Latest news with #Cree
Globe and Mail
11 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Globe and Mail
How The Matriarch tackled trauma in the wrestling ring
Sage Morin's life changed on May 19, 2013. A tragedy altered her family forever, and Sage was left to pick up the pieces, all while navigating her own deep grief and a complicated legal system. More than a decade later, the trauma of her loss has become a badge of resilience and healing. Sage's transformation is literal: She enters a wrestling ring, donning the character of a proud Cree fighter, inspiring a new generation of Indigenous youth. Jana G. Pruden, feature writer for The Globe, tells the story of Sage and her rebirth into The Matriarch. Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at thedecibel@
Canada Standard
3 days ago
- Politics
- Canada Standard
Decolonizing history and social studies curricula has a long way to go in Canada
In June 2015, 10 years ago, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) called for curriculum on Indigenous histories and contemporary contributions to Canada to foster intercultural understanding, empathy and respect. This was the focus of calls to action Nos. 62 to 65. As education scholars, we are part of a project supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council called Thinking Historically for Canada's Future. This project involves researchers, educators and partner organizations from across Canada, including Indigenous and non-Indigenous team members. As part of this work, we examined Canadian history and social studies curricula in elementary, middle and secondary schools with the aim of understanding how they address - and may better address in future - the need for decolonization. We found that although steps have been made towards decolonizing history curricula in Canada, there is still a long way to go. These curricula must do far more to challenge dominant narratives, prompt students to critically reflect on their identities and value Indigenous world views. Read more: Looking for Indigenous history? 'Shekon Neechie' website recentres Indigenous perspectives As white settler scholars and educators, we acknowledge our responsibility to unlearn colonial ways of being and learn how to further decolonization in Canada. In approaching this study, we began by listening to Indigenous scholars, such as Cree scholar Dwayne Donald. Donald and other scholars call for reimagining curriculum through unlearning colonialism and renewing relationships. Read more: Leaked Alberta school curriculum in urgent need of guidance from Indigenous wisdom teachings The late education scholar Michael Marker, a member of the Lummi Nation, suggested that in history education, renewing relations involves learning from Indigenous understandings of the past, situated within local meanings of time and place. Curricula across Canada have been updated in the last 10 years to include teaching about treaties, Indian Residential Schools and the cultures, perspectives and experiences of Indigenous Peoples over time. Thanks primarily to the work of Indigenous scholars and educators, including Donald, Marker, Mi'kmaw educator Marie Battiste, Anishinaabe scholar Nicole Bell and others, some public school educators are attentive to land-based learning and the importance of oral history. But these teachings are, for the most part, ad hoc and not supported by provincial curriculum mandates. Our study revealed that most provincial history curricula are still focused on colonial narratives that centre settler histories and emphasize "progress" over time. Curricula are largely inattentive to critical understandings of white settler power and to Indigenous ways of knowing and being. Notably, we do not include the three territories in this statement. Most of the territorial history curricula have been co-created with local Indigenous communities, and stand out with regard to decolonization. For example, in Nunavut's Grade 5 curriculum, the importance of local knowledge tied to the land is highlighted throughout. There are learning expectations related to survival skills and ecological knowledge. Members of our broader research team are dedicated to analyzing curricula in Nunavut, the Northwest Territories and the Yukon. Their work may offer approaches to be adapted for other educational contexts. In contrast, we found that provincial curricula often reinforce dominant historical narratives, especially surrounding colonialism. Some documents use the term "the history," implying a singular history of Canada (for example, Manitoba's Grade 6 curriculum). Historical content, examples and guiding questions are predominantly written from a Euro-western perspective, while minimizing racialized identities and community histories. In particular, curricula often ignore illustrations of Indigenous agency and experience. Read more: Moving beyond Black history month towards inclusive histories in Quebec secondary schools Most curricula primarily situate Indigenous Peoples in the past, without substantial consideration for present-day implications of settler colonialism, as well as Indigenous agency and experiences today. For example, in British Columbia's Grade 4 curriculum, there are lengthy discussions of the harms of colonization in the past. Yet, there is no mention of the ongoing impacts of settler colonialism or the need to engage in decolonization today. To disrupt these dominant narratives, we recommend that history curricula should critically discuss the ongoing impacts of settler colonialism, while centring stories of Indigenous resistance and survival over time. There are also missed opportunities within history curricula when it comes to critical discussions around identity, including systemic marginalization or privilege. Who we are informs how we understand history, but curricula largely does not prompt student reflection in these ways, including around treaty relationships. In Saskatchewan's Grade 5 curriculum, students are expected to explain what treaties are and "affirm that all Saskatchewan residents are Treaty people." However, there is no mention of students considering how their own backgrounds, identities, values and experiences shape their understandings of and responsibilities for treaties. Yet these discussions are essential for engaging students in considering the legacies of colonialism and how they may act to redress