Maple Creek

On the way home from Calgary, the car pretended to self-drive for a few minutes, right into Maple Creek for lunch.    I can no longer simply drive by this singular small town of just over two thousand people, having savoured its hospitality and fantastic food in July.   At that time,  I did know that Maple Creek is the Gateway to Cypress Hills and Fort Walsh.   What I didn’t know was that it’s a travel destination all on its own.

That iconic Saskatchewan July day, who knew we would head into Maple Creek from our home base on the highway, the EagleValley Campground, loaded onto the flatbed of a tow truck!  A two-week old starter started, but then wouldn’t stop.  That’s how it goes, sometimes.  The opportunity the misadventure disguised revealed itself about ten minutes later. 

Chicken Noodle Soup and House Roll at The Shop

My husband supervised the repairs in the garage, and I scooted into The Shop across the street just as the skies opened.  In Chef Jordyn Winzer’s Bakery / Deli, I settled in to wait out the storm and the breakdown with a cranberry-coconut cookie, a mug of coffee, books and my computer.   Not much time to read, though, as another RV breakdown victim sought refuge in the restaurant.  I can’t resist a French accent, however, and seized the opportunity for a conversation in French with a visitor from Quebec.  Not five minutes after his departure, a French-speaking family stopped by.  They were motorcycling to the Rockies, each parent with a teen behind them on the machine.  By the end of that stimulating exchange, the skies had cleared.   A container of roasted garlic carrot humus in hand, I headed to the garage to check in; just a few more minutes, and we’d be rolling, a new starter installed.

By then, supper was a logical next step, and the Star Café and Grill beckoned.  Featured in the Globe and Mailin January, the restaurant was at the top of our personal gotta-eat-there list.  It didn’t disappoint.  I had carmelized onion soup and lettuce wraps. With Cypress Hills rhubarb wine,  the light and flavourful meal refreshed and satisfied.  During our walk later, I made mental notes to stop at Country Lane Kitchens and Cowtown Kids Toy and Candy before our departure.  I continue to wonder how a town of approximately two thousand people can support a kitchen store and a toy / book store?  My own town more than twice the size doesn’t!

The next day, after visits to both businesses, I had even more questions.  Just a few steps into the store, I could tell that Country Lane Kitchens rivals any similar enterprise in a city.  When I spied a display of Bosch kitchen machines, I asked about the metal driver for the cookie paddles.  What?  They had them on hand?  Really?  I left with a driver and the cake paddles too, for the price of the driver and shipping online.  Country Lane Kitchens, too, would be added to our Calgary itinerary.

The two story half-block toy store is a child and grand-parent’s nirvana.  As I meandered  from the science experiments  through the games and the building toys, past the kites and the trucks, I wondered how I could have been oblivious to this treasure for so long.  No more.  Cowtown Kids Toy and Candy will be another regular stop.   

To celebrate our memorable three days in Maple Creek and Cypress Hills, we headed to the Rockin’ Horse Bar and Grill.   I didn’t want a heavy meal.  One of the chef’s specials that night was a small lasagne and salad, with lots of sauce, the description added.  So tempting!  But I never order pasta in a restaurant.  In the end, my decision to trust the description paid off in a delightful small oval dish of narrow lasagne noodles slathered in a robust marinara sauce, with a fresh salad on the side.  Another perfect meal for me. 

Thank you, Maple Creek, for a great three days in July and an energizing short pit stop a few days ago.  We’ve been extolling your hospitality and your treasures since we got back, and we’ll alter our travel routine to assure a stop in your special town.

Grassroots

"We almost lost our school," the volunteer tour guide adds, near the end of a fascinating ride on the Southern Prairie Railway at Ogema.   "We were down to 45 students.  And when you lose your school, there goes your community."

So, she continues, people  got together to brainstorm possible pathways.  They decided to lobby agribusinesses to see if one would set up near their town.  Success!  Filipino workers followed, with their families.  School enrolment is now at 145 students.  An ice-cream shop and a wellness spa have opened.  Further down main street is Solo Italia Pasta, relocated from Northern Italy, that makes wood-fired Neapolitan pizza available fresh on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, or frozen and ready to bake at home.   Great story here, combining travel, romance, and business opportunity.  Wow!  How inspiring!  All this has happened in Ogema, population 403 (2016 census)! 

"When you walk down Main St.," she concludes, bringing me back from my reverie as the train pulls into the station,  "remember to find the fire wall.  It was buit in 1915, after a fire destroyed a significant part of Main Street.  The brick came from the plant in Claybank."

