The Blanket Exercise A teaching tool by KAIROS to raise awareness and understanding of the nation to nation relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples in Canada. TWO VERSIONS INCLUDED: GraDES 4-8 AND GraDES 9-12/ADULT In this booklet you will find two different versions of the Welcome to the script: one for grades 4-8 and one for grades 9-12/adults. Hopefully doing the Blanket Exercise will inspire participants Blanket Exercise to take action on the injustices facing Indigenous peoples. At the end of the booklet you will find a list of suggested follow-up activities. The KAIROS Blanket Exercise is an enormously popular and successful teaching tool that uses participatory You are invited to explore and use this exercise in your popular education methodology to raise awareness of the community, school, group, or place of worship. Please do nation-to-nation relationship between Indigenous and non- not hesitate to contact us with questions on any stage of Indigenous peoples in Canada, and to teach a history the process, or with advice on how we can make the Blanket of Canada that most people do not learn. Exercise even better! Since its creation in 1997, it has been done hundreds of times with thousands of people of all ages and from all ABOUT KAIROS: KAIROS unites eleven national Canadian churches and backgrounds, by a wide variety of groups, both Indigenous religious organizations in faithful work for human rights and non-Indigenous, as a way to open, or continue, the and ecological justice through research, education, conversation about decolonization. partnership, and advocacy. In 1996, RCAP concluded that Designed to deepen understanding of the denial of public education is key to realizing a renewed relationship Indigenous peoples’ nationhood, the Blanket Exercise between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples - one explores the major themes and recommendations of the based on sharing, respect and the mutual recognition of Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP), examines rights and responsibilities. Through creative and innovative how federal policies and programs impact the lives public education initiatives and campaigns such as the of Indigenous peoples in Canada, and identifies what Blanket Exercise, KAIROS works towards a just, peaceful Indigenous peoples and their allies are doing to bring and respectful relationship between Indigenous and non- about positive change. Indigenous peoples that recognizes Indigenous peoples’ rights, including the right to self-determination. As the name suggests, the Blanket Exercise begins with blankets arranged on the floor to represent Canada before the arrival of Europeans. The participants, who represent Indigenous peoples, begin by moving around on the blankets. While a narrator reads from a script, other participants – representing the Europeans or newcomers - join and begin to interact with those on the blankets. As the script traces the history of the relationship between Europeans and Indigenous nations in Canada, the participants respond to various cues and interact by reading prepared scrolls. At the end of the exercise only a few people remain on blankets which have been folded into small bundles and cover only a fraction of their original area. 2 Blanket Exercise | © KAIROS, 2012 GoaL: of time, give them a copy of the script, and ask if they To engage participants in the historic relationship between would agree to play the role of the European(s) (or choose Europeans and the Indigenous nations, and in the a confident member of your group on the spot). Copy and colonization of the land we now call Canada. roll the scrolls, identifying them on the outside by number or letter and type. For the grades 4-8 script, the scrolls for WHat YOU NEED: photocopying are found on page 15 and for the Grades • 10 (or more) blankets 9-12/adult script, the scrolls are on page 43. Also, gather the necessary number of coloured cards. • Scrolls - At the end of each of the two versions of the script you will find the corresponding “scrolls”. Print these pages, The ideal number of participants for this exercise is about roll them as scrolls, and indicate on the outside their type 25, but it can be easily and successfully adapted for smaller and number. If possible, use coloured paper to distinguish groups by having participants read more than one scroll. the scrolls from each other to make them easier to identify The key is to ensure that there are some participants left on during the exercise. Note that the scrolls with letters are the blankets at the end of the exercise. Groups larger than used by the European character(s), while ones with 25 can also be easily accommodated by using the “fish-bowl” numbers are used by Participants. approach, which means having have some participants play • Index cards: white, yellow and blue (if you don’t have active roles on the blankets while others observe in a circle coloured cards you can always write the colour on the around the group and help