KAIROS Blanket exercise draws 15 to learn about Indigenous history

by Lucie Roy

On Sunday more than 15 people were in attendance for the KAIROS Blanket Exercise held at the Morinville Community Library.

Sharon Morin, Program Director, Michif Cultural Connections facilitated the Blanket Exercise assisted by her son Josh and Elder Arcand who spoke and also performed the smudging ceremony prior to the start of the Exercise.

“The Blanket Exercise is a really interactive way you learn about Canadian history from the Indigenous perspective,” Morin said. “We can read lots and you know we can watch lots but when we are actually physically interacting and reading the scrolls and trading the items and having the babies taken away it is much more. You learn more from your heart than your head. Kind of the way I look at it.”

The scrolls that are read by the participants cover 500 years of history but the exercise does not go too much into the pre-content but the idea of it. The exercises presents what it was like in the beginning and covers the treaties that were made amongst the First Nations, how they wanted the treaties to be and thought they would be, but how they were misinterpreted and then used as a land grab.

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