide lunch to students! Not an easy task, I must say.)

All the food served for lunch was finished by students

Students lined up for their food - Shepherd's  Pie and Mrs. Q. patiently dished out the food for each student.

I visited a Cree language classroom

Teacher and students ate lunch together in the classroom with the teacher supervising them.

  After students finished their lunch, they could go outside and play on the school playground.













I also asked for permission to visit other classrooms, one of which was a Cree language class.

What I saw in the Cree classroom reminded me of what a French Immersion classroom looked like in Ontario.

Learning posters in a Cree class

A Cree class in progress

Lots of posters and words in the Cree language to encourage and help students to learn the language.

School Library

I also visited the school library at this elementary school.

Positive messages in the school library

Again, I saw the same positive messages here for the students in the library.

Atrium to the School Library

My most favorite place of the school was this sunny spot to the entrance of the library!   A beautiful place with skylights where sunlight could stream in and brighten up the entire area.

With ample seating area, students could meet, congregate, talk and share!

I enjoyed my visit to the Onchaminahos School and appreciated the opportunity of working with the students and learning more about their cultures!

Thank you to Mrs. Q. and the Grade 4 class for your warm welcome and kindness!

R.T.
A Northern Reserve
Alberta

Meeting with a Former. Chief of the Cree Nation

The Ex Chief met with us at the Youth Centre

We were fortunate to have the opportunity to meet with many people in this northern reserve.
This morning, P. arrange to meet with C. who came to the Youth Centre to talk to us.

We sat in a circle in the round room. C. wanted to know something about us and asked each one to say our name and briefly tell something about us. In an aboriginal circle, the person starts and then continue clockwise.

Head piece worn by an Aboriginal  Chief

After each person had his/ her brief introduction, C. told us about himself.

C. - the meaning of his name - water from the mountain. He was born and has lived on this reserve all his life.  Though it was  compulsory for all native people to attend Residential School, C. refused and managed to escape from that experience.

1898 was the year the Residential School started on this reserve. In  1971 – Cree people took over the Blue Quill school. At the time,  the government said the Blue Quill school would not last a day. C. is very proud that Blue Quill  is a university now!

We sat in the beautiful meeting room built by C. & his team while he was a Chief of this reserve community

When C. was young, he was never in a leadership role but was elected as chief at one time. Along with other band council members, they built this hall ( the hall where we were in), the roads and the school, achieving many things for his people.

He also worked in a treatment centre, was on council and went to university to learn his language. C.'s dream was to see his young people to speak Cree. He felt that  people his age need to speak more Cree, but they speak more English when they meet as many were educated in English in the Residential Schools.

We had a wonderful conversation with the ex Chief. He gave us a lot of information and we learned many things from him such as the 1876 treaty which the Cree people on this reserve signed with Queen of England. There used to be four chiefs, eventually they became one. There were the south and north side of this reserve– one side was Catholic while the other was Protestant.

There are seven ceremonies with the Cree people – e.g. Sweat Lodge, Sun Dance, Pipe Ceremony etc. Each one has a chief leading the ceremony.

C. is a funny person indeed! The best thing I remember our meeting was his tremendous sense of humor and his ability to put people at ease.  Throughout the duration of his recall of the hurts experienced by his people, he managed to make us laugh by injecting humorus stories in between.  E.g.

C.:              Do you know why they call Quebec - Quebec?
Our Group :   No, why?
C.              They were coming up the St. Lawrence River and the native kept telling them "Get                               back! Get  back!" So they figured out the name of the place was Quebec, therefore they                        named it Quebec!"

C. was using a lot of Cantonese ( a Chinese dialect)  in his conversations with us and we were wondering how he learned so much of the language.


Our Group:    C. how come you know so much Cantonese? Your Cantonese is amazing!
C.:                  I am part Cantonese, you know.

Our Group:    Really? ( Getting excited! )

C.:                  For sure, my stomach is Cantonese! ( I love Cantonese food!)

C.:               There are about 70% of unemployment here on this reserve. Do you know why?
Our Group:     No, we don't why?

C.:               Jesus told us not to do anything until he comes back. That’s why people are not doing                          anything!

The ability to laugh and see the humour in life is an excellent life skill. I need to learn from Chief C. and see the bright side of everything when I am faced with obstacles and difficult situations in life.


R.T.
A Northern Reserve

Alberta
May, 2016

An Invitation to a Moose Dinner on a Northern Reserve, Alberta

Our second dinner invitation on this northern reserve!

