It’s especially important for aboriginal students to share culture, understanding and to correct historical misunderstandings, said Mohawk Nation elder Paul Skanks during the Jan. 9 kick off to Carleton’s first Aboriginal Awareness Month.
Previous awareness celebrations have lasted just one week, but this year, they were expanded.
The opening ceremony started in similar fashion to last year’s ceremony with a young boy showcasing a traditional hoop dance. Dressed in neon-green clothing decorated with a depiction of two white stallions, the boy kept rhythm to two women singing.
Geraldine King, a second-year Canadian studies and history student, also delivered a thanksgiving prayer in Anishinaabemowin to thank the creator.
“A month is more important,” said the Aboriginal Students’ Centre co-ordinator. “It creates more awareness overall, a lot of other cultures and ethnicities celebrate their cultures for a longer span of time as well. It’s time to have that type of representation.”
The co-ordinator said she hopes to create more awareness of the tepee that has been erected on campus and how students can respect the structure and how it’s traditionally used.
Summer John, president of Carleton’s First Peoples Council and a third-year child studies student, said the awareness is important for her, specifically because Carleton is situated on Algonquin land.
“It is important to respect that, not only to bring out the Algonquin cultures but the other cultures across Canada,” John said. “I think it is significant to showcase that there is not just one type of aboriginal person and there’s many.”
“It’s just a celebration of who we are as contemporary people today,” agreed Naomi Sarazin, a Carleton alumnus, one of three co-ordinators for the Centre for Aboriginal Culture and Education and one of the awareness month’s main organizers.
“Aboriginal Awareness Month is the celebration of aboriginal people which include First Nations, Inuit and Métis people. It is about our culture, our traditions, our heritage, the history of our people and how all of that has shaped who we are today,” she said.
One event this month will feature Elijah Harper, one of the key players in the rejection of the Meech Lake Accord. Harper will be the keynote speaker during the Jan. 28 Elder and Student Conference, according to the program of events.
“We made an effort to include aboriginal and non-aboriginal people, because it is a shared community here on campus and we need to know how to share with one another, interact with one another and learn with each other,” Sarazin said.
Skanks urged attendees to “put [their] minds together as one. Everything that can be, will be,” he said, before a round-dance, linking both aboriginal and non-aboriginal attendees together, ended the opening ceremony. q
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A previous version of this article named the Aboriginal Students’ Centre co-ordinator. The name was removed to protect the source’s privacy and safety. The article was last updated on Nov. 11, 2021.
