Charlene Bearhead is an educator, author, [1] and Indigenous education advocate. She was the first educational lead for the University of Manitoba's National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation. [2]
Charlene Bearhead is an educator, author, [1] and Indigenous education advocate. She was the first educational lead for the University of Manitoba's National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation. [2]
Bearhead grew-up in Drayton Valley, Alberta. [3] She is a mother, grandmother, and educator with decades of experience in the educator sector. [4]
She received a degree in education from the University of Alberta in 1985. Bearhead holds teaching certificates for both Alberta and Manitoba. She has taught for Parkland School Division and Calgary School District in Alberta and St. Vital School Division in Manitoba. She was principal of Paul First Nation School and has served as superintendent of education for the Paul First Nation. She founded Mother Earth's Children's Charter School in Wabamun in 2003 and served as its first principal. Bearhead helped establish an Aboriginal Circle program and developed a Youth Cultural Reconciliation Special Project for public schools in Edmonton. She also served as interim education director for the Alexander First Nation. [5]
She led negotiation of the First Nations and Inuit Child Care Initiative on behalf of Treaty 6, Treaty 7, Treaty 8 Alberta as well as Ontario. She led the establishment of the Early Childhood Services division for the Alberta regional office of the First Nations and Inuit Health Branch of Health Canada.
Alongside Sylvia Smith, Bearhead was the national coordinator for Project of Heart, which was tasked with educating Canadians on the history and legacy of residential schools. [6] From 2015 to 2017, Bearhead was the education coordinator for the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation at the University of Manitoba. [7] She subsequently was named education coordinator for the National Inquiry into Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women and Girls. [8] [4]
Bearhead was the education adviser for the Canadian Geographic Indigenous Peoples Atlas of Canada project. [9]
Together with Wilson Bearhead, [10] and illustrator, Chloe Bluebird Mustooch, [11] Bearhead authored the Siha Tooskin Knows series of children's book published by Highwater Press, an imprint of Portage and Main Press, based in Winnipeg, Manitoba on Treaty 1 Territory and Homeland of the Métis Nation. [1]
The Love of the Dance, Siha Tooskin Knows series (2020)
The Sacred Eagle Feather, Siha Tooskin Knows series (2020)
The Best Medicine, Siha Tooskin Knows series (2020)
The Catcher of Dreams, Siha Tooskin Knows series (2020)
The Gifts of His People, Siha Tooskin Knows series (2020)
The Nature of Life, The Strength of His Hair, Siha Tooskin Knows series (2020)
The Strength of His Hair, Siha Tooskin Knows series (2020)
The Offering of Tobacco, Siha Tooskin Knows series (2020)
The Canadian Indian residential school system was a network of boarding schools for Indigenous peoples. The network was funded by the Canadian government's Department of Indian Affairs and administered by various Christian churches. The school system was created to isolate Indigenous children from the influence of their own culture and religion in order to assimilate them into the dominant Euro-Canadian culture. Over the course of the system's more than hundred-year existence, around 150,000 children were placed in residential schools nationally. By the 1930s, about 30 percent of Indigenous children were attending residential schools. The number of school-related deaths remains unknown due to incomplete records. Estimates range from 3,200 to over 30,000, mostly from disease.
The Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP) was a Canadian royal commission established in 1991 with the aim of investigating the relationship between Indigenous peoples in Canada, the Government of Canada, and Canadian society as a whole. It was launched in response to status and rights issues brought to light following events such as the Oka Crisis and the failure of the Meech Lake Accord. The commission culminated in a final report of 4,000 pages, published in 1996 and set out a 20-year agenda for implementing recommended changes.
Indigenous police services in Canada are police forces under the control of a First Nation or Inuit government.
J. Wilton Littlechild, known as Willie Littlechild, is a Canadian lawyer and Cree chief who was Grand Chief of the Confederacy of Treaty Six First Nations and a member of Parliament. A residential school survivor, he is known for his work nationally and internationally on Indigenous rights. He was born in Hobbema, now named Maskwacis, Alberta.
