Indigenous program signs funding contract
After a successful, self-funded pilot program, the Circle Project has secured outside funding for its Culture Connection For Kids program, which focuses on building Indigenous knowledge and positive cultural identities.
The non-profit recently signed a contract to receive a full year of funding from the National Indian Brotherhood (NIB) Trust Fund.
“We were already thinking if we don’t get this funding, how are we going to manage this program?” said Larissa Anderson, director of children’s services for The Circle Project.
An Indigenous-based community organization, The Circle Project provides families and individuals with programs and services to support education and employment.
Anderson said because of the success of the program, staff planned on finding a way to continue it no matter what, but the NIB funding has come as a relief.
Launched in October 2017, staff say the six-month pilot program has already made a big impact on kids who attend the daycare and their families.
“When we started the program, the kids didn’t know much about their language or anything and now the kids can count from one to 20 (in Cree) no problem,” Anderson said.
Culture Connection for Kids centres around four main areas — language, knowledge keepers/ elders, traditions and powwow — and the majority of its programming takes place at the Circle Project’s Children’s Centre with kids ages three to five.
Through daily programming and monthly parent nights, kids and their families have been learning about the importance of the buffalo for Indigenous people, the medicine wheel, powwow and regalia.
The program was curated after careful consultation with families.
In a questionnaire sent out before the creation of the program, parents were asked to rate their knowledge of Indigenous culture. Sixty-five per cent of respondents rated their level of knowledge as low or average.
“My skin is brown, but I don’t know what that means. How am I supposed to teach my children?” one parent told Circle Project executive director Ann Perry.
“If the parents didn’t really know a lot about their own culture, whether it’s because of the Sixties Scoop or the intergeneration effects or the fact that they were not exposed to their home communities on First Nations reserves, what are their kids going to learn?” she said.
Based on input from parents, programming was designed to include powwow drumming, dancing and singing, Cree language classes, bark rubbing, knowledge about teepees and more. Knowledge keepers, elders and other Indigenous community members are brought in to help with the teachings.
While most of the programming is done with preschool aged kids, it is incorporated into the infant and toddler activities as much as possible. School age children also participate in the program after school.
“If you could have seen them from Day 1 to now, just how much more they know and how much more they respect everything that they’re learning,” said Anderson who leads much of the programming. “It’s been a great program.” Perry said a major motivation behind the program was to help improve graduate rates among Indigenous youth in Saskatchewan, which are notoriously lower than non-Indigenous students.
“We did quite a bit of research before we started the program on the importance that the child has that good cultural identity and ... sense of belonging because that does actually contribute to success in school and that was very, very important to us,” Perry said.
With the new funding, Perry said the program not only gets to live on, but now has the support to expand programming and add in new activities that can be enjoyed by the kids and their parents.
She said parents have expressed gratitude that the teachings have become part of their child’s upbringing and said its beneficial for the children and the parents, because everyone is getting a chance to learn.
“A positive cultural identity has a positive impact on a person’s life, whether you’re six or 60,” Perry said.