those legacies. A key learning outcome could involve students becoming more aware of how their own personal and community histories inform their historical understandings and reconciliation commitments. History curricula generally ignore Indigenous ways of knowing and being. Most curricula are inattentive to Indigenous oral traditions, conceptions of time, local contexts and relationships with other species and the environment. Instead, these documents reflect Euro-western, settler colonial worldviews and educational values. For example, history curricula overwhelmingly ignore local meanings of time and place, while failing to encourage opportunities for land-based and experiential learning. In Prince Edward Island's Grade 12 curriculum, the documents expect that students will "demonstrate an understanding of the interactions among people, places and the environment." While this may seem promising, environmental histories in this curriculum and others uphold capitalist world views by focusing on resource extraction and economic progress. To disrupt settler colonial relationships with the land and empower youth as environmental stewards, we support reframing history curricula in ways that are attentive to Indigenous ways of knowing the past and relations with other people, beings and the land. Schools have been, and continue to be, harmful spaces for many Indigenous communities, and various aspects of our schooling beg questions about how well-served both Indigenous and non-Indigenous students are for meeting current and future challenges. If, as a society, we accept the premise that the transformation of current curricular expectations is possible for schools, then more substantive engagement is required in working toward decolonization. Decolonizing curricula is a long-term, challenging process that requires consideration of many things: who sits on curriculum writing teams; the resources allocated to supporting curricular reform; broader school or board-wide policies; and ways of teaching that support reconciliation. We encourage history curriculum writing teams to take up these recommendations as part of a broader commitment to reconciliation. While not exhaustive, recommendations for curricular reform are a critical step in the future redesign of history curricula. The goal is a history education committed to listening and learning from Indigenous communities to build more inclusive national stories of the past, and into the future.
CBC
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- CBC
Chyana Marie Sage crafts a memoir steeped in Indigenous tradition and a strong sense of empathy
Chyana Marie Sage's memoir, Soft As Bones, is her quest to better understand the childhood trauma and abuse that scarred her family. It's also a tapestry of poetry, history, Cree language, traditional ceremony and folklore — and delves into her experiences and those of her family with compassion and strength. "Writing this book has been the most cathartic experience of my life," said Sage on Bookends with Mattea Roach. "Healing is a lifelong journey and it never ends and we're continually growing. But writing this book allowed me to release, to process and release so much that was stored up in my nervous system." Sage is a Cree, Métis and Salish writer from Edmonton who is now based in New York. She joined Roach to share the catharsis she felt from writing about painful memories and the care she took to portray everyone with empathy. Soft As Bones is a phrase that I understand has been part of your life for a few years now. It's your Instagram handle. It's the name of your YouTube channel and now the name of this book. What do those three words mean to you? Soft As Bones is this phrase that came to me and this was years before the book was the book. I was living in London, Ont. at the time and I was sitting there just having my morning tea. Then, in my head, came the words "soft as bones." I sat with it and I ruminated on it and it kind of encapsulates my philosophy on human beings, like specifically Indigenous folks, but really all people. It's this idea that we are equal parts strength as much as we are delicate and fragile, because our bones are our foundation, they're our building blocks. They're very strong. They give us the capability to stand and give us structure, but yet they can also break very easily. However, they also have immense capacity for healing as well. I just think it's this beautiful metaphor for us as human beings, like holding space for us to be strong as much as we are fragile, and allowing those to coexist together. In the second section of the book, you share a lot about your mom's back story and her own struggles when she was growing up. What did you want readers to know about your mom? How could I write this story without her and her voice and her experience? Because I needed to go back into the past, and not just my own past, but all of our past to to understand how all of our stories came together and and how what happened in our family unit unfolded. Because on paper, you can look at a fact and think, "Well, oh my God, my mom fell in love with the guy that was in prison. Of course, this wasn't going to go well, right?" And you can insert all of these judgments for what a terrible decision or this and that. But life is not that simple. Life is not black and white. And so I wanted to not just write, "OK, my mom fell in love with this charming man in prison, but it was how does one get to that point?" I tried my best to do this with everyone in the book, but I really want people to understand the full scope of the person because we are not just the bad things we do. We are so much more than that. I really wanted to do everybody justice, especially my mother, so readers could understand where she was at, mentally, in all of that. One of the other things that you do in the second section of the book is you weave this story of your mom's teen years and that of your own teen years with the eight stages of a drum making ceremony that you attended when you were 14. What was important about that ceremony for you as a young person? Oh, so much. It's an honour to be able to make your own drum. It's not something that everybody gets to do, even if you're Native. It's like a coming of age thing, right? So now my time has come and I get to make this drum. And when you're making this drum, you're so connected to, A, everyone