nēhiyawak Child Raising Practices and Lessons for Schools

Abstract

In this article, I take up Pushor’s conceptualization of ‘walking alongside,’ of accompanying families on their journey to educate their children, as an alternative to the ways in which educators have stood over parents as authorities with more knowledge. I detail the parent and grandparent knowledge approaches to schooling. I make my ways of thinking, doing, and being visible by storying moments of my lived experiences as a nēhiyaw in education, a parent and grandparent, a teacher and assistant professor. I share aspects of my cultural knowledge through nēhiyawēwin-Cree language when it comes to visiting, gratitude, and storytelling with the aim of adding a nēhiyaw voice to the field of research and literature on family engagement.

1. Establishing My Cultural Context

In this article, I take up Pushor’s (2015) conceptualization of ‘walking alongside,’ of accompanying families on their journey to educate their children, as an alternative to the ways in which educators have stood over parents as authorities with more knowledge. I detail the parent and grandparent knowledge approaches to schooling. I make my ways of thinking, doing, and being visible by storying moments of my lived experiences as a nēhiyaw in education, a parent and grandparent, a teacher and assistant professor. I share aspects of my cultural knowledge through nēhiyawēwin-Cree language when it comes to visiting, gratitude, and storytelling with the aim of adding a nēhiyaw voice to the field of research and literature on family engagement.

The nēhiyawak (Exact Body of People) are a nationhood of the ‘Cree’ (English reference) people who are the largest collective of the Plains region in what is now called Canada. Of the five dialects of the Cree people, nēhiyawak are of the ‘Y’ dialect, living within Treaty Six Territory that covers central Saskatchewan and Alberta. Treaty Six was signed in 1876 between the Crown and various other Nations. The nēhiyawak continue to be “the largest Nation within Canada. Cree speakers live right across Canada, from British Columbia through Quebec, and into the United States” (B. Daniels & Custer, 2022, p. 9).

The nēhiyawak are a Nation. The term ‘nation to nation’ was often used when Treaty agreements were made between Nations and the Canadian Government, known as the Crown. For the nēhiyawak, being on our lands with our spoken languages is home, and is a Nationhood.

The nēhiyawak understanding of kinship is in the context of relationships, of relatives, including land and water. “Relationships to land are familial, intimate, intergenerational, and instructive” (McCoy et al., 2016, p. 116). The nēhiyawak understanding of ‘kin’ and kinship is the belief that we come from the earth, just as other living spirits such as the trees, the mountains, the plants, and the animals do. We are all related. Our language, too, comes from the land. Language is alive with spirit and is also ‘kin’ for the Cree. Language has a spirit and includes spiritual communication. This ontological way of perceiving reality (Hauck & Heurick, 2018) is a belief among many Indigenous Peoples.

We have a relationship with all of creation, seen and unseen. It is also literal, as we have a kinship system with our families and children. “Within our kinship of communication is language, and how we address each other is significant. We use our language to convey terms of endearment and relationship; it determines how we address each other and how we think and behave. Family units are extended, which is why we have many relatives” (B. C. Daniels, 2021, p. 188). In addition, we also have multiple ‘little’ mothers and fathers who are the siblings of our biological parents and can include adoptees. nēhiyawak believe all people are related and interrelated, and we have a saying that conveys this meaning, “kahkiyaw niwāhōmākanak.” It is embedded in our worldview, our thoughts, our philosophy, and our prayers. Our understanding that we are all related is different from Eurocentric notions of family. In European culture, family is based on a nuclear structure consisting of a colonial, often Christian, unit between two parents and their biological children. It is siloed and segregated.

