Dear EMJ Families,

Today, June 21, the nation marks National Indigenous People’s Day. Classes at EMJ are engaging in a variety of learning experiences to mark the day including: learning on the land, grade five students learning alongside grade nine students at Panabaker, and others engaging in the teachings that have been shared from Blackfoot Elder Saa’kokoto on Summer Solstice.

As a part of our system-wide work, we want to share our 2024-2025 Commitment to Truth and Reconciliation for the learning community. We are inspired in making our commitment from the 2015 Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canda, Call to Action 62.2:

We will learn how to integrate Indigenous knowledge, language and teaching methods into our classrooms by focusing our professional learning and planning. We will do this good work by continuing to align our spirits, hearts, bodies and minds with the CBE Indigenous Education Holistic Lifelong Learning Framework.  You can view the framework/medicine wheel in the image shared.

We commit to identifying places across curriculum where Indigenous ways of being, belonging, doing and knowing can guide learning experiences that make meaningful connections to the land. We will orient our minds to build and apply knowledge of how to value and balance Indigenous and Western perspectives to create 'ethical space' in the learning environment; and we will identify places across curriculum. We will work with an Elder to study and incorporate ways Indigenous teaching methods as part of our ongoing commitment to Indigenous Land-Based Learning.

Marina, Susan and Staff