The Claybank Brick Plant, as it happened, is our next day’s destination on our Southeast-Saskatchewan camping experience.     We head out from our home base at Dunnet Regional Park in Avonlea, a beautiful park nestled in a sheltered valley.  It boasts a concession booth, outdoor gathering spot, and a swimming pool in the final stages of renovation.  I notice many RV’s permanently installed on sites rented annually.  I’m surprised.  My surprise itself astonishes me.  This is a beautiful spot—peaceful, quiet, clean, friendly, restorative, a tribute to the community that works hard to maintain it.

We find the brick plant on an iconic July day, sunny, warm, the living skies living up to their name and reputation.  At the Bunkhouse Café and Gift Shop, we take advantage of the orientation video, and enjoy chats with other visitors.  The place buzzes with the chatter of a cycle group from Regina that’s just arrived.  A server brings the corn chowder and homemade Saskatoon pie to our corner table.  One hour until the tour.

Claybank brick, we learn, was a high quality product used nationally and internationally.  It faces the Gravelbourg Co-Cathedral as well as the Château Frontenac in Quebec City.   Its exceptional resistance to heat made it a wise choice for the launch pads at Cape Canaveral, Florida.  The tour guide is knowledgeable and patient with our questions, as we discover the fascinating process of brick making and details about the lives of the workers who lived and worked in this isolated spot.  The plant itself has hardly changed from its opening in 1914.  In fact, each year on Heritage Day, volunteers get the machinery moving again to demonstrate how the bricks were made.   For outdoor enthusiasts, hiking trails branch out from the plant into the clay canyons.  As the site has lost provincial grant money, support is critical to maintain this jewel of Saskatchewan history.

We move on to another home base outside Maple Creek.  From there, we head north on Highway 21 toward the Great Sandhills.   I’ve never been on this highway, I realize, a set-square perpendicular that pierces fields of startling yellow canola, flax showing off a blue hue as it ripens, green pastures dotted with watering holes and cattle, and  a brilliant blue canopy.     All the way to Leader, with only a small mid-way correction, the road heads straight north and the landscape replicates.   We encounter almost no traffic.  The isolation of farm families living in this area of the province overtakes the beauty of its vast panorama.  I thought I understood isolation, growing up in a hamlet of 100 people, but this expanse moves me, and I’m grateful.

At Leader, we turn eastward toward the access to the Sandhills, Sceptre.  The museum and interpretative centre testifies to the innovation and hard work of small-town folks.  Residents have transformed a circa 1960 school into a small town, with school room, hospital room, dentist’s office, police service, general store.   Detail is painstaking, and artefacts abound.  As we head down the grid road to the hills, we appreciate the solitude, and trust that we’ve interpreted the directions correctly.  In the parking area, we read about John Both, a rancher devoted to the sandhills.  No one should judge another person until you’ve walked in his boots, he said, and, to honor him, a arch of boots greets hikers on the trail to the hills.

What an experience!  Meandering through grid roads and secondary highways in southeast Saskatchewan in a 1978 camper van without air in +30 temperatures has reminded me of the challenges of life in what some might consider the middle of nowhere.  Thanks to this grassroots holiday, I can better understand and appreciate the issues, concerns, and delights that characterize life in this corner of our great province.

August 10

Until not that long ago, August 10 was just an ordinary special day.   Embued with elevated status because it is my husband’s birthday, it has always borne the accoutrements of celebration.

Birthdays have always been important in our family.   Gifts?  Not so much.  Time in celebration?  You bet.  I would make coconut cream pie, a favorite to anticipate this once in the year.  We would gather for a special meal around a dining room table set with the china and my mother's silver.  Often, guests would join the party.  To take advantage of summer, we might eat on the patio, linger over a mug of beer or a glass of wine with neighbours, while away the afternoon and evening chatting.   Now and then, we might change it up—a car show, supper on the lake in the city with friends or family.  In 2006, we had cake on the cliff on the isle of Capri.

From the get-go, my husband shared the August 10 magic with a a friend and neighbor, one year older.  That friendship has endured through the years.  Over the last decade, though, others have laid claim to August 10.   The daughter of our niece (and godchild) was born on August 10, as was our grandson’s cousin on his mother’s side.  When August 10 rolls around now, we think of three other people.