2. awina niya—Situating and Positioning Myself

How I introduce myself as a nēhiyaw is an example of knowledge transmission, resistance, and resurgence. An important and appropriate place to start applying an Indigenous approach to research is with ‘self-in-relation’ (Absolon, 2011; Kovach, 2009; Martin & Mirraboopa, 2003). Thus, let me begin:

tān’sātawiya,

kitatamiskātināwāw, kakiyosēw nitisiyihkāson pakitahwāw sākahikanihk ohci niya mâka niwīkin Victoria, BC, ēkwa niwîhkihton ēkwa nēwo nitotawāsimisin ēkwa pēyak nōsisim. kitatamiskātināwāw kīhtwām niya ohci ahcahkowinihk ē-ayamihtâyek ōma nitâcimowin. niya ohkomimāw, niya okāwīmāw, niya okāwīsimāw, ēkwa niya omīsimāw māka mīna onīkānēw wīci-atoskēwin ta-pimācihtāyāhk nēhiyaw pēkiskwēwin, nēhiyaw ōma niya, nēhiyawak ōma kiyanaw.

This is me. My language represents my identity and nationhood. Speaking as a second language, an additional learner, it is a testament to my will that I live and speak Cree! I am still here, along with my future endeavours and manifestations. My children and grandson know who they are. Resistance, resurgence, and reclamation are acts of self-determination and decolonization. For me, it is more than a metaphor. Locating ourselves in a nēhiyaw way is a “way of ensuring that those who study, write, and participate in knowledge creation are accountable for their own positionality” (Absolon & Willett, 2005, p. 97).

In English, I greet all of you. I am called (Belinda kakiyosēw Daniels), a nēhiyaw from Sturgeon Lake First Nation, Saskatchewan. I currently live in Victoria, B.C. I am married with four children and one grandchild. Again, I greet and shake your hand, in spirit as you are reading my story. I am a grandmother, mother, aunt, sister, and warrior for all languages. I am a nēhiyaw, of the nēhiyawak nation. (End of translation) I am an assistant professor for (Indigenous Language Revitalization) in the Department of Indigenous Education. I have taught for 27 years. I am the founder of the (nēhiyawak Language Experience), a non-profit organization designed to create community language learning on the land and to make opportunities for the nēhiyawēwin Spirit to be learned, listened to, and lived.

3. Introducing the nēhiyaw Protocol That Guides Me

Now, before proceeding, I offer tobacco, as this is a teaching, given to the lands and waters to help me do what is good and necessary. I smudge, and the smoke rises up to the sky. My prayers are in my language, nēhiyawēwin. My aspirations and intentions meet with the ancestors, and the Sun gives me light, love, and inspiration. As I wake up every morning to write this story for you, trusting our children and future children who attend Canadian schools will benefit, ‘the art of visioning and dreaming appears to have been forgotten by many; however, not by me’ (B. Daniels, 2018, p. 282). I will share what little I know about nēhiyaw practices and blend nēhiyaw ways into the schooling process, in the hopes of interrupting colonial practices. In doing such, I will draw on nēhiyaw epistemology and pedagogy. My thoughts and prayers will guide me because nēhiyaw knowing “is still there, often revealed to us in the form of stillness, silence, prayers, and dreams (B. Daniels, 2014, p. 108). My mind is filtering through these ideas that are not my own, but come from the collective consciousness of my ancestors; they listen, and those thoughts come when needed the most (B. Daniels, 2018) as I am of the nēhiyawak nation.

4. Turning Now to My Purpose

I ask, ‘How do nēhiyaw kinship ways in raising children interrupt school-centric practices and move them toward being more family-centric in nature?’ I will explore this question throughout this paper and narrate nēhiyaw pedagogy that honours nēhiyawak nationhood. It is with good intention, and through the use of my reflections and lived experiences as a parent, grandparent, educator, and now as an assistant professor, that I attempt to “walk alongside” (Pushor, 2015). Pushor shared in her scholarship when “acknowledging that both teachers and parents are holders of knowledge, together they work toward mutually determined goals and outcomes” (p. 216). Pushor went on further to state, “A teacher who walks alongside a parent in the education of their child is someone who is with them as they engage in this challenging and meaningful” (p. 216) experience. As I attempt to walk alongside teachers as a parent and grandparent, I bring my knowledge and understanding of nēhiyaw child-raising practices to inform school practices and suggest ways that nēhiyaw families such as mine can be a part of the school landscape.

