The cold never stops kids as they bundle up to learn about Indigenous culture.
Grade 8’s from Bishop Lloyd, led by Derek Hyland, who teaches them a land-based cultural leadership program at Bishop Lloyd Middle School, went to Jack Kemp Community School to teach.
“Today’s a leadership day for us to run a bunch of different stations for students at Jack Kemp to learn a variety of different skills,” said Hyland.
The middle schoolers were on hand to teach a variety of programs.
“We have a variety of things from hide scraping to cooking over fire to smoking meat, snowshoeing, to a variety of different traditional games that are being played and some stuff around, like hides and paws and skulls and stuff,” said Hyland. “There’s even a mock ice fishing station out front.”
Hyland’s class gives back to the community by teaching what they’ve learned.
“Our Grade 8 class is a land-based outdoor class. We’re trying to get out and learn from the land, learn from elders and engage in the community but also engage in leadership opportunities,” he said.
Jack Kemp reached out to Hyland asking if the Grade 8 class would help them run the day.
“One of our big goals is to participate in the community, once we learn some things to give back and teaching the community and engage in the community as much as we can,” said Hyland.
The event also had some community partners helping teach.
“We have some community partners, the (Lloydminster Native) friendship centre is here running a station and some gentlemen from Kicksled YLL,” he said.
As set up was nearing completion kids flooded to the back and front of the school to begin taking part in various activities. One kid was thrilled.
“We’re learning about my culture,” yelled one eager kid.
An array of stations were set up, kids could take part in snow shoeing, meat smoking, Bannock making, learn from exhibits featuring hides and displays, hide scraping, kick sledding, and even ice fishing.
The Grade 8s were the ones teaching the Jack Kemp kids
“We planned out a day at Jack Kemp for teaching them the wilderness, things that we do in our class because we wanted to teach them about the things that we do,” said Grade 8 student Tason.
Grade 8 student Kate, who was also at the meat smoking station says smoking is one of the many things they learn about.
“Right now we are starting a fire so we can get up some smoking meat, that is one of the couple of things we do here, we hunt, we pull in our meat, we cook it, we smoke it however we want, it’s pretty fun,” she said.
When asked how they prepare to teach the answer was standing nearby.
“Well, we have Hyland and he’s very helpful, we usually kind of plan out the ideas we want to do with them, then we think of how we would do it and prepare it,” said Tason.
“We just talk it through,” Kate finished.
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