to read the scrolls. cards, or on pieces of paper). You will need enough white and yellow cards for just over half of the participants, and As the facilitator, please keep in mind that some groups find two blue cards. Mark one of the yellow cards with an “X”. the exercise emotional and will react in different ways. Some may laugh inappropriately or get angry. It is important to • A narrator and at least one person to act as the European. remember this during the debrief session. You may want to Both should be comfortable reading aloud. consider asking the group why certain reactions happened • 3 maps from the Report of the Royal Commission on at certain points. This type of discussion can help sensitize Aboriginal Peoples, which you will find in the centre of the the participants and may avoid lingering questions about booklet – “Turtle Island”, “Treaties” and “Aboriginal Lands what kind of behaviour or reaction is appropriate. Today”. (You may consider scanning these and presenting them on a projector). SOME coNCEpts AND TERMINOLOGY to REVIEW BEFORE GEttiNG startED: TIME REQUIRED: What is a treaty? Doing the Blanket Exercise takes one hour; it’s always better Treaties are internationally binding agreements between not to rush it. Reflecting together afterwards is important, sovereign nations. Hundreds of treaties of peace and so take as much time as possible. The larger the group, the friendship were concluded between the European settlers more time you will need. and First Nations during the period prior to confederation. These treaties promoted peaceful coexistence and the PREparatioN: sharing of resources. After Confederation, the European Depending on the age of the participants, choose the settlers pursued treaty making as a tool to acquire vast appropriate version of the Blanket Exercise script and read tracts of land, and the numbered treaties 1 through 11 over it carefully. Ideally, speak to one or two people ahead were concluded between First Nations and the Crown. Blanket Exercise | © KAIROS, 2012 3 For Indigenous peoples, treaties outline the rights and TERMINOLOGY responsibilities of all parties to the agreement. In the Indigenous peoples is a term for which there is no one traditions of Indigenous treaty making, these are oral definition because it is up to each Indigenous person to agreements. In addition, they are “vital, living instruments define themselves, something that for far too long has been of relationship” (RCAP) that involve all Canadians. done by others. Cree lawyer Sharon Venne suggests that being Indigenous means being “descendants of the people “To us the answer is not about incremental change, it is not occupying a territory when the colonizers arrived.” about just concrete action, it is also repairing the relationship. And the way to repair the relationship between us and Canada Indigenous is a word that has come into widespread use is to have this country acknowledge that its richness and its through the recognition that those people who are the original wealth come from their one‐sided interpretation of the treaties. inhabitants of a place, and who have been marginalized by There has to be henceforth a double understanding of what ethnic groups who arrived later, have much in common with those treaties represent.” (Ovide Mecredi, Crown-First Nations other peoples worldwide with the same experience. Gathering 2012) Not only does the word speak to global solidarity amongst What does it mean to be a sovereign nation? these peoples, but it has important legal significance as well. A sovereign nation enjoys the right to self-determination and Indigenous peoples’ rights have been recognized at the has a governance structure and territory that is recognized international level in various ways but most importantly in by other nations. While European nations focus on the the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous protection of individual rights, Indigenous nations centre on Peoples, which was adopted by the United Nations General collective rights such as land, language, spiritual traditions, Assembly in 2007 and endorsed by Canada in November 2010. and self-governance, to name a few. Indigenous individuals When we speak of peoples, as opposed to people, it is a rely on strong nations for their well-being because they recognition of collective rights: that each Indigenous people protect and nurture the collective rights through which an is a distinct entity with its own cultural and political rights. individual finds cultural meaning and identity. The Indigenous struggle for sovereignty is a struggle for nationhood and Aboriginal peoples refers to the original peoples of North many believe that the recognition of Indigenous nationhood America who belong to historic, cultural and political will enhance, not diminish, Canadian sovereignty. The treaties entities. Canada’s Constitution Act, 1982 recognizes three are central to sovereignty and nationhood as they address groups of Aboriginal peoples: First Nations, Inuit and Métis.