Our team was excited to attend the Turtle Island Reads storytelling roundtable on September 19th at Thompson House on the McGill University campus. We spent a wonderful hour listening to Indigenous storytellers about their motivations, beliefs, and hopes for future generations of Indigenous children. Speaking in the roundtable were filmmaker Tharionente Barnes (Kanien’kehá:ka of Kahnawá:ke), journalist Jessica Deer (Kanien’kehá:ka of Kahnawá:ke) from the CBC Montreal Indigenous Unit, poet Marie Annharte Baker (Anishinaabe), Cherie Dimaline (Métis) author of “The Marrow Thieves”, and Rosa Washee (T’licho Dene), represented Richard Van Camp.

We feel privileged to have witnessed such an enlightening discussion filled with laughs, powerful messages, and wisdom. We heard directly from these storytellers’ mouths what “Story” is and what it means to them and their people, as well as the power that stories can have for an individual and for a Nation.

We thank you for your time and your words.

Our school year is starting off on a great note. Rebecca and Louis from our team are packing up and are headed to North Battleford, SK to meet with teachers, administrators, and consultants from Treaty Six Education Council (TSEC). Over our two-days on-site, we will be sharing our new interface, highlighting tons of new resources, and providing hands-on training around some ideas for classroom activities that feature our resources and resource kits. We look forward to lots of great feedback and are looking forward to seeing some familiar faces, and meeting new ones.

We were happy to participate in the first annual Teach for Canada Northern Education Fair at the end of July in Thunder Bay, ON. This event, which was part of the Teach for Canada teacher orientation, provided over 80 new and returning teachers, community members, and administrators with access to great classroom resources and programs to help kick-off the school year. We offered all of the teachers complimentary access to Learning Bird to learn more about their new communities and to get a jump on learning some new Ojibwe and Oji-Cree vocabulary before heading into their new communities. We’d like to extend a special thank you to the whole Teach for Canada team for hosting such an awesome event.