Our team received our  second dinner invitation at one of the local's house.

The hospitality of the people of of this northern reserve is incredible!  We did not even know the host who invited us for dinner.

M. and W. invited all 15 of  us for dinner !

W.  from the Youth Centre invited our team for a moose and bannock dinner.

We had great conversations with the family members

I was really surprised that someone we hardly knew invited all fifteen of us, including P. and J., for supper!

W. showing us how to make bannocks from scratch

We got to W.'s sister's  house and W.  was cooking up a storm making Bannock from scratch.

Delicious bannocks go well with everything!

The ingredients for making bannock are quite simple - flour, milk, egg, baking power, a pinch of salt and sugar. It could be deep fried or baked.


Both are very fresh and delicious!

Delicious fried moose meat !

It was a moose feast at M.'s house!

W. and M. and her family prepared a lot of food and set up the table with stewed Moose, fried Moose meat, ground beef and all the trimmings for Indian tacos.

Stewed Moose meat, yummy!

We were treated to a feast at M.'s house!


The moose dinner was fantastic!  For many on our team, it was their very first time tasting wild game meat. For all of us, our first taste of the Indian Tacos.

S. relaxing in our host's living room

M.'s house was spacious and comfortable!  Our host made us feel at home! Some of us relaxed in the living room while some watched the bannock making demonstration in the kitchen.

Since the house and the property were quite big, there were a lot of activities going on and everyone was engaged in one thing or other.

We enjoyed meeting the family!

Our team members mingled with other people at the house. We met our host, the family and a few other people. We got to chat with them and know more about them

I spent sometime talking to S. and we had a good chat about school and the topic of bullying came up.

Relaxing after dinner in the backyard

From our conversation, I learned that being a teen going to high school was not an easy thing for some, especially for those not so outgoing teenagers as they could easily become a target for bullying.

W.anda, M. and her family  invited all of us for a dinner at M's  home

The dinner experience was beyond words!  The food was fantastic; W., M, her husband and her family were so warm and welcoming!

M. warmly welcome us and showed us around her property

We were very blessed to have been invited into people's houses to partake a dinner with them who were willing to open their homes and welcome us.

 The best of all was the opportunity to get to know our aboriginal people and foster an understanding and relationship wit them!

Thank you. W., M. and W. for your hospitality!

R.T.
A Northern Reserve
Alberta

Residential Schools : A National Crime - Listening to the Victims' Sad Stories

As a teacher in the public school system in Ontario, I was required to follow the Ontario Curriculum and  teach an unit on the Native Peoples of Canada to my elementary school students.

I knew very little about aboriginal peoples and their history at the time, therefore, I did some research on my own before teaching the lessons to my students.

Today, along with my team mates, we heard the true stories and experiences of our aboriginal people who went through the notorious Residential School System when they were children themselves.

What a revelation and shock it was to us all! In my mind, I always thought the residential school was the government's way of making sure that aboriginal children received a good Canadian education. Nothing more than that. How wrong was I!

Little did we know that the Residential School Policy was part of John A. McDonald's - Canada's first Prime Minister, Nation Building Plan which was to isolate aboriginal children from their parents and to assimilate them, a quick way to get rid of " the Indian problem."

Under this Residential School policy, the Indian Agent went into communities, rounded up all the aboriginal children (aged seven to fourteen) and removed them forcibly from their parents, and their community. Native parents had no say in what was happening to them and what was taught to their children. Parents would face jail term if they refused to send their children to Residential School.

A Residential School in northern Alberta 

Native children were treated differently from non native children.  They were denied of their language and culture.  Aboriginal children were subjected to a different culture while their own culture was demeaned and ridiculed.

 They were neglected, punished and beaten for speaking their own mother tongue. Many were abused physically and sexually.  Some of the stories we heard from  Residential School survivors brought tears to our eyes:

Story 1 – At the residential School, porridge was served to the students every day throughout the year. Everyday the students were expected to finish their bowl of porridge. A little girl did not want to eat it, the person in charge slapped her hard on her face and forced her to finish her porridge. The girl did eat it reluctantly. But later on she threw up the porridge she ate, the person in charge forced her to lick up the vomited food.

Story 2 – One of the Residential Schools in British Columbia was built with an apple orchard in the back of the school. The children did not have enough to eat and they were always hungry. So they went outside to pick up some apples fallen on the ground to eat, but they were forbidden to do so and were told to drop the apples on the ground.  However, being hungry, these children thought of other ways to smuggle the apples in their pants.  So they learned how to steal food being in the Residential School.