that's there, the elder that's leading it, and B, you really feel connected to your entire ancestry. As much as there is a lot of difficulty in this memoir, it was really important to me to capture a lot of the beauty of my culture. The history and the importance of that is so strong because I just think about my family members who were not allowed to do that. And I'm not talking about my ancestors, I'm talking about my family members. I'm talking about my grandparents. I'm talking about my aunts and uncles who were in residential schools who are still alive today. For me to be able to do that and have that ceremony was just a very emotional and powerful experience, even if at the time, at 14, you don't feel the scope of it then, but you know that it's special and you know that you're grateful for it. It felt like such a celebration and a moment of beauty. Because as much as there is a lot of difficulty in this memoir, it was really important to me to capture a lot of the beauty of my culture because there is so much beauty and love and healing and connection in my culture. I wanted to share a little bit of that with the rest of the world.
Globe and Mail
4 days ago
- Globe and Mail
Wildfires are devastating northern Saskatchewan – a place too often ignored by the rest of the country
Bill Waiser is the author of A World We Have Lost: Saskatchewan Before 1905, which won the Governor General's Literary Award for Non-Fiction. The out-of-control wildfires raging across northern Saskatchewan have introduced Canadians to a part of the country they may have believed was largely empty. In fact, even people living in the southern part of Saskatchewan view it as the great unknown – or, as provincial cabinet minister Joe Phelps once called it, 'another country altogether.' But northern Saskatchewan matters. It could even be argued that the history of the province has northern beginnings. When the province was carved out of the North-West Territories in 1905, the northern boundary was set at the 60th parallel. That meant that more than half of the new province featured a heavy, mixed-wood forest and thousands of bodies of water, including several large lakes. Saskatchewan's geographical centre at Molanosa, an acronym for 'Montreal Lake, Northern Saskatchewan,' was about 160 kilometres north of the city of Prince Albert, well into the boreal forest. Half of Saskatchewan residents who were forced to flee wildfires can return home this week What's the difference between an evacuation alert and an evacuation order in Canada? The Cree and Dene, who had lived in the region for millennia, were a resourceful, resilient people who adjusted to the arrival of the European fur trade in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. The first contact between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples happened in northern Saskatchewan. All major settlements in Saskatchewan were once in the north. Cumberland House, Reindeer Lake (Southend), Lac La Ronge, Pelican Narrows, Green Lake, Île-à-la-Crosse, Buffalo Narrows, La Loche, and Fond du Lac all began as fur-trade communities. Many Saskatchewan residents today would be hard-pressed to locate them on a map. By the mid-19th century, a distinct society – one based on hunting and trapping and centred around water-based communities with a trading post and sometimes a mission – had taken shape in northern Saskatchewan. It was largely Indigenous in makeup. It was also separated from the prairie south. The major trade route ran east to west from Cumberland House up along the Churchill River through Île-à-la-Crosse and Portage La Loche to Fort Chipewyan and the Mackenzie River. The region's isolation would become more pronounced in the early 1880s, when the Canadian Pacific Railway was built west from Winnipeg through Regina and Calgary. Settlement and development were largely restricted to the wheat farming on the southern prairies. Northern First Nation and Métis peoples, as vestiges of the old fur trade west, had no part in Saskatchewan's future. That certainly appeared to be the case according to the 1906 western census: less than one per cent of Saskatchewan's population lived in the north. The Saskatchewan government's gaze consequently rarely extended to the north, where it gladly abdicated any meaningful presence in favour of the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Hudson's Bay Company. It wasn't until after the Second World War that northern Saskatchewan and its rich and diverse natural resources came to be part of provincial post-war development plans. The Great Depression had staggered Saskatchewan because of its overdependence on agriculture, and after the war, the government began to look for ways to diversify the economy to try to make it less vulnerable. Northern forestry and mining were part of the new Saskatchewan in the latter half of the 20th century, but northern Indigenous peoples initially played little to no role in these resource industries. In effect, there were two northern societies: one that was white and well-off, and another that was Indigenous and poor. This colonialism extended to the provincial government. Saskatchewan may complain about a distant, insensitive Ottawa, but Regina acted much like an imperial government in the province's north. Today, Indigenous peoples are playing an increasingly larger role in new economic development. At the same time, many continue to pursue a traditional lifestyle and practise their cultural traditions as best they can. Theirs is a unique way of life with its own rhythm, centred on the land and water. Indeed, some have never left their home community – at least, up until now, when wildfires have turned them into refugees. People have complained about the wildfire smoke that has drifted southward and made outside activity difficult, if not dangerous. But spare a thought to the thousands who fled on short notice, forced to leave behind a world that has meant so much to them for generations. Thousands have begun to return, but others may not be back for some time, not knowing what the fires will have destroyed. And it will take longer to rebuild what they have lost. That's why the largely Indigenous firefighting crews have battled so hard to save what they can. For Canadians, especially those living in Saskatchewan, this may be 'another country altogether' – but for so many displaced people, it's home.
