First Nations Program - Yearend Celebration

Laura Cranmer invited us today to the First Nations Studies’ Yearend Celebration. It was unlike any such event we have ever participated in. First of all, it opened with a song and a prayer said by the Elders in Residence, blessing all the guests and thanking the Snuneymuxw for giving permission to hold the celebration on their territory. All participants were required to stand up and many held up their hands in prayer and thanksgiving. After the official beginning of the celebration, Louise Mandell, the honoured guest speaker, gave a lecture about her involvement in the Aboriginal Rights movement and about the legal and political situation of First Nations in Canada. She spoke at length about the founding of the Assembly of First Nations and their 1980 manifesto in Ottawa entitled Declaration of First Nations, as well as the subsequent fight for treaty rights of Aboriginal Peoples. 

Songs with the Accompaniment of Drums.

Members of the Faculty with the Snuneymuxw Chief (second left).

 

After the lecture we attended a splendid feast in honour of the graduating students of the First Nations Program. The meal was followed by several aboriginal songs performed with the accompaniment of drums, as well as other cross-cultural performances courtesy of first year students of the program (a song from the Republic of South Africa and a dance from Japan, among others). Many thanks were expressed on behalf of lecturers, students, and the First Nations elders sharing their wisdom during classes. What was most heartwarming was the welcoming atmosphere that made the Yearend Celebration more like a family gathering rather than a university event. These extremely close bonds formed between the faculty and students is what sets the First Nations Program aside from other programs at Vancouver Island University and we felt very honoured to take a small part in their celebrations.

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.