We took turn  sharing our comments and about what we had learned

Story 3 – Being hungry all the time, aboriginal children came up with creative ways to find food. They played the marble game with each other.

Whoever won the game got marbles from their peers. As a result, they learned to use the marbles as a form of currency to buy food from each other, e.g. five marbles for a piece of bread, ten marbles for something else. So the Residential School taught the children how to steal food and how to gamble for food to fill their hunger!

Dr. Peter Bryce visited thirty five Residential  Schools at the time. He found the condition so deplorable that he resigned from his work with the government and wrote a book titled - A National Crime: The Canadian Government and the Residential School System  (  1999)

 

With 42% of aboriginal children died  due to their Residential School experience, what parents would send their children to school?

We found these stories and incidents shocking beyond belief. As an educator all my life, I could not imagine anyone responsible for teaching and taking care of children could be so cruel to the little innocent ones?

At the end of the presentation, we were asked to express how we felt and what we had learned. When it was my turn to share and dialogue in the circle, I could not hold back my tears and expressed my sorrow and apology to the aboriginal people among us.

The Residential School System existed over a hundred years; it was the darkest chapter in our Canadian history. The stories of the first nation people who suffered at the hands of our government need to be told and heard!

R.T.

Alberta

May, 2016

Our First Dinner Invitation on the Reserve - We have so much to learn from Our Aboriginal People!

Our very first dinner invitation on the  reserve

Since our task was done for the day, it gave me time to catch up on my writing back at the Youth Centre.

 It was also my turn to cook dinner. I put the pork tenderloin which was marinated from the previous night along with some potatoes, carrots, and pineapple into the oven ( preheated at 400 degrees F.)  After an hour, dinner was ready and the pork came out beautifully cooked! 

Our host's family keeps some horses on their property

We received our first dinner invitation on the reserve. We were pretty excited and took the dish over to A’s house and shared it with her family.

The animal lovers on our team were very excited!

A. and her family live in a house on the reserve. The house is built on  a pretty large property where animals like horses and dogs can roam free. 

Since there were a few animal lovers on our team, we   spent some time with the animals while we were there.

A. shared some native games and stories with us

A student of the notorious Residential School for ten years,  A. was taken from her parents when she was young separated from her family and community.  She shared some of the unpleasant stories with us as well as some Cree traditions, games and stories.

A. demonstrated a popular hand game to us

A’s mom was a mid wife and she told us about the trick her mom used to help deliver babies among aboriginal women.

Before the invention of the epidural, in order to reduce pain and help the baby to turn around in the mother’s womb, A.’s mom would ask the husband to go out, find a snake in the woods and bring it back. 

The mid wife would place the snake on the mother’s stomach to help induce labour. Feeling the movement and vibration of the snake of the mother’s stomach, the baby would turn around with his/ her head down towards the birth canal and ready to come out from the womb. We were all spellbound by these very interesting native tales indeed!

The Saskatchewan River flowing through the Cultural Heritage Park of this northern community

Learning about the Cree stories and cultures outdoor 

A. and her family were very gracious and hospitable toward our group. 

The whole family including A., her husband, Audrey, her daughter and her grandchildren took us to the Cultural Heritage Park where we could see the Saskatchewan River flowing below us.

A. & family were generous with their time and gave us unique experiences

We lay down some blankets and listened to A’s stories about the native Sweat Lodge and the treaties between the first nation people and the government of Canada.

These little fern leaves make great mosquito repellent!

When the mosquitoes started to attack us, A. and her family showed us how to prevent the annoying bugs from biting us the native and natural way!

They pulled up a few pieces of fern like leaves off the ground and told us to squash them in our palms and spread it on our hands and feet.  

We have much to learn from the wisdom of  our Aboriginals

A natural bug repellent was made! 

We have so much to learn from the wisdom of our aboriginal people!

Three bottles were set up for target practice

Hunting was a way of life for aboriginal people for centuries. Some still hunt on the reserve.

After the stories were told, A. and the family  took us to the gravel pit. .

They set up three bottles on a pole and showed us how to do target shooting. 

Some of the young people tried it for the first time. I was not interested in guns therefore I just stood there and took pictures. 

The young people all had lot of fun! It was something they did not expect to do on this trip!

We got back to our host’s  family at around 10pm. L. was there and we chatted a little while she showed us pictures of her family and her daughter’s wedding. It was a lovely time we spent with our host and learning a little bit more about her. We look forward to more time like this with our host!

R.T.

Alberta