Winnipeg principal 'dumbfounded' after 4-metre teepee stolen from elementary school's lawn
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The principal of an East Kildonan elementary school says the theft of a teepee that was put up on the school's lawn has robbed its students of important land-based learning opportunities during National Indigenous History Month.
The four-metre-wide teepee was erected on Monday by a knowledge keeper who has a relationship with Angus McKay School, said principal Jean-Paul Rochon.
It was gone the next morning.
Rochon said the theft happened sometime between 11:30 p.m. on Monday and Tuesday morning, when school staff arrived.
"I'm still quite dumbfounded, because it would have taken a lot of effort to get that teepee down," Rochon said, adding that moving a teepee of that size and its heavy wooden poles would have likely required a large truck.
The teepee was supposed to stand on the lawn of the kindergarten to Grade 5 school for two weeks during June, which is National Indigenous History Month and includes National Indigenous Peoples Day on June 21, and was large enough to accommodate full classes of more than 20 students, Rochon said.
"If we're going to talk about learning from the land and learning about different cultures, it would be important to learn within the context of those pieces. So to have an actual teepee that the kids could go into as they talked about it, to be inside of a teepee, would have been extraordinary," he said.
He said another teepee has been set up in the school library, thanks to the knowledge keeper. It will stay there until the end of the month.
"We'll be able to still do some of those activities. It won't be out on the land, but at least we've not lost out on the opportunity of the actual physical teepee," Rochon said.
Winnipeg police confirmed to CBC News that a police report has been filed and officials are investigating. No further information has been provided.
Rochon said the school custodian checked in the wooded area behind the playground to see if anything had been left there, but found nothing.
The school hasn't heard anything about the teepee's whereabouts yet, he said.
'Like it had vanished': parent
Parent Chelsea Dyck, whose two children go to Angus McKay, said the tight-knit and quiet community has been shocked and upset by the theft — and how quickly it happened.
"I didn't even know that the teepee had even been here until we got the email about the news that it had been stolen. It got put up, and the next morning it was like it had vanished," she said.
She said parents and community members are shaken by the fact that someone would steal something so large and culturally significant from the lawn of an elementary school.
"This isn't the kind of thing you can just tuck under your jacket and walk off with," Dyck said.
Kelli Johnson, whose two children also attend the school, said many of the houses in the area have doorbell cameras, but many face away from the street and likely wouldn't have video of the crime.
"It's not just some petty vandalism. It's got to be something that must have been planned," Johnson said.
She said it's disappointing to lose both the teepee and the learning experiences that students would have had inside it.
"I think being in that teepee would have been a really awesome experience for the children of Angus McKay," Johnson said.
CBC News was not able to contact the knowledge keeper who works with the school as of Wednesday.
Learning teepee stolen from front lawn of Winnipeg elementary school
12 hours ago
Duration 2:07
Staff at Angus McKay School are surprised after a four-metre-wide teepee on the school's front lawn disappeared without a trace. The teepee was to be used for lessons around the summer solstice and National Indigenous Peoples Day on June 21. Now that it's missing, educators at the northeast Winnipeg school are making different plans.
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