Narrative

Return to Part 4 Return to Home Page

A Part of Many Worlds

Pilar from Ecuador moved to Canada with her family to live with her Canadian born Aunty Sue. Now adjusted into grade 3, Pilar who grew up in Quito, Ecuador, is bilingual in Spanish and English. Earlier this week Pilar attended her first Pow wow. Pilar experienced many new things during the field trip and described some of her big ideas to her Aunty Sue.

Pilar enjoyed learning about different cultures and could see differences between Ecuador, Regina and the culture demonstrated by the First Nations people. The clothing she saw was different from what students wore in her school and around the city. The food she sampled included a bowl of bison stew with bannock, those were different from the empanadas she ate in Quito or the hamburgers her Aunty Sue would make.

During the different categories of dances, Pilar learned that they all had different meanings like connections to the land and the environment. One dancer reenacted a hunter on the plains of Saskatchewan preparing to use a bow and arrow to hunt a buffalo. The hunter ensured their basic human needs were met by traditionally using every part of the buffalo. The hunter would have lived off the natural resources from the land, knew the landscape of where the animals roamed and acquired technologies to hunt successfully.

Pilar noticed that the Elders held leadership position and wondered if they were voted in like the political system in the government. The day at the pow wow opened the scope for Pilar because she experienced a different culture, learned something from the First Nations traditions and could now imagine how much of this information would help influence her future. The pictures she had seen of the earth had much more depth because now she could bring visual images to the people within the places she had explored and learned about in class.