In my earlier research, I expressed my view that “the role of teacher is one of an extended family member” (B. C. Daniels, 2021, p. 184). While this may be a new conceptualization to non-nēhiyaw peoples, it is one that is situated in an understanding of ethical space (Ermine, 2007). Authentically engaged parent and grandparent knowledge must start with finding a position of mutual respect. Ermine (2007) shared that we know how to be respectful, we both came from “respective political and cultural systems (p. 200). It is how we came to Treaty Agreements. Let’s continue to be respectful and friendly as we reproduce such negotiations and generate new models and new practices of implementing holistic thinking in schools. Let’s start telling a renewed story of school together, a more inclusive and representative story.

5. Indigenous Storytelling as a Way of Being

One way of holding space is teaching through storytelling, and this is what I attempt to do in this article. Good medicine stories are and can be told; miyo ācimowina are bundles of knowledge in the languages we speak. As Ermine (1995) shared:

For the Cree, the phenomenon of mamatāwan refers not just to the self but to the being in connection with happenings. It also recognizes that other life forms manifest the creative force in the context of the knower; it is an experience in context, a subjective experience that, for the knower, becomes knowledge in itself. The experience is knowledge.

(p. 104)

Kathleen Absolon (2011), an Anishinaabe knowledge carrier and academic from Flying Post First Nation in Ontario, explained the parallel between Indigenous knowledge and contemporary Indigenous research:

Indigenous paradigms/ways of understanding our existence, how we come to know about that existence and what we think about our existence are the roots of Indigenous methodologies in research.

(p. 54)

Johnson (2012) asserted, “In Indigenous research it is important to define our own terms, to state our research goals from within our own cultural framework, and to stand our ground (p. 80). Kovach (2015) illustrated that “Indigenous knowledge systems are a legitimate way of knowing” (p. 53) who we are as Original Peoples on Turtle Island. Vessels of memory, stories, and languages still live in us, as the Original People today. “Storytelling is also a cultural practice in regaining who we once were, and who we still are” (B. Daniels, 2018, p. 282). This is what I am doing. In the stories I tell, I illustrate important threads that we can weave together to create a new picture of schooling and education for nēhiyaw children and families.

I am sharing this story with you now of my lived experiences and nēhiyaw worldview practices because, as I shared above, we know “experience is knowledge” (Ermine, 1995, p. 104). I will discuss visiting protocols, morning routines, honoring the Sun, and appreciating our surroundings, all intertwined with grandparent knowledge. We hold up our stories as some have significance in illustrating how life on earth came to be, some are sacred, and some are about life lessons, such as this story I am telling you now. What does it tell us, and teach us, about home and school learned practices? In this experiential paper, I am going to let this nēhiyaw story resonate with you, highlighting the differences in what schools do and what grandparents/parents do, yet aspire to the possibility of change that brings along parent and grandparent knowledge. Parent (and grandparent) knowledge is knowledge possessed by those who provide care and nurturing to children in “the complex act of childrearing and in the complex context of a home or a family” (Pushor, 2015, p. 15). As Young et al. (2024) noted, while parent knowledge has both general and specific elements to it, it is “culturally-developed” (p. 418). It develops within “the collective culture that encompasses ‘common beliefs, practices, ways of being and behaviors held by a group of people’ (Parent Teacher Home Visits, n.d.)” (Young et al., 2024, p. 419). For the purposes of my paper, the collective culture to which I am referring is the nēhiyaw worldview. miyo wīcēhtowin expresses the concept of “walking alongside” (Pushor, 2015). The meaning of miyo wīcēhtowin, or “walking alongside”, is described as:

The notion of having a partnership of being in unity, or living in harmony with each other. With this Cree understanding, and in the practice of good relationships, helpers, those walking alongside, strive to achieve balance between their own values as well as their values concerning others.

(Young et al., 2024, p. 417)

Stories have a way of revealing who we are and how we come to understand one another. Walking alongside one another, sharing our stories, is a powerful way to connect and to learn from and with one another.

6. Story as a Framework

This little story shares big ideas, which I will come back to at the end of the article.

