Chapter 10: Building Relationships as a Basis for Reconciliation: The Prairie Spirit Journey

At a Land-Based Education Camp

We found this narrative to be a powerful illustration of how learners, from different cultural backgrounds who are discovering how to be in relationship with one another, learn by observation and as they are invited to engage by the Elder and his drum. This chapter traces the beginning of a journey toward the renewal of relationships first formed centuries ago, promoted and nurtured by positive leadership in a central Saskatchewan school division. Prairie Spirit School Division (henceforth, Prairie Spirit), spans some 15,000 square kilometres, serves 12,000 students, rural and urban, and employs 650 teachers. The Prairie Spirit learning community acknowledges that they gather and learn on Treaty Six Territory, traditional and ancestral lands of First Nations people, including the Cree, Dene, Nakota, Saulteaux and Anishinaabe, and on the homeland of the Métis Nation. This acknowledgement includes the attestation of their responsibility to educate learners about Indigenous peoples’ culture, language, traditions and history, to include the devastating influences of colonization, and to move forward in the spirit of reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples of Canada. Authentic relationships are being built amongst Indigenous and non-Indigenous individuals and communities in Prairie Spirit through education, with the goal that all learners will flourish.