Students take part in anti-racism youth leadership workshop in Swift Current
High school students had an opportunity to reflect on issues of identity, power, privilege and discrimination during an anti-racism youth leadership workshop in Swift Current.
The Multicultural Council of Saskatchewan (MCoS) hosted the Arrêt/Stop Racism workshop at Swift Current Comprehensive High School, March 7.
It was attended by about 60 Grade 9-12 students from schools in Swift Current, Hazlet and Moose Jaw (Peacock Collegiate and Central Collegiate).
“I think the youth are a good target group, because being a teenager there’s a lot of idealism, energy and a sense of fairness and right and wrong in the world, and so they’re really able to get this,” MCoS Executive Director Rhonda Rosenberg said. “They’re at a state of intellectual development where they can get their heads around discrimination and they can see it. They can take that theory and know what it looks like when they’re walking around the halls of the school, when they’re walking around the community. They’re really capable of leading other students and it’s no question that we know that peer leadership is hugely influential.”
Students learned to facilitate activities for use in their own schools and communities. She therefore hoped the interaction in the workshop will help students to develop a sense that they can make a difference to help create communities that are positive and respectful to everyone.
“There are facilitator guides for every student, for the teachers to use when they are back in their schools, and we have selected activities that are possible for students to facilitate,” she said. “You get better at it the more that you do it. There’s no question, practise is a big deal, but I have seen youth lead most of the activities that we’re doing and we know that they can do this.”
Swift Current was one of three locations in the province for the 2019 workshops. MCoS also arranged similar events in Fort Qu'Appelle and North Battleford. The workshops are offered in the run-up to the International Day for the Elimination of Racism on March 21.
MCoS has been organizing these youth leadership workshops for about 10 years, and they have also previously been held at different schools in southwest Saskatchewan. There was a workshop last year in Maple Creek and one of the 2017 workshops took place in Swift Current.
Some changes have been made to the workshop content to reflect the importance of reconciliation and to give students a better understanding of the experiences of First Nations in Canada. Groups read a First Nation story and students discussed what they learned from the story about the indigenous view about the natural world and human relationships.
Another small group activity was a simulation of colonization to help students gain a better understanding of its long-term impact on society.
“Each of these small groups will be like a First Nations community and then we will have one of the facilitators act as a European, first wanting to come to trade and then wanting land and bringing in residential schools,” she explained. “It’s an experiential simulation of several 100 years condensed into a few minutes, but it helps them understand the relationships between those initial European contact relationships, but also why we are the way we are today.”
Other components of the workshop have remained the same and provided students with perspectives on the issues of racism and discrimination. There were activities on stereotyping and labelling, and students shared their own stories through a sculpting exercise to create a tableau.
“Rather than bring in keynote speakers, we really like to start with participants’ own experiences,” she said. “Most people have an experience, even if they haven’t necessarily been a direct part of a situation, of seeing a situation of racism or discrimination or exclusion or powerlessness. So they share stories in their small groups, and they choose one of them and create a frozen tableau image of a moment of crisis.”
The group discussion then focused on different choices in that tableau scenario that can result in a better and more positive outcome.
Rosenberg felt there is still a lot of work required to address racism in society, but she is encouraged by the fact that people are willing to step forward to say those beliefs do not represent them or their community.
One of her goals with the youth leadership workshops is to help students to understand that they are not standing alone and to focus on what can be done collectively.
“I think it’s important that we don’t just see ourselves as individuals having to address racism all by ourselves,” she said.“We talk about four types of racism, and individual racism is only one of them. Those kinds of things are often systemic. They’re institutional. ... We need to deal with systemic issues in a collective way, and not just think that we have to be all on our own and solve the world’s problems.”