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Grades 7-9 Teaching Supports

Wela'liek/Thank you for observing Orange Shirt Day and the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.

Discussing the residential school system will evoke emotional responses from both students and teachers. It is important that the cognitive and emotional development of your students be considered and respected when choosing resources and information to be shared. As a support, we suggest the following:

Again, wela'liek/thank you for your participation and commitment to Truth and Reconciliation, actively ensuring that 'Every Child Matters'. If you have questions or comments, please reach out to your region's Mi'kmaw Education Coordinator or email Mi'kmaw Services Branch at MIKMAQSERVICES@novascotia.ca

Select a Focus Area:

Focus: The Truth

Teachers of grades 5 to 12 are encouraged explore Truth and Reconciliation resources, organized by the National Centre of Truth and Reconciliation (NCTR). This link takes you right to the page with the free resources for educators.

Truth and Reconciliation Week - NCTR

While the truth that needs to be told and learned about Canada's shared history with Indigenous peoples begins with colonization, the focus of this packet is on Canada's residential school system and

Truth: Context for Teachers

Refer to the following folders in this link in support of building your own knowledge about the residential school system in Canada and about Shubenacadie Residential School in Nova Scotia:

Truth: Activation of Prior Knowledge

Invite students to begin the conversation about residential school.

The following prompts may be used to facilitate continued discussion, to identify areas in need of more information, and to pose questions for further study:

Truth: Suggested Learning Experiences

Propaganda Versus Truth

*Please preview all videos in advance of sharing with students. Some videos include content and images that are likely to evoke an emotional response.

Share and discuss with students the following promotional video from 1955: Residential schools promotional video (2m37s) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_V4d7sXoqU

Share and discuss with students your selections from the videos that follow. Below are a number of short videos (most between 3 and 5 minutes long), all speaking to residential schools and survivor stories, countering the positive messaging of the government public service advert of 1955. Teachers are asked to preview all and, using their professional judgment, select to share any number of the videos below to broaden students' understanding of residential school. To help with planning, the length of each video is found at the end of the title/description.

Discuss the contrast between the images and messaging of each video in comparison to the propaganda video from 1955.

Discuss the importance of critical viewing in terms of bias, perspective, and the importance of analysing motives with regards to the propaganda video.

What role does learning the truth about residential schools play in Canada's goal for reconciliation?

Follow-Up Activity

Students work in small groups to design a wordle or tagzedo that tells others the truths of residential schools. Visit CBC Kids and assess its approach to sharing “news” of the unmarked graves to younger children. https://www.cbc.ca/kidsnews/post/751-unmarked-graves-found-at-former-saskatchewan-residential-school

Focus Resilience: Context for Teachers

Refer to the following folders in this link in support of building your own knowledge about the residential school system in Canada and about Shubenacadie Residential School in Nova Scotia:

Resilience: Pre-teaching Vocabulary

Tuberculosis (TB):
An infectious disease that affects the lungs, making it hard to breathe
resilience:
in this context, the ability for Indigenous peoples to persevere, survive, and overcome the impacts of colonization and the multitude of government-driven policies and systems, including residential schools, and to thrive despite the barriers, trauma, and ongoing challenges in multiple forms
Synonyms: strength; resistance; survival

Resilience

Facilitate conversations that help students fully grasp the concept of resilience and its connection to the residential school experience.

Suggested Learning: Ma'kit's Doll (pronounced MAW-git, said with a “hard g”)

Suggested Learning Experience: Ma'kit's Doll

Ma'kit Poulette was one of the many Mi'kmaw children from Nova Scotia who went to Shubenacadie Residential School. Although the Canadian government stated that attendance was mandatory for children ages 7 to 18, many children were much younger, including Ma'kit who was 3 years old. Ma'kit's story is another story of loss but also one of resilience. After her beloved doll was cruelly taken from her, Ma'kit created a new doll to keep her company. The locally made documentary about Ma'kit's experience will provide pre-teaching details to help plan learning experiences for students.

Ma'kit's is a story of loss, not limited to the loss of her doll. Loss was a common thread among the many who went to residential schools throughout Canada — loss of belongings, cultural traditions and language, family and loved ones, and self-identity. On Orange Shirt Day, we remember those young students who lost so much through the residential school system, including over 3000 children who experienced the ultimate loss, that being loss of life. (NOTE: More recent sources estimate the number of deaths at over 6000.)

