This may be surprising to some, but raising kids on the rez during a pandemic has been a blessing for my family?and many others. When COVID-19 hit, my daughter, River-Jaxsen, wasn?t enrolled in public school yet?she was three, almost four. But we enrolled her in some online classes and began to expand her virtual learning experiences to the world outside Poundmaker Cree Nation, where we live. (The reserve is north of what the colonial world refers to as North Battleford, Saskatchewan.)
We fill the days balancing land-based and traditional knowledge with education that will be required in the public school system, in order to prepare her. It?s an intermingling of her mother-tongues and what our people have been practicing for generations, along with the science of the natural world, mathematics that connect to daily living, and fuelling our bodies with a kinship to the land through substantive hours outside. She knows how to set snares, how to make the soup from the wapoose we do get (this means rabbit in Anishinaabemowin), and how to give back to the land after receiving such a gift. Despite our fragmented Internet connection, we also signed up for classes through outschool.com, and began to hear from other Indigenous families online about what their homeschooling experiences have been like during the pandemic.
Dad of six Brent Achneepineskum, one of my relatives back home on Pays Plat First Nation in northwestern Ontario, switched to homeschooling at the very beginning o...