Once, long ago, there was a poor little boy who was brought up by his grandparents. He had lost his mother and father, and so his grandparents brought him up. The boy’s name was Chooc h chooc h-a- hay. His grandparents raised him to be self-sufficient, hunting and fishing and trapping, so in the future he might be able to take care of a family when he has a wife and might know how to build a nice home for his future family. Chooch chooch- a- hay was raised right by his grandparents, who taught him how to work, how to make a home. He did get married, and he had children of his own, and he used all the knowledge and wisdom that his grandparents gave him. He used it in life. Chooch chooch- a- hay came to an age where he was now an elder. He was a grandfather. He lived even to the point that he was a great grandfather, a great great grandfather, alongside his children, and he got to see all four stages of life (childhood, youth, adulthood, and old age).

And when his grandparents were talking to him, giving him insight, they taught him that his Cree language was God’s language. And that Cree language is a good medicine. It can heal a person, and it is alive. And there’s truth in it. And it’s healing within itself. And yeah, I guess you’ll see there a spirit with that language and that is what they believed in. And he showed this language to his children, his grandchildren, his great grandchildren, and they all lived to be elderly people. He taught his children to have that spiritual love for one another, to be kind to one another, help one another, and have respect for one another. That’s how he taught his children and all the rest of his family members to live with the language and to learn from it.

(A story told by Elders: Parker, E., Parker, H., Arkinson, and Murie, produced by Stone Child College (2014), 24 August 2014)

7. Historical Context That Has Shaped School-Centric Practices

In the beginning, prior to contact, Indigenous languages flourished. There was an abundance of food, such as bison. Daschuk (2019) wrote, “Communities that continued to specialize in bison hunting did so because their material needs were more than adequately met” (p. 4). He went on further to say, “These large groups provided enough labour to drive herds over large distances and then kill and process them, creating large surpluses of food that were traded (often for corn and other crops) or stockpiled for future use (p. 4). There was also gratitude that existed on the land. People lived in harmony through their relationships to land, water, each other, the seen and unseen, and the cosmos. Original Peoples knew their ancestors, knew their origin stories, knew their laws, and themselves. This knowledge system “flow[ed] through the layered spirit world about the earth, the place where spiritual beings reside and the place where our Ancestors sit” (Simpson, 2017, p. 161). This connection was embedded in all living societal things. Life was much different then. Prior to contact, as nēhiyawak, we had everything we needed; life was good. But then contact changed everything.

Historically, in what we now know as Canada, contact violently interrupted Original Peoples’ knowledge systems. What stood for a millennium of generations, what was a long tie of ancestral connection, was interrupted. Almost erased were families’ intergenerational transmission of languages, values, roles, and traditional laws. The government of Canada, with authoritative policies and acts, began implementing colonial racist rules, such as the 1876 Indian Act, and inadequately funded an era of inhumane residential schools and a lack of proper education.

8. Interrupting Schoolcentric Practices with Indigenous Ways of Knowing, Teaching, and Learning

While these colonial laws are still felt and vibrating within our memory today, there is good news:

There is a reason that Indigenous people have survived and thrived for millennia with these ways of knowing, teaching, and learning. The period of colonization is but a blip in the entire history of Indigenous peoples’ histories and survival, and recovery is possible.

(Restoule & Chaw, 2017, p. 10)

In the era of reconciliation, I think often about Senator Murray Sinclair (2015), former Chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC), as he gave us this example when he spoke during the closing events of the TRC in Ottawa, “Education got us into this mess, and education will get us out of it.” Walking alongside, bringing parent and grandparent knowledge into the schooling and education of our children, is one solution. What might such walking alongside encompass?

9. kiyokēwin—Taking the Time to Visit

9.1. At the Start of a School Year

One approach and practice I have been thinking about deeply and working on is the concept of visiting—kiyokēwin. But before we get to that, let’s consider what currently happens now in mainstream education, teacher practitioners take the lead in practices such as Meet the Teacher events and Parent–Teacher Conferences.