Watch and discuss “Magit's Doll” (11m23s). (Note: Proper spelling is Ma'kit.) Ma'kit's story is the subject of The Elder Youth Story Exchange Program https://vimeo.com/143251875

Follow-up Activities and Discussion

Resilience: Context for Teachers

Pi'kun Poulette: ECMA Award-Winning Song Forgiveness

Refer to the following folders in this link in support of building your own knowledge about the residential school system in Canada and about Shubenacadie Residential School in Nova Scotia:

Resilience Suggested Learning

Pre-teaching Vocabulary

Resilience:
in this context, the ability for Indigenous peoples to persevere, survive, and overcome the impacts of colonization and the multitude of government-driven policies and systems, including residential schools, and to thrive despite the barriers, trauma, and ongoing challenges in multiple forms
Synonyms: strength; resistance; survival

Suggested Learning: Examples of Resilience

Note that the personal and community examples of resilience of Indigenous peoples are many, including examples from survivors. Mi'kmaw survivors Pi'kun Poulette and Rita Joe are two such examples. Through their gifts of song and poetry, they spoke their truths to generations of Mi'kmaw and non-Indigenous Canadians and used the power of their resilience to influence generations to come.

Pi'kun Poulette: ECMA Award-Winning Song Forgiveness

youtube.com/watch?v=9rJon74KePg (3m15s)

Suggested Learning: Forgiveness by Pi'kun Poulette

Note that the personal and community examples of resilience of Indigenous peoples are many, including examples from survivors. Mi'kmaw survivors Pi'kun Poulette and Rita Joe are two such examples. Through their gifts of song and poetry, they spoke their truths to generations of Mi'kmaw and non-Indigenous Canadians and used the power of their resilience to influence generations to come.

Pi'kun Poulette: ECMA Award-Winning Song Forgiveness

Forgiveness by Pi'kun Poulette with Morning Star

They put me in a residential school when I was six years old
Forced me from my family and all I'd ever known
I cried out for my Momma - but she could not hear me
I was two hundred miles away in Shubenacadie
They tried to break my spirit - I wouldn't let them see me cry
They held my head under water until I almost died
I can still hear the screaming deep inside of me
And I will always bear the scars of Shubenacadie
I learned how to hate and I learned how to fight
And love had no room in my heart of stone
Apiksiktuaqn etamuloq (forgiveness I am asking)
To find love I had to forgive
With forgiveness I found love again
Now I've found forgiveness and I can hold me head up high
Mi'kmaq I am and Mi'kmaq I'll die
The wisdom of the elders helped set my heart free
From the sins of the residential school in Shubenacadie
I learned how to hate and I learned how to fight
And love had no room in my heart of stone
Apiksiktuaqn etamuloq (forgiveness I am asking)
To find love I had to forgive
With forgiveness I found love again
I learned how to hate and I learned how to fight
And love had no room in my heart of stone
Apiksiktuaqn etamuloq (forgiveness I am asking)
To find love I had to forgive
With forgiveness I found love again
With forgiveness I found love

Pi'kun Poulette was from the Mi’kmaw community of Eskasoni . He was a member of the band Morning Star and won an East Coast Music Award (ECMA) for Forgiveness, a song about his experience in residential school and his journey to forgiveness. Pi'kun Poulette passed away in 2013. He left the gift of his music and, in particular, his song Forgiveness to help other Mi'kmaq survivors of residential school with their healing.

Suggested Learning: Rita Joe - I Lost My Talk

Read I Lost My Talk aloud to students. Mention it is written by a residential school survivor. Have students choose a word or phrase that held meaning for them and explain its significance for them and, as best they can, for Rita Joe. Listen/Look/Learn from music videos and other media presentations about Rita Joe.

I Lost My Talk

I lost my talk
The talk you took away.
When I was a little girl

At Shubenacadie school.

You snatched it away:
I speak like you
I think like you
I create like you
The scrambled ballad, about my word.

Two ways I talk
Both ways I say,
Your way is more powerful.

So gently I offer my hand and ask,
Let me find my talk
So I can teach you about me.

Familiarize students with the following references:

Rita Joe's Legacy

As a class, read Rita Joe's obituary to get closer to seeing Rita Joe for who she was. Identify 3 pre-selected phrases in the obituary for students to highlight, or they can select their own. Talk, write, or draw its connection to Rita Joes' legacy. Students may also view “I Lost My Talk” Rita Joe Biography (10m 39s) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJByYl9HO3M

Two of Rita Joe's poems are included in her obituary. Read one or both and talk about the meaning Rita Joe may have “Without the language, we are warm bodies without a spirit.”

Rita Joe's Obituary

March 20, 2007
Rita Joe, Mi'kmaq poet
Born We'koqma'q / Whycocomagh, March 15, 1932; died Sydney, March 20, 2007

October Song, Rita Joe's last poem found on her typewriter.

