Tsimshian: Learning Culture Through Sights, Sounds and Scents
Cultural lessons are being provided to young students in order to preserve the original Tsimshian culture and to maintain its place within Canada’s rich cultural diversity.
Below is an article published by Inside Toronto:
The faint smell of burning sweetgrass wafts across a basement room in the almost century-old Bala Avenue Community School in Mount Dennis.
The sacred plant is often used to open gatherings by Canada's First Nations people, and on Tuesday it was lit by Shannon Thunderbird to honour the coming together of approximately 30 students. The kids, an almost equal mix of boys and girls in grades 4 and 5 at Bala, have volunteered to spend five days learning and celebrating Aboriginal culture, led by Thunderbird, an artist and educator of the Coast Tsimshian First Nation in British Columbia.
The program has been organized by the non-profit Arts for Children and Youth.
"There's going to be drumming, there's going be singing...and there's going to be storytelling," Melissa Somer, an early childhood educator at Bala, said of the intended hands-on experience.
What does the school hope the children will learn?
"That there's a lot of respect and acknowledgement for all cultures and..that everyone is equal and no one is bigger or better than anybody else, we're all treated the same," outlined Somer.
The message will be useful at the multicultural Bala. The JK-Grade 5 facility near Jane Street and Weston Road has about 250 students who speak approximately 20 languages, and Somer said about 10 per cent of them identify as First Nations.
The students have previously shown an interest in First Nations culture, as 50 receive language instruction in Ojibwe.
"That's all different nationalities - Vietnamese, Jamaican, some of them say they're mixed," said Ojibwe instructor Martha Toulouse.
She's really not certain why there's so much interest in learning a First Nations language.
"Maybe it's to do with the history and the culture, maybe they watch old movies on television," she suggested.
Whatever the reason, Toulouse said she strongly supports the presence of Thunderbird's program at the school.
"It actually teaches the students the seven grandfather teachings," she said, referring to the principles of love, truth, bravery, honesty, wisdom, respect and humility.
