More book-devouring...

We began the day with a beautiful sunrise seen from the VIU campus. That’s the second Canadian university situated in a picturesque environs – it makes us supremely jealous! :P Not to mention the wild rabbits hopping about the parking lot. If only Sosnowiec was a bit prettier…

Another Shot of the VIU Campus.

The first class of the day was taught by Laura Cranmer, whom we met a couple of days earlier at the Colloquium. It was a lecture on Aboriginal Communities, and it opened with a prayer in the Kwakwala language, which we didn’t expect, so it came as a bit of a surprise. The classes in the First Nations program here at VIU are very hands on – usually there is a First Nations Elder assisting the lecturer and providing his or her knowledge for the benefit of the students. This particular class was a discussion of Eden Robinson’s Monkey Beach, a novel by an Aboriginal author, addressing contentious issues of the First Nation communities in Canada, among them the trauma of residential schools.

A View from Sugarloaf Mountain Park Situated Not Far From Where We Live.

Afterwards, we spent some more time at the library, salivating over countless books, but we only had a couple of hours before we had to go to another class, this one about theoretical approach to first nations studies. Turns out the group had already moved on from the theoretical part and onto the practical, and they were working on their final projects. The lecturer was very accommodating, though, and she showed us a lot of examples of performance art created by Aboriginal authors.