In the last five years, a shadow has tinted the aura around August 10.  People die on this day.  My godmother, Janine, died on August 10 in 2013.   The link to my tribute to her (August, 2013, Strength) is here.  Three years later, the director of education who first hired me (at the time, those individuals were called superintendents), an elegant and magnetic individual in his nineties, with a calm, reassuring manner, passed away on this very day.  At the request of his wife, I played and sang Ave Maria at his funeral, a significant musical stretch for me. 

Just this past August 10,  last week, Charlie, my husband’s music partner over the last three years, passed away.   An agressive and pervasive cancer claimed him only six weeks  after diagnosis.   A gifted musician with a mellow approach to life, generous in sharing his time and abilities, he was an ideal partner for Elmer.  Together, they brightened the days of countless individuals with limited opportunities to get around.  Just such an occasion at St. Paul’s Lutheran Home is described in my post, Teleportation (October, 2017).  In response to a request from the family for stories for Charlie’s grandchildren,  Elmer has written a moving elegy to Charlie.   Check it out in the preceding post.

Curious, isn’t it?  And there’s no explanation, either.     Astrological sources (more curiosity) indicate that August 10 is "an extremely potent time,"  and that the configuration represents "a form of a cold passage that one needs to go through to reach for the light of the Sun."  That’s interesting.   August 10 is known as a pathway to the sun, to the light.  In birth, the light of life, I imagine; in death, the light of the spirit, of eternal life with God, believers would say.

Right now, I’m thinking this coincidence of life events assures our connection to six very special people.  When August 10 rolls around, how can we not ask how the girls born on this day are doing? How can we not think of Elmer's childhood friend?  How can we not remember those close to us who passed away?  How can their lives not touch us deeply?

August 10 will continue to be a celebration of the lives of special individuals.  It’s just that a few of those individuals will be with us in spirit.

Charlie

Last week, Charlie Mintenko, my husband's musician partner during the last three years, passed away after a very brief but devastating illness.  Their musical collaboration evolved into a close friendship, and Elmer will miss Charlie on the personal level as much as on the musical level.

Charlie's family asked friends to send them stories about Charlie that they can tell his grandchildren.  Here is Elmer's tribute to Charlie, a fitting ode to a special man.


Dear grandchildren of Charlie Mintenko,

    I want you to know how very fortunate you are to have had your grandfather be part your life while he was with you. Know that he will continue to be with you for as long as you live. 

    I can say that with conviction because, although as a musician my life and his have crossed paths many times since the 1980's, it has been the last three years that he and I have had relatively exclusive time together doing gigs mostly as a two piece band.

    It's been said that one of the reasons farmers in Saskatchewan are so creative is that they spend so much time on a tractor with significant time to think of new ideas while they drive up and down working their fields. For musicians, a lot of sharing happens as we navigate the many roads all hours of the day or night to play our music.

    During this time together I developed a very deep appreciation of who your grandfather was. First of all he was a very good man. He was very quick to make friends, and once relationships were established he'd nourish them with hugs and humorous quips. He wouldn't allow negative experiences get him down. He would dismiss them as learning experiences and move forward from there deciding not to make the same mistake again. I believe that is one of the reasons he got along so well with people. He never held a grudge and was very quick to overlook any "indiscretions" directed toward him. His sense of humor was amazing and even if he told the same joke twice it was still funny. To say he was a talented musician would be an understatement. The thrill of playing with him in a two piece band was reinforced by the fact that his repertoire was amazing.  His instrumental competence was superb, and his stage presence exuded warmth and confidence. You can't beat a combination like that. 

    Music was only one of your grandfather's many talents. During one of our trips, I learned that he was a qualified electrician.  True to his nature, he shared his talent. I look around our house and I see a bathroom wired, electrical outlets installed in the garage and wiring installed on our deck all done by the knowledgeable skill of your grandfather. I also learned that as a result of his early employment he was a capable mechanic. My old Chevelle, my Camper van and small SUV never functioned so well as since your grandfather laid hands on these vehicles. Musicians tend to be significantly dependent on their electronic equipment to function efficiently. Once again your grandfather's creativity rescued electronic components which would have been abandoned by average technicians. The show would always go on because he made things happen.

    You are also very fortunate because your grandfather was a tremendous family man. We discussed many topics as we travelled. In addition to solving all the world's problems we spent significant time talking about family. Usually the impression is that it's the grandmothers who pull out the pictures and brag about grandchildren. Let me set the record straight. We grandfathers can hold our own. Your grandparents and my wife and I have grandchildren of similar ages and you can understand how significantly we delved into the topic. We agreed that we were very fortunate to have such wonderful wives, children and grandchildren.