Currently, these are the practices that occur in schools everywhere. I experience them with my child and grandchild each year. Once a year, in the fall, it becomes time for households to register their child or grandchildren in school. Caregivers must provide identification, a local address, produce updated report cards, share personal information, give hospitalization numbers, and sign a number of forms. A lot of personal, documented information is handed over to authorities through a practice that does not feel warm or personal. Then there are more forms to sign and lists to check off regarding lunch programs, after-school programs, costs of school supplies, and sports/arts fees. It is very much a formal practice, and perhaps even a scary one. Many nēhiyaw people continue to experience ongoing internal trauma when it comes to these types of schooling procedures. In my experience, I often meet with indifference to this trauma, and it still makes me shake.

Historically, there has been damage done through residential and day schools. Because of this damage, there is still a valid systemic mistrust. The residential school systems have been sources of deceit, criminal offences, and violence, not to mention recently found burial grounds in a number of locations across a number of Canadian provinces. Colonization and cultural erasure are still deep in the family memory for many nēhiyawak communities.

Given this history, why not meet the family within the community, in neutral settings, and get to know the families first, before all the paperwork and as a means to move away from the cold procedures? Open up the school gymnasium, have a soft invite, do some relationship building circles through shared storytelling, let parents and grandparents share stories of their lives.

9.2. As the Year Progresses

Later in the year, parent–teacher conferences begin with family input regarding the whole child, from a strengths-based approach, before discussing school subjects. Have meaningful discussions about what the child is learning at home from the parents, and listen deeply as the teacher. From my home, as a parent, I teach my children and grandchildren about gardening, and we engage in land-based learning, such as when to harvest, when to pick berries, knowledge of mushrooms, and medicinal plants. We practice seasonal ceremonial events like the summer and winter solstice, new and full moon celebrations, and memorial feasts. I share the significance of the teachings of nēhiyaw ways of being, doing, thinking, and, of course, language learning. Why not have parents and grandparents share where they are from, learn more about the lands and local languages on which the school is built? Use this knowledge to begin your curriculum-making together, situated in context and culture.

To begin, ask yourself, ‘How strong is the relationship between families and school staff? Is it going well? Are students succeeding? Finishing school? Raving about their schooling experiences? How is the friendship going between families and school staff? Is there currently an inclusion of nēhiyaw epistemology and ontology? Who is leading this work? Do educators want, and think it is possible, to have a friendship with parents, especially nēhiyaw parents and grandparents? Do educators believe they can learn from parents and grandparents? Do educators understand that they can be better teachers when they use parent and grandparent knowledge alongside their own?

For me, as I delve deeper and deeper into my own nēhiyaw way of being, I ask myself this question, as a parent and now a grandparent, ‘Where is the respect, the ethical and mutual space? One day, my daughter and I were discussing just this fact. My grandchild—ninosim—is my sacred little star, my little gift from Creator. Does my little ninosim want to get to know (you) the teacher? Does ninosim want to get to know the school? Do the teacher and the staff want to know him from an authentic place and space of engagement? As a parent and grandparent, I have discussed this with my family. There are remnants of residential schooling that are still felt today that seem arbitrary and interrogative from a white teacher’s position. I bring this up because my grandson, although he is nēhiyaw, attends French Immersion programming. Questions were raised by the teacher who asked, “Why French? Why this particular school?” When reflecting upon that scenario, I felt there was a lack of intercultural respect. However, moving forward through Treaty negotiations, through Truth and Reconciliation, we as families and extended families are taking back our responsibility. In earlier times, my parents and grandparents did not have this responsibility, this right. Through policies such as residential schooling, there were “restrictions imposed on Indigenous parents, historically, in regard to their place and voice in their children’s upbringing and their schooling and education” (Young et al., 2024, p. 419).

9.3. As a Social School Practice

I have to ask myself, if visiting is a societal cultural norm in what we do outside of school, why is it not an integral part of the schooling process and curriculum? Visiting and taking the time to get to know each other as people is key to developing any new relationship. For me, when I think about visiting as a child, my grandparents loved to share stories, they listened to other people’s stories, and there was never a rush or people looking at the time. We as a family, in the moment of interacting, made time disappear; we were enriching our relationships with visits. Building relationships is a value, a natural law, and a way of being. Relationship building is significant when family and community are involved, as Indigenous educators, parents, and grandparents, we assert that trust, relational accountability, and community care are the foundation (Cajete, 1994; Simpson, 2017; Smith, 1999; Tuck, 2009; Wilson, 2008), especially where our children are concerned.

