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The Northern Alberta Institute of Expertise (NAIT) raised a teepee in its important campus quad in Edmonton on Thursday in honour of Aboriginal Tradition Day, an annual celebration of Indigenous identification, traditions and data.

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Derek Thunder, who manages a gathering area on campus often called Nîsôhkamâtotân Centre, led the development with elder Francis Whiskeyjack of Saddle Lake Cree Nation.

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“All the pieces we do has some type of educating behind it, and the aim of why we do it,” Thunder mentioned of the occasions scheduled for the day, which additionally included a pipe ceremony and a stew and bannock feast in addition to powwow and Métis dancing.

“Individuals are not going to know who we’re until we give alternatives like this to showcase who we’re,” Thunder added.

About 50 individuals watched the teepee take form, and several other observers joined within the building course of whereas Whiskeyjack imparted conventional data.

Every of the 15 poles used to construct the construction characterize values, Whiskeyjack defined, comparable to honesty, endurance, humility, kindness and sharing.

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“Any form of values which can be connected to a type of poles is how the moms used to take care of the kids in a house, and the way they’d increase them,” he added.

The teepee started as a tripod that noticed the primary three poles certain with rope at their intersection level about two-thirds of the best way up. Volunteers then helped Thunder, Whiskeyjack and others plant subsequent poles as a person circling the body with a size of rope certain every new addition to the entire.

After helpers wrapped the body in canvas and pushed out the pole base for a cosy match, third-year bachelor of enterprise administration pupil Rena Gladue helped the group hammer in stakes to maintain the teepee grounded.

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With Indigenous and Jamaican roots, Gladue mentioned she was drawn to the occasion out of a way of delight for her heritage — an appreciation she gained after working for organizations such because the Nechi Institute, which gives well being and wellness programming for Indigenous communities.

“There I began studying my tradition, and I by no means knew how lovely it was,” she mentioned, including she plans to attend a girls’s circle scheduled for the Thursday celebration.

Aboriginal Tradition Day at NAIT additionally kicks off every week of Indigenous programming within the lead as much as Canada’s second Nationwide Day of Fact and Reconciliation, a federal statutory vacation that honours residential college survivors, their households and communities, and the kids who by no means got here residence.

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“Our dad and mom, a number of them weren’t even related to their tradition as a result of they went to residential faculties,” Gladue added, noting that Indigenous languages and practices had been typically forbidden at these establishments. “They’d nothing to show their youngsters about their tradition, so I really feel like that’s what occurred to me.”

The annual celebration at NAIT had been established properly earlier than the federal vacation, Thunder mentioned, and the polytechnic determined to maintain its scheduled programming to acknowledge Indigenous identification as properly perseverance.

“We’re allowed to have a good time who had been are as a result of it tells those who no matter what occurred within the historical past of Aboriginal individuals, we’re nonetheless right here,” he mentioned. “We should always have a good time the traditions that we now have and be pleased with who we’re and the place we come from.”

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