      I have presented a mere fraction of the qualities that illustrate what a tremendous person your grandfather was. I congratulate you in being able to say you are his grandchildren. You have a tremendous model to inspire you as you go through life.

Elmer Beutel

Reproduced with permission.

Segue

 "You’re an orphan now," the pastoral worker said to me, as we sat with my father after he died.   I remember staring at her, confused.  I was fifty-eight years old.  I couldn’t consider myself an orphan.  Could I?  "Both your parents are gone now," she added.

I was heartbroken.  And unsettled in my heartbreak.  My father was one hundred years old.  He had been very ill for six months, and no longer lived with us.  His death was not unexpected.  It had just been unexpected that day.  I had collapsed at the side of the bed, holding his hand, saying, "I’m sorry.  I’m sorry."  I wasn’t there in his last moments. 

I always assumed I would be.    At seven in the morning of what would be his last day, when I popped in on the way to work, he was still sleeping.  His mouth was open and a little askew.  For a brief moment, I paused.  I thought of my mother on her last morning.   That day, though, I was only five minutes away.   When the call came for Papa, at eleven o’clock later that morning,  I was half an hour away plus organization time to advise the school administration and gather my things.  He had already passed when I hurtled into his room.    I was so profoundly shaken.  Guilt, I thought.    It must be guilt.  Maybe partly, on reflection.   In the end, though, guilt encrypted the real issue filed away in the subconscious.

The encryption code itself was innocuous.  Just a meme with the words, You look around and realize there is no shoulder for you to lean on.   I am an orphan.  I’m the child no longer.  I’m always the parent now,  the  Elder.  Parents listen to the stories, they encourage, they praise, they accept.  Their support is unconditional.  They are there in the beginning, and they know you in a way no one else ever will.   When they are gone, the torch passes. 

That means I’m the shoulder now.  The bulwark.  The person who listens, encourages, praises, supports.   It’s my turn.   My parents did it for me.  They modeled the role, and it’s up to me to pay it forward.  I am almost entirely comfortable with this.   Fortunately, being is more critical here than doing.  One question looms above all, though.  What about my own need for an interested and caring ear?  A compassionate and caring confidante is handy.  Should such a person not be available, though, I can manage with the equilibrium I've worked toward over the years.  The more I live, the more I read,  and the more I reflect, the more I’ve come to wonder if  core emtional strength isn’t  a basic component of the human design, a parallel track DNA, part of the package we’re born with, there to be uncovered, nurtured and honed with use throughout our lives.  We’re ready, then, with a mature solidity, when it’s our turn to be the bulwark.   My inner strength, my steel core,  is roused and active, primed for its role in this phase of my life. 

"You will weep and know why," the late-Victorian British poet Gerard Manley Hopkins says.   I wept, and I know why.  The segue in generational responsibility has occurred.  In his poem Margaret, Hopkins continues: 

Sorrow’s springs are the same.

Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed

What heart heard of, ghost guessed:

It is the blight man was born for,

 It is Margaret you mourn for.

The bulwark is our destiny.  It’s what we were born for, what’s been bequeathed to us.    Whether it’s a blight or not is up to us, I guess.  Still, a part of us will mourn "Margaret", our essential child self that passes along with our parents.

 

Watershed

My retired life has veered in the weeks I've been away.  In fact, the other day, I marked a watershed.  

I’ve let my subscription to Educational Leadership lapse.    The professional journal that has shaped my pedagogy for decades of my career as an educator will no longer be part of my life.  I’ve closed a door.  Well, maybe I’ve left it open just a crack to accommodate occasional stints in the classroom as a substitute teacher if I’m needed.  Still, the cancellation of my membership in the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, which publishes the periodical, does confirm the fork my life has taken in the past few years.

The signs have been there for a few years.  After I retired from the classroom, I kept up the professional reading as a consultant.  Now, though, since September, mostly disconnected from the education scene, I pile the periodicals, or worse, never remove the plastic.  The membership books, too, are stacked, spines uncreased, covers smooth, pages pristine.  Even worse, the titles don’t entice me any more.  Fostering Resilient Learners, or Hanging In: Strategies for Teaching the Students Who Challenge Us Most, or Authentic Learning in A Digital Age—in years past, these titles would have called me until I opened them up. 