Visiting, especially around a table with food, is a nēhiyaw family-centric approach which I am familiar with and have lived experience doing. “Sharing round a kitchen table while eating, drinking, and making from an Indigenous worldview” (Mattes & Farrell Racette, 2019, oral presentation) is not only enriching, but nourishing on many levels. It is a practice that has been in existence forever. If this practice is welcomed by the school and its teachers and staff, it will create unity in raising our children and grandchildren together. This approach will make school or learning that much more successful for everyone.

In my current, active Social Sciences and Humanities Research (Daniels, 2023), I am not only mentoring new PhD candidates specializing in Indigenous languages, but also introducing this way of relationship-building within a collective of teacher educators. Making time to visit—pē kiyokētān—can be curricular and foundational in education. It can create an “ethical space of engagement” (Ermine, 2007, p. 194) as a way of approaching multi-cultural and interracial understandings across all kinds of knowledge domains.

10. Morning Routines in School: Moving Towards nanāskomowin—Gratitude

Another example of a current practice that is school-centric is the practice of taking roll call and the authoritarian way in which a teacher does morning attendance in class. When this is done first thing in the morning, it may conflict with nēhiyaw practices or beliefs in several ways that are uncomfortable and jarring. The following damaging memories speak of my lived experiences.

10.1. Morning Roll-Call

When I moved from my Reserve lands to the city, entering a public school, attendance was full of shame and ridicule when our full names were called out. I remember this experience being belittling and embarrassing. In high school, I remember being always late.

I remember my English teacher humiliating me in front of a class of more than 30 students. He ridiculed me for always being five minutes late, saying to me that because I was always five minutes late, I would never amount to anything or succeed in anything. In that moment, I distinctly remember my feelings being hurt. I felt tears swell up, and anguish fueled my body. I was paralyzed, wondering what I should do. Should I go sit down, or should I leave? I stood there for a moment at the door and then stepped back and closed the door. I never went back to that class (B. Daniels, 2014, p. 104).

During attendance, I was happy my name was typical, Belinda Daniels, as there were English-translated names from other Original People (like the nēhiyawak) origins, such as Bighead, Bighorn, and Smallchild. Names mean something, yet other students would make fun of last names and add mean comments. This aspect of roll call could ruin your whole school experience, which, in my case, it nearly did.

Further, the time set for roll call may overlap with ceremonies or seasonal activities that are significant for the student’s identity and well-being. It may be something as small as observing the Sun rising. Mornings are spiritual in nature and connect to the bigger picture of life—pimātisiwin. Being grateful for a new day is a common practice among nēhiyawak, which I will come back to later.

As a young person going to school, I had high absenteeism. nēhiyaw students today also often miss a lot of school, often for a variety of reasons related to intergenerational effects of residential schooling—effects such as turbulent home experiences, poverty, insecure housing, and food insecurity. These effects of intergenerational trauma are often ones that colonial mainstream teachers can not fathom or just do not appear to want to understand. In my experience, there were also nēhiyaw, Anishnabe, and Dakota students who were committed to their culture. Because of ceremonial practices they were involved in, such as wakes or funerals, which were significant and important to their families, students would miss school. Teachers sometimes spoke derogatorily about nēhiyaw students’ absences, reinforcing stereotypes and perpetuating biases. These spiritual events conflicted with the school’s attendance policy and thus were coded as unexcused absences.

10.2. Mornings Are Spiritual

The Sun—pīsim—is the Creator’s child—a grand spirit, the Sun rising in the direction from where light comes.

The Sun, which we call kihc-ōskāpēwis, is the Great Helper of the Creator.

This spirit helper comes up from the east and provides us with daylight. If it wasn’t for kihc-ōskāpēwis, who works for the Creator to give us daylight and warmth, where would the Cree be? In darkness. So we thank the Sun every morning as it comes up for this lifegiving. That is the work the Creator gave the Sun.