The association between the monarchy of Canada and Indigenous peoples in Canada stretches back to the first interactions between North American Indigenous peoples and European colonialists and, over centuries of interface, treaties were established concerning the monarch and Indigenous nations. First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples in Canada have a unique relationship with the reigning monarch and, like the Māori and the Treaty of Waitangi in New Zealand, generally view the affiliation as being not between them and the ever-changing Cabinet, but instead with the continuous Crown of Canada, as embodied in the reigning sovereign.
Peguis First Nation is the largest First Nations community in Manitoba, Canada, with a population of approximately 11,438 people. The members of Peguis are of Saulteaux (Ojibway) and Maškēkowak descent.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada was a truth and reconciliation commission active in Canada from 2008 to 2015, organized by the parties of the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement.
The Law Society of Alberta (LSA) is the self-regulating body for lawyers in Alberta, Canada, established in 1907 which derives its authority from the Legal Profession Act of the Government of Alberta.
The following is an alphabetical list of topics related to Indigenous peoples in Canada, comprising the First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples.
The Sixties Scoop, also known as The Scoop, was a period in which a series of policies were enacted in Canada that enabled child welfare authorities to take, or "scoop up," Indigenous children from their families and communities for placement in foster homes, from which they would be adopted by white families. Despite its name referencing the 1960s, the Sixties Scoop began in the mid-to-late 1950s and persisted into the 1980s.
KC Adams is a Cree, Ojibway, and British artist and educator based in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
The history of the First Nations is the prehistory and history of present-day Canada's peoples from the earliest times to the present day with a focus on First Nations. The pre-history settlement of the Americas is a subject of ongoing debate. First Nation's oral histories and traditional knowledge, combined with new methodologies and technologies —used by archaeologists, linguists, and other researchers—produce new—and sometimes conflicting—evidence.
The First Nations nutrition experiments were a series of experiments run in Canada by Department of Pensions and National Health in the 1940s and 1950s. The experiments were conducted on at least 1,300 Indigenous people across Canada, approximately 1,000 of whom were children. The deaths connected with the experiments have been described as part of Canada's genocide of Indigenous peoples.
Chelsea Vowel, who often writes as âpihtawikosisân, is a Métis writer, professor, and lawyer from near Lac Ste. Anne, Alberta, whose work focuses on language, gender identity, and cultural resurgence. She has been published in the Huffington Post, The National Post, and The Globe and Mail. Co-host of the podcast Métis in Space and runner of the IndigenousXca Twitter account, Vowel has been noted as a "prominent and respected Métis blogger" and "one of the most visible of [the] new generation" of Métis intellectuals.
The National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, originally and still colloquially known as Orange Shirt Day, is a Canadian holiday to recognize the legacy of the Canadian Indian residential school system.
The Indigenous Peoples Atlas of Canada is an English and French educational resource created by the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, published by Canadian Geographic, and funded by the Government of Canada. It was created to address calls to action from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, among them the development of "culturally appropriate curricula" for Aboriginal Canadian students. Its content includes information about indigenous lands, languages, communities, treaties, and cultures, and topics such as the Canadian Indian residential school system, racism, and cultural appropriation.
The blanket exercise is an interactive educational program that teaches the history of colonization in Canada. The program was created in response to the 1996 report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, and is used as a teaching tool across Canada.
Lana Whiskeyjack is a multidisciplinary artist, writer and researcher known for her work exploring experiences of Cree identity in Western culture. She is featured in the documentary film Lana Gets Her Talk by Beth Wishart MacKenzie.
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The Canadian Indian residential school system was a network of boarding schools for Indigenous children directed and funded by the Department of Indian Affairs. Administered by various Christian churches and funded by the Canadian government from 1828 to 1997 Canadian Indian residential school system attempted to assimilate Indigenous children into Euro-Canadian culture. Over 4,000 students died while attending Canadian residential school. Students' bodies were often buried in school cemeteries to keep costs as low as possible. Comparatively few cemeteries associated with residential schools are explicitly referenced in surviving documents, but the age and duration of the schools suggests that most had a cemetery associated with them. Many cemeteries were unregistered, and as such the locations of many burial sites and names of residential school children have been lost.