It’s impossible to underestimate the influence this periodical has had on my professional growth.  When it arrived in the mail, I would pounce on it, primed to devour the morsels that would nourish me as a teacher.  I’d sit with it during breakfast, the cover folded under, highlighter in hand, post-its at the ready.  Not without considerable guilt, I’d shear off some lesson-planning time  to integrate the wise words of the pedagogy gurus.   

Among the nuggets all that professional reading gave me, I highlight

·  assessment, plain and simple, the fundamentals of assessment for learning and sound grading practices; 

·  the characteristics of star teachers to reflect on, all the more fascinating because I’ve never considered myself a part of any such group;

·  rich tasks, meaningful work for students, authentic processes that mirror the adult world;

·  the form and power of feedback;

·  coaching know-how;

·  communication tips;

·  mathematics games (see 2048).

Membership in the organization directed me to transformational books, some of which are:

·  Summarization in Any Subject by Rick Wormeli

·  Never Work Harder Than Your Students by Robyn Jackson

·  How to Create and Use Rubrics For Formative Assessment and Grading by  Susan Brookhart

·  Learning Targets by Connie Moss and Susan Brookhart

·  Totally Positive Teaching by Joseph Ciaccio

·  Grading Smarter Not Harder by Myron Dueck

Now, though, my reading record lists Ryan Holiday, Gregory Boyle, David Frum, Chris Hedges, John Ralston Saul, as well as some fiction, in both French and English.  It’s best, then, to read between the books and understand that I’m entering a new period in my life that’s not dominated by pedagogy.  Imagine.  A world where I’m not thinking 24/7 about how to create effective and differentiated learning situations.

The suprise might be that I’m good with that.  I don’t feel regret, or wistfulness, or nostalgia. I didn’t cry as I shredded the membership renewal notice, nor as I filed away the last EL issue, nor even as I transferred the recent ASCD books from my current library in my office to the book depository shelves downstairs.   I’ve veered off in a different direction.

Time to subscribe instead to the Folk-Harp Journal. 

Reconciliation: Actions

Reconciliation must be owned at a personal level.  So must it happen on a personal level.  In my last post, I promised some actions that you and I can take that contribute to reconciliation, as well as to our personal growth.  The suggestions, in blue font,  come from the document Strength for Climbing: Steps on the Journey of Reconciliation  published by Kairos (in French, La force d’escalader :  Des pas sur le chemin de laréconciliation).   Unless I have indicate otherwise, I have read the books and articles recommended here, and viewed the films and videos.

• ·  Reconnect with Indigenous ways of knowing.

Native Knowing: Larry Merculieff  (17 minutes)A video about keen observation, use of all five senses, and suspension of thought as a pathway to the language of nature.

• ·  Dig into the story of what happened to First Nations people in Saskatchewan and in Canada after contact.

Daschuk, James.  (2013).  Clearing the Plains: Disease, Politics of Starvation, and the Loss of Aboriginal Life.  Regina: U of R Press.   From the book cover:  In arresting, but harrowing prose, James Daschuk examines the roles that Old World diseases, climate, and, most disturbingly, Canadian politics—the politics of ethnocide—played in the deaths and subjugation of thousands of aboriginal people in the realization of Sir John A. Macdonald’s “National Dream.”

Daschuk, James.  (2015).  La destruction des Indiens des plaines : maladies, famines organisées, disparition du mode de vie autochtone.  Quebec : Presses Université Laval. En quelques années seulement, des milliers d'Autochtones sont morts; les survivants ont été réduits en sujétion. Dans cette ouvrage passionnante et bouleversante, James Daschuk analyse les causes de cet effroyable massacre : les maladies venues de l'Ancien Monde; les rigueurs du climat; mais surtout, la politique ethnocidaire du gouvernement canadien.Pour les premiers habitants des Plaines, le  « rêve national »  de Sir John A. Macdonald a tourné au cauchemar  (commentaire de Renaud-Bray).

King, Thomas.  (2012).  The Inconvenient Indian:  A Curious Account of Native People in North America.  Toronto:  Anchor Canada.
Thomas King offers a deeply knowing, darkly funny, unabashedly opinionated, and utterly unconventional account of Indian–White relations in North America since initial contact. (University of Minnesota Press)

Manuel, Arthur, et Derrickson, Ronald M.  (2015).  Unsettling Canada:  A National Wake-Up Call. Toronto:  Between the Lines.    Manuel and Derrickson write a history of the Indigenous peoples of British Columbia.  The authors describe their experiences growing up, as well as their roles as activists in the events that shaped the directions of relations with First Nations on the federal and provincial levels.  They are frank in their assessments, and provide singular perspectives and insights.  