(Christensen, 2000, p. 5)

There are many gifts that come from the east, from where the Sun rises, such as new beginnings, new understandings, and new journeys. “One of the most important gifts to be acquired in the east is the capacity to focus our attention on the events of the present moment” (Lane et al., 2003, p. 45). Being out on the land, waking up in the morning, draws us into the present moment.

In my childhood home, we got up early all the time. It did not matter if it was a school day or the weekend. In the early mornings, I could easily hear the birds singing in spring or summer, or the ice breaking and cracking in winter. These sounds were my wake-up call. I loved leaving my window open, as the land and water waking up is what made me feel alive and in the present moment.

Not long after waking up, nimosōmpan (my late grandfather) would call out ‘waniskāk’, which meant, wake up all of you! Directed to me and my siblings (first cousins in English colonial culture). We would sit with my grandfather at the table, looking out the window. Depending on the season, we would listen to the fire crackling, or we would hear the rain, or sometimes nothing at all, and just sit in silence, enjoying each other’s presence. I loved the mornings sitting with my grandfather.

Mornings and seasons of renewal have something in common; it is about gratitude, the opportunity for a new day. The Sun, Creator’s child, is significant; mornings are a part of our philosophy. Come dawn, we have a special song and I have taught it to my children and students, ‘waniskā—Wake up song’.

It goes like this:

waniskā pē-wāpan ōma—wake up, dawn is coming

āsay piyēsīsak kī-nikomowak—the birds are already singing

pē miyonākwan kitaskī naw—the land is beautiful

Mornings are a way of reflecting, acknowledging, and honoring, and also taking notice of the ecologies.

11. Morning Invitation to Parents/Grandparents

Moving from a school-centric to a family-centric way of being, a morning practice could become a possible invitation for parents and grandparents, and a way to engage them in the morning. They can help greet the students and say their names, be involved in ‘slow’ routines to implement morning ‘quiet time,’ perhaps smudging, meditation, and practice of morning and/or life gratitude. An extra step in the slow morning could be a morning walk around the school grounds, giving thanks, offering tobacco to the land for a new day. Parents/grandparents could assist in this practice.

Such a morning routine would help build relationships with nēhiyaw communities. It would show respect for cultural practices while finding flexible, inclusive solutions to ensure students are supported, both academically and culturally. These morning times could still be curricular, incorporating such things as land-based learning: spatial directions, plant and tree identification, and place names of the local area. They could also incorporate local language learning, such as a greeting or a saying of gratitude in the nēhiyaw language.

12. Families in School: Bringing in the Love of Grandparents and Parents

Even though my children had access to grandparents, great-grandparents, ceremony, nēhiyaw names, and lots of language because of my awareness of language and identity through nōhkompan (my late grandmother), it was not enough. Knowing and understanding your language deepens your sense of identity. I wanted my children, along with my nieces and nephews and my grandson, to have a strong nēhiyaw identity. As families, we all want our children to have strong identities. Strong identities mean that we as nēhiyawak, whether we are children or adults, need language. With nēhiyawēwin-Cree language revitalization and reclamation, we also need land, land back to maintain our nationhood. With these two living knowledge systems, we need our parents and grandparents’ support, modeling, and love. Events, gatherings, and language camps help us practice and experience who we are. It is radical while at the same time decolonial, but this is what it takes. It is our responsibility, and it is the way we can make ourselves accountable to our future generations.

Parents and grandparents are holders of cultural knowledge. There is embodied memory that they can bring to the school landscape. We can offer our knowledge of nēhiyawak traditional parenting. These unique childrearing practices are deeply rooted in the cultural, spiritual, and social traditions of our communities and of other Original peoples worldwide. While these practices vary, depending on the specific Original peoples, there are common values and principles shared across many Original cultures, like the nēhiyawak.

An excerpt from Mandelbaum’s (1979) journal depicts the role of grandparents:

A youngster, a little over two years old, came wandering into the Sundance lodge. He stopped near the circle of singers and stood there for a full 15 min gazing about him… Children often wandered in and out of the lodge. At one time during the dance, two boys about four [years of age] engaged in a battle, throwing stones and chips at each other. One would run up and pound his adversary with a twig at intervals. I was a bit perturbed, being in the line of fire. But no one else seemed to care; eventually the boys ran out to play elsewhere. Children spent a great deal of time with their grandparents and relatively little with their parents who were preoccupied with adult tasks and cares. Once, in telling how the souls of the dead sometimes visit the earth, Fineday incidentally said, “The old people come back to see their children and especially their grandchildren, for the Cree love their grandchildren even more than their own children.” When asked for an explanation, he replied that when a person grows old he has more time to spend with the children and so grows very fond of them.

