Interactive Song & Dance
Everywhere you look, Indigenous dance is captivating world and there has never been a better time to bring movement and energy to your organization. Song and dance workshops will provides an ideal way to introduce children or your community to the concepts of indigenous, theatre and art forms of culture in a safe fun moving environment. From the drummers beat to traditional and contemporary art forms of rhythms, improvisations in our dance workshop will bring new -learning experiences.
Oral Traditions
We have stories to tell, stories we have lived from the inside and out. Creation stories have shaped our communities with landscapes and traditional laws and teachings evident in our stories passed on from countless generations.
Your stories and stories of the people around you are unique, and valuable to your family and your community. You can discover, preserve unwritten history using oral history techniques and skills.
Grizzly Bears Protected Species
The Grizzly bear plays a prominent role in the community of St’at’imc as a protected species both in cultural and ecological as an umbrella species. If we protect the Grizzly bears, we are also sustaining and ensuring the continuance of cultural survival into the future.
In Language Holds Life, In Language Holds Death
Language holds a vast ray of information of thousands of years of culture and how we relate and connect to the land and to each other. It is a powerful indicator of a tribal groups identity, it is an important way to maintain links within one’s own cultural past, present future identity. Sadly within the next generation or two diverse languages will become extinct if Indigenous peoples do not pick up the momentum and capture and reclaim traditional languages as a means of reclaiming culture.
The Decade of Indigenous Languages Begins in 2022: Why it is important to act now on behalf of Indigenous Languages?
Language is intrinsic to the expression of culture. As a means of communicating values, beliefs, and customs, it has an important social function and fosters feelings of group identity and solidarity. It is how culture, traditions, and its shared values may be conveyed and preserved. Every time a language dies, so does an expression of human experience like no other.
Every time a language dies, so does an expression of human experience like no other. The United Nations Decade of Indigenous Languages begins in 2022. First Nations representatives from British Columbia joined more than 500 participants from 50 countries in Mexico City in February 2020 to discuss a roadmap for the Decade of Indigenous Languages (2022-2032). At least 40% of the 7,000 languages used worldwide are at some level of endangerment. Indigenous languages are particularly vulnerable. One of the world’s top “language hotspots” of endangered languages is the heart of British Columbia it is the home to 34 distinct languages and seven language families. Together these account for more than 60 per cent of all Indigenous languages spoken in Canada. We urge leadership, educators, and communities to develop an appreciation and understanding of the significance of Indigenous languages and to support comprehensive plans to be put into immediate actions.
St’at’imc Seven Laws of Life: Health; Happiness; Generations; Generosity; Power; Compassion; Quietness
This section focuses on the following Lessons:
- Understandings one’s personal identity
- Who am I?
- What are my values in life?
- Medicine wheel to health and wellness
- What is True Happiness?
- Why do we focus on past, present and future generations and how do the choices we make impact generations?
- What does it mean to be Generous?
- How can you use Power as a tool to success?
- What are the differences between Compassion and pity?
- What are the values of Quietness and how can bring more of this into our lives.
Singing Workshop (Voice lessons, Singing, leadership)
Learn how to sing enchanting songs. Whether you’re an instrumentalist who has never sung or an experienced singer looking for a new experience to strengthen your voice, this workshop is was designed to meet you where you are. Join Grizzlypaws as she helps you get started to express your voice. Grizzlypaws discusses the history of Indigenous singing to provide some context to the learners, and then helps you understand and play with your vocals. She also demonstrates physical exercises to build core strength—which can improve your singing—sound, pitch, and melody.
Topics include:
- The history of singing in Indigenous culture
- Understanding your vocals
- Caring for your voice
- Building core strength
- Developing the correct mental approach to singing
- Teaching a couple songs to sing together
Live Performances of Grizzlypaws Songs
Album: Hear Me
Album: We are the Children of the Land
Album: Come Home
Album: Muzmit.stumc
Resilience Topics: Overcoming Trauma; Sexual Abuse, Anger & Violence; Neglect; Incarceration; Education Challenges School Failures
Resilience is the ability to recover and bounce back from adversity and hardships, feeling stronger and more capable to cope than ever before.
Resilient people demonstrate great flexibility, high energy, mental agility and consistently perform at their highest level. They have strong relationships and support networks that help them to amplify their productivity and results.
The beauty of resilience is that it gives hope and strength to those who may have similar challenges and or barriers to overcome.
Education Leadership
- Inclusive Education
- Lifelong learning is a collective responsibility
- Understanding Indigenous knowledge and pedagogy and the historical and contemporary conditions of Aboriginal education in Canada.
- Education Skills & Training impacting First Nations Economy.
Grizzly Bear Performance: Song, Dance and Creation Story.
“She crouches, she bends, she bounces, bells jingle, she turns, she stalks, she stands tall, paws extend skyward, she pounces, she shakes the imposing head of the magnificent – and heavy- grizzly bear regalia draped over her.” – Wendy Fraser Bridge River Lillooet News
The Bears name is Grizz both Grizzlypaws and Grizz are from the community of Xwisten. Grizzlypaws and Grizz evoke the days when grizzly bears once roamed the land with no threat. With the declining number of Grizzlies, Grizz now marks his ancestral footprints to provide hope, sustainability through cultural education to empower, promote and to increase awareness of cultural identity, community and family values.
Women EmpowHERment
Women are the foundation of family, community and cultural sustainability. Women empowerment is to motivate and develop women by promoting their participation in all areas and sectors, to build stronger families, community and economies, improve their quality of life; remind them of their strengths and gifts as mentors, mothers, sisters, daughters and leaders. EmpowerHERment to women encourages women to take action and make their own decisions by breaking all their personal rules that the society and their family and even religion/culture had created for them. It is to inspire them to be independent in all aspects from thought, mind, decision, health and wellness and to bring equality into their life.
Indigenization & Decolonization
The work of Indigenization is a growing focus in this era of reconciliation, which has been driven forward by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC). Indigenization is one way in which we can contribute to working toward a stronger shared future as Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. Indigenization is a reflective journey of incorporating Indigenous Knowledge teaching and learning into education.
Land Acknowledgements
Recognize Indigenous peoples as stewards of their traditional lands since time immemorial while acknowledging the ongoing impacts of colonization. Land acknowledgements are a time for you to reflect and draw on your knowledge of the local Indigenous peoples and the traditional lands of a place. Respectful land acknowledgments involve a process of reconciliation and acknowledgement of the displacement of Indigenous peoples. Indigenous peoples have always honored guests, as well as their hosts when visiting other nations and communities. To honor and show gratitude is a sign of respect. In order to enact meaningful change and build positive relationships it is time for all of us to do the same.