Sakamoto, Mark.  (2014).  Forgiveness: A Gift From My Grandparents.
Toronto:  HarperCollins Canada.   
Disclaimer:  This book is in the mail.  I have not yet read it.  The 2018 Canada Reads winner,  this memoir, based on the suffering of the author’s grandparents during World War II, discusses the true meaning of forgiveness

Saul, John Ralston.  (2008).  My Fair Country:  Telling Truths About Canada.  Toronto:  Penguin. In this seminal must-read, the author provides a unique perspective on Canada.  Canada is a Métis nation, he says, shaped and influenced by indigenous ideas.  We are far more Aboriginal than European, he maintains.  To illustrate his concept, he recounts episodes in Canadian history and analyzes them in that optic.

Saul, John Ralston.  (2008).  Mon pays métis : Quelques vérités sur le Canada.  Traduction de Rachel Martinez et Éve Renaud.  Montréal : Boréal.
La version française de My Fair Country. Quelles sont quelques-unes de ces vérités ? Nous sommes une civilization métisse.  « La paix, l’ordre et le bon gouvernement »  sont une imposture.  Notre élite ne se reconnaît pas dans le Canada et ne souhaite pas le diriger. 
Savage, Candace.  (2012).  A Geography of Blood:  Unearthing Memory from a Prairie Landscape.  Vancouver:  Greystone Books-D&M Publishers. The author moves to Eastend, Saskatchewan, and begins to explore the area.  She uncovers “a darker reality—a story of cruelty and survival set in the still-recent past—and finds that she must reassess the story she grew up with as the daughter, granddaughter and great-granddaughter of prairie homesteaders.” (quotation from book cover)

Heritage Minutes    A collection of one-minute videos on Canadian history.  Click the Indigenous History tab in Categories.

• ·  Learn why we are all Treaty people, and the provisions of Treaty for First Nations and non-First Natios people.

A Solemn Undertaking: The FiveTreaties of Saskatchewan (14 minutes)
A concise summary of the treaty-making process and the perspectives of First Nations and the government.

The Socio-Economic Impact ofTreaties (18 minutes)
The video discusses treaties in Saskatchewan from an economic standpoint.  It contrasts the role of First Nations and aboriginal people in the early trading economy with that of the agricultural economy of Saskatchewan.    Education and entrepreneurship are identified as means of integrating First Nations into the Saskatchewan economy. 

Treaty Message Minutes
We Are All Treaty People (14 minutes)
This video traces the history and accomplishments of the Office of the Treaty Commissioner, and highlights the reciprocity of the Treaty relationship. 

• Be clear about the circumstances in which First Nations pay taxes.   

Here’s an article that can help:  "First Nations pay more taxes than you think" by Aleksandra Sagan for CBC News, April, 2015

• Share what you have learned in conversations with others (book clubs, film clubs, movie night).

Reconciliation: Where Will YouStart ? (31 secs)Thoughts on reconciliation from a variety of individuals and groups end with a question:  Where will you start ?  Great way to begin or end a discussion on the subject—with a personal call to action. 

Reconciliation: What Does It Mean toYou? (31 secs)“Reconciliation is exploring the past and choosing to make a better future.” A variety of individuals and groups comment on what reconciliation might mean.  This video would be an effective catalyst to discussion on the subject.  

• Watch films by Indigenous filmmakers and storytellers on Indigenous themes.

Reserve 107 : Reconciliation on the Prairies
Indian Horse, from a novel by Richard Wagamese

Disclaimer:  I have not yet viewed these films. 

• Confront stereotypes and racism wherever you witness them.
• Acknowledge the traditional territory where you live.
• Integrate observance of days such as the National Aboriginal Day on June 21.
• Model reconciliation by volunteering with those in or just leaving prison.
• Attend powwows or other Indigenous gatherings.
• Visit an Indigenous place of learning (Elders’ Centre, classes at a university, Friendship Centre).
• Watch how people around you are living out reconciliation.

These actions don’t seem to be epic.  They can be mostly private, at first, and then, inevitably, public.  They don't require signing anything or organizing much at all.  But they can be epic in their very smallness.  They take the most precious thing we have, our time.  They require openness to new ideas and to changing our perspective.  And, in many cases, as you surely know, they take courage.  Courage to say something that might mark us as the outliers in a group.  They do effect incremental change over time, and that’s epic.