“On the day I am blue,
I go again to the wood where the tree is swaying,
Arms touching you like a friend,
And the sound of the wind so alone like I am;
Whispers here, whispers there,
Come and just be my friend.”

One of Rita Joe's daughters once asked her about her ability to write poetry. “The words are floating through the air and I just catch them,” she replied. The gentle, soft-spoken Mi'kmaq poet's words touched many lives and brought her great acclaim and many honours, but she humbly described herself as a housewife with a dream to bring laughter “to the sad eyes of my people....”

Her journey from the reserve in Whycocomagh after she lost her mother at the age of five, included foster homes and the Shubenacadie residential school; lost years which she regretted in later life. “It was a time when you prepare for life, so that you're ready to face the world at 16,” says Murdena Marshall, a Mi'kmaq educator and long-time friend and confidant who lived near her home on Eskasoni First Nation. “She lamented in later life about missing those years, and poetry was a means of talking about it. But not in a mean way.”

An ability to convey her thoughts through words came early. Daughter Francis Sylliboy says that once, when she was asked by a nun and the principal at the Shubenacadie school where she got the words she had written on a piece of paper on her desk, Rita pointed to her head and her heart. Sister Dorothy Moore, a Mi'kmaq nun from Membertou First Nation, who along with Rita Joe was awarded the Order of Canada for her work as an educator, was at Shubenacadie School with her in 1943 and 1944 and remembers “a very gentle girl; you couldn't help but gravitate to her.”

She often used the poem I Lost My Talk (see next page) in her lectures to demonstrate how deeply the residential school experience touched young Mi'kmaq who often spent years away from their families and communities. Rita began writing poetry in the late 1960s, but she didn't tell her 13 children and her husband until her work was selected for an award. Her first book, Poems of Rita Joe was published in 1978. She published another six books of poetry and received several honourary degrees and an Indigenous Achievement Award for her work.

She wanted to portray her people in a positive way, says Francis. “She wanted to pass along the positive, gentle, loving image of the Indian....”

Note: Rita Joe died from complications due to Parkinson's disease. Despite the illness and its effects on muscle control, Rita Joe continued to write during her last days.

Follow-up Activities and Discussion

Rita Joe was named a gentle girl and called the “Gentle Warrior.” She was a survivor of her gentle war.

Suggested Learning: We Shall Remain by Kalolin
(pronounced GULL-oh-lin) Johnson

Introduce the video We Shall Remain. It is the second installment of the "ABMHS Song Project" from "Allison Bernard Memorial High School" in Eskasoni, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. It is written and sung by Kalolin (pronounced GAL-oh-lin) Johnson, a recent graduate of ABMHS.

Listen/Look/Learn while viewing Gentle Warrior. Discuss how the song relates to Rita Joe's message. Extension: Explore music, dance, video, and visual art as forms of expressive advocacy. Include performers and artists of Mi'kmaw and of other Indigenous ancestries. Explore ways to encourage youth to learn the Mi'kmaw language, thus, actively preserving it. Propose ideas that link language preservation to music, movement, and theatre.

Grow the concept of advocacy through response-led discussion to:

Every Child Matters: United Nations Rights of the Child

Orange Shirt Day is a day to honour the children who survived the residential school experience and a day to acknowledge the harm done by the residential school system to Indigenous children who were students.

It is a day to recognize how residential school system damaged each student's sense of self-worth, self-confidence, self-esteem and well-being. Orange Shirt Day is a day to affirm our commitment to ensure that everyone around us matters.

Every Child Matters
September 30th
orangeshirtday.org/

National Day for Truth and Reconciliation

Since 2013, September 30th has been observed as Orange Shirt Day, a phrase coined because of Phyllis Webstad, a survivor of St. Joseph Mission Residential School in British Columbia, having had her new orange shirt bought by her grandmother taken from her when she arrived at the school. It has become a symbol of the personal stories of the tens of thousands of Indigenous children taken from their families and communities, thousands of whom never were to return home.

YouTube.ca
Phyllis Webstad Orange Shirt Day Presentation

Beginning in 2021, September 30th will also be known in Canada as the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. Its name speaks to the importance of two necessary commitments all Canadians must make: to learn the truth about Canada's shared history with Indigenous peoples, including residential schools, and to act in ways that nurture ongoing relationships of Reconciliation.

Government of Canada
National Truth & Reconsiliation

Canadian Geographic
Canadian Geographic: Behind National Day for Truth & Reconciliation