By Sarah Rae

Students ditch phones to connect with nature

Jun 3, 2016 | 5:00 PM

It’s not every day a Grade 9 student is encouraged to wield a spear at school. But practical outdoor knowledge is what the Living Sky School Division’s land-based learning program is all about.

This week the Grade 9 students at Spiritwood High School spent four days at a remote part of Chitek Lake, accessed only by boat, learning skills like how to build shelters, identify plants for medicinal purposes, track and trap animals, and build fires.

Century Papequash built a spear and distractor to hunt rabbits. She learned the best time to hunt rabbits and crafted the spear and distractor herself with help from guides. She described how if hunting, she would throw the distractor, a stick with feathers on it, near the rabbit so it thinks an owl is hunting it and will stay low and still. Then it is easier to aim the spear since the rabbit isn’t moving as much.

She said it feels pretty cool to have actually crafted something and said she’s going to take some of the knowledge she’s gained home with her.

“I feel pretty useful. This was an opportunity that I’m glad I got to experience,” she said. “I feel like I’m going to remember everything here.”

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Ethel Stone, an elder from Mosquito First Nation and a member of the school division’s Board of Elders, helped guide students and share her knowledge during the program. She said it’s beautiful to watch the students learn and connect with each other and nature.

“We’re all cheering them on and the pride that they have in ‘yes, I’m the one who made that, I’m the one who’s done this, all me,’ that’s the pride they need in their lives,” she said.

Stone said she’s afraid of young people losing the ability to communicate face-to-face in favour of technology, so seeing the kids connect with each other rather than being on their phones was beautiful.

“From day one when they came in they were all sort of in separate little corners and then day two already you could tell they were starting to mingle and now today, everything was togetherness and that’s what they need, they need that communication,” she said.

The kids were allowed to use their phones, but most of them didn’t. They said there were so many other things to do they didn’t even miss checking their phones.

Apart from free time to swim, go for walks or other activities, the students worked on their inquiry projects. They worked on projects related to shelter, fire building, trapping, or medicinal plants. That means students built equipment like Papequash’s spear, or a bow and arrow. Some students made bow drills they could actually build fires with. A group made a shelter that was waterproof which one boy said he would sleep in that night.

Other students foraged for plants to make teas and use for other medicinal purposes.

Gitz Crazyboy, who was there for the week as a guide for students, taught them how to track and find blind spots. He said he saw students really immersing themselves in everything they were doing and the response was amazing.

“What kid, 14 or 15 years old wants to get up at 5:30 a.m., 5:45 a.m. to check snares or go do some tracking at six in the morning and then is eager to do it the next day, and the next day?” he said.

He added there’s a kind of magic to being on the land, that it really opens up a person’s senses.

“You’re always learning something,” he said. “There’s always something the land will have to teach you if you’re just willing to listen to it.”

Madison Francoeur, who studied medicinal plants for her project, said she’d be looking at the world around her differently when she goes home.

She picked plants like muskeg and horsetail and studied their benefits. She said even if those plants don’t grow near her house, she now knows what to look for.

“I hope I can use some of that knowledge, I mean for sure now that I know I can find things around where I’m living I’m going to try and maybe find other plants that I didn’t know about before and take some pictures, write things down,” she said.

Stone said this program had been a vision of hers for a long time, and is happy to have been part of its success for a few years now. She said bringing First Nations and non-First Nations students together to connect with each other and to the land is essential.

“I always wanted this togetherness because we live together on earth you know, there’s no need to be separate from each other because we’re all human, we’re as good as anybody, we’re all equal. That’s how we see it as First Nations,” she said.

Sarah.rae@jpbg.ca

@sarahjeanrae