(p. 144)

When reflecting on these concepts, I see how it was my grandparents, aunts, and uncles who helped shape the person I am today. My grandparents are now among the stars; they still watch over me, I feel their presence, and see and visit them in my dreams. They watch over my children and grandson now as well. To give an example, the other night I dreamt (30 April 2025),

I dreamt I was in this hall of some sort, almost like a lobby, but it had various windows and I could look out these various windows of all sorts and sizes.

I saw my daughter—nitānis—and grandson—ninōsisim. They were with another woman, a friend of nitanis. They were talking and it looked as though nitānis was giving her advice and comfort. nitānis then invited her friend to Bingo. ninōsisim was sitting beside his mother, nitānis was in the middle, and the friend was on the other side, all sitting down at a table.

As I was looking at nitānis through the window, in the reflection of the entrance were glass sliding doors, so that people could go in and out of the Bingo hall.

I saw ninōhkompan sitting beside my grandson, ninōsisim, who was sitting next to nitānis. ninōhkompan was also playing bingo, but it was crossword bingo! ninōhkompan was circling letters. It was crossword bingo. However nitānis and ninōsisim could not see their great grandmother and great great grandmother, but I could, from where I was standing and peering through the window. (Her reflection was on this glass door, where people could go in and out.) ninõhkompan saw me! She knew I could see her! Then her reflection was gone.

I woke up and thought to myself, as I was tearing up with joy, ‘Oh my goodness, what a beautiful visit. ninōhkompan wanted to make it known to me that she is here with us!’

My dream validates what I have always believed; we are never alone, and ninōhkompan sits beside and watches over family members. Great grandparents and great great grandparents and their love lives on. This love is intergenerational, whether we are alive on earth or among the stars.

I spent a great deal of time with my grandparents as they raised me, “Parenting in a culture that requires a high level of attachment, indulgence” (Simpson, 2011, p. 134). Simpson (2011) stated, “Grandparents were responsible for teaching their grandchildren, often through the use of personal and traditional stories, as well as life’s lessons (p. 129). When I became an adult, my connection with my grandparents never stopped; my nōhkompan continued to teach me up to her last breath, and now, even after death.

The concept of kinship is significant and a part of our governance system and roles. It is essential to all education, to all classrooms, that grandparents, aunts, and uncles play a part in our schools. They have knowledge to offer us as the ‘Original’ peoples of their lands. They have stories, they know the origin stories of significant beings and spirits. They have knowledge of a different worldview that teaches how to interact in the modern world in a way that is self-sustaining. Invite the relatives of the child when parents are busy working; this adds enrichment to their identity, esteem, and life. I have lived experience in this, my extended family’s love, when I can come and share what little I know of who we are as nēhiyawak.

13. Returning to My Little Story with Big Ideas

What does it teach us?

The story about ‘Chooch chooch-a-way’ is about being grateful, being self-sufficient, self-sustaining, and learning how to build a home, both literally and figuratively. The story further gets us to think about regenerated knowledge, the land, and how it takes care of us, and how we take care of each other. There is significant grandparent knowledge transfer, funds of cultural knowledge that should not be erased from schooling. This way of teaching happens inherently. What the little boy was taught when he grew up becomes, in turn, what he teaches when he is a great-grandfather himself. It is cyclical. We can all learn from this story, from becoming friends with, to walking alongside, local grandparents who are from the local lands. Because they have this infinite knowledge about the earth beneath their feet, there is room in the curriculum for visiting, listening, observing, stillness, being in the moment, and learning the languages of local Original peoples, like the nēhiyawak. There is value in learning to think in another way of being and doing. We can all learn from this and walk alongside parents and grandparents in our schools.