Time of India
5 days ago
- Politics
- Time of India
Calgary erupts as protesters flood streets of Calgary with fury over Kashmir, Gaza, climate, and Trump while G7 leaders meet in mountain resort
As G7 leaders convened in Kananaskis, Calgary became a hub for diverse protests, with over 400 demonstrators advocating for global issues like Kashmiri self-determination, Ethiopian peace, climate action, and Indigenous rights. The marches disrupted downtown Calgary, leading to temporary road closures and some delays for emergency services, prompting a police review despite overall cooperation from participants. Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads Environmental and indigenous concerns Calgary Police takes charge While G7 leaders gathered in the mountain resort of Kananaskis to discuss global trade, security, and climate policies, the streets of Calgary , just 100 kilometers east, became the stage for a chorus of voices demanding to be 400 protesters assembled near Calgary's City Hall, rallying for causes that spanned continents, including Kashmir, Ethiopia, Gaza climate justice , Indigenous rights, and opposition to US President Donald Trump . Demonstrators turned downtown Calgary into a global forum of its own.'We are here to protest for justice and peace for Kashmir,' said Majid Ishfaq, a community organizer with Calgary's Kashmiri diaspora. 'Kashmir is a flashpoint right now between the three nuclear powers, India, Pakistan, and China. We are urging the G7 countries to include our conflict in their agenda.'Nearby, Kidane Sinkie, president of the Amhara Association of Calgary, held signs denouncing the ongoing violence in Ethiopia. 'Leaders know everything that is going on. The point is, they don't act. We want to show how serious this is.'Amanda Gillis, standing beneath a banner opposing coal mining in Alberta's Eastern Slopes, made a dual statement. 'We've got to stand with people that want democracy and not fascism,' she said, referencing Trump's re-emergence in US politics. 'We also don't agree with Danielle Smith ignoring 77 percent of Albertans who said they do not want coal mining in our Eastern Slopes. It's going to hurt our water.'Several demonstrators, including youth climate activists from Fridays for the Future, voiced their opposition to fossil fuel expansion, which they say disproportionately harms Indigenous territories and violates Canada's environmental commitments.'We're doing the counter-summit for the G7,' said Cynthia Tahhan, holding a handmade placard. 'We're here to protest environmental degradation, especially by oil and gas corporations, and the destruction of traditional Indigenous lands.'Josie Augr, a Cree woman from Bigstone First Nation, stood quietly with her daughters, holding a sign that read: 'Water Is Life. No More Broken Promises.' 'Our people still have to boil water in 2025,' she said. 'The G7 talks about global cooperation. What about here?'Calgary police were forced to shut down parts of downtown, including Macleod Trail and the Fourth Avenue Flyover, as marchers wove their way through the city. The police later confirmed that while most protests were peaceful, some disrupted emergency services, including two fire department calls that were delayed due to the unexpected redirection of the march.'We will be reviewing all evidence gathered today to determine if any further action is required,' said Calgary Police in a statement. 'That said, the general willingness of participants to cooperate was much appreciated.'At one point, police said 'two calls for service for Calgary Fire Department were impacted' by a wandering demonstration that was eventually caught up to and the G7 is taking place behind tight security in the Rocky Mountains, designated protest zones were arranged in Calgary and Banff to ensure demonstrators could still voice their concerns. Still, many activists criticized the inaccessibility of the summit reported that no active protests were seen at Calgary International Airport's designated demonstration area, just plane spotters with cameras.
