Kairos blanket exercise. (Nicole Reis/meadowlakeNOW Staff)

By Nicole Reis

Blanket Exercise

School division staff get a lesson in Indigenous history

Dec 16, 2019 | 2:31 PM

The division staff at Northwest No. 203 school board received an educational exercise in Indigenous culture and history.

The school board engaged in the Kairos program exercises which, according to their website, is committed to developing a new relationship with Indigenous peoples in Canada and around the globe. The relationship is grounded on mutual respect, equity and the full realization of Indigenous peoples’ rights.

Terry Craig, superintendant of the board, administered the Kairos Blanket Exercise to a group of approximately 40 members of staff for their first time on Dec. 12.

The exercise has participants walk on the blanket as if walking through the history of First Nations peoples. Each blanket segment represents a specific land or territory, and historical situation.

“We deal with Indigenous people every day as a staff, whether it’s our councillors, front desk people or purchasing people. We all deal with Indigenous people all the time. It’s an empathy or an understanding. Not that you have to have that but it doesn’t hurt,” Craig told meadowlakeNOW.

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Elder and Indigenous educator Sid Fiddler spoke at the meeting.

“It always good for me to see this in action. I support it. It’s a good tool to create awareness and conversation that we need to have. To have our institutions respond in a healthy way,” Fiddler said to the crowd after participating in the program.

Northwest teachers and Grades 4 and 9 students have learned the Kairo program over the last four years.

“Its part of our continuous learning that we’re trying to do as a division,” Duane Hauk, director of the school board, said.

Terry Craig, who administers the exercise, says a group of united churches developed the program intended to form a new relationship with Indigenous peoples in Canada and around the globe, based on mutual respect, equity and the full realization of Indigenous peoples’ rights.

“Staff are now trained to facilitate this,” he said.

Powerful and emotional images and video footage documenting the ’60s Scoop, residential schools and painful testimony from survivors.

This is in addition to improvements in indigenous education over the past several years.