Latest news with #Janvier
CBC
09-04-2025
- Politics
- CBC
Dene teacher shares tools she developed to empower 2-spirit youth in the classroom
Tanzy Janvier struggled to embrace her two-spirit identity as a child going to Catholic school. Now a Grade 8 teacher in Saskatoon, she's helping other teachers support 2SLGBTQ+ youth in the classroom so that they don't struggle as she once did. Janvier, who is Dene and originally from La Loche, Sask., founded an organization called Indigenous Teachers for Two-Spirit Youth where she shares knowledge and experiences with fellow educators and tools that they may use in the classroom to help their students, from elementary to high school. She presented a workshop called Empowering Two-Spirit Youth: Decolonizing Education with Indigenous Teachers for Two-Spirit Youth at the Think Indigenous conference last week in Regina. "School is the very first place where students start to explore the identity amongst their peers and if they don't have those safety nets to be able to do that, once they're done school and in adulthood they don't know who they are and how that impacts them so much," said Janvier. Janvier said teachers are trying to find ways on how best to support diverse students. She said some teachers already feel overwhelmed with how to teach Indigenous content and 2SLGBTQ+ content, so when you combine the two, that can be even more overwhelming. "We're some of the most marginalized groups and have some of the most unfortunate statistics when it comes to attendance and suicide rates," said Janvier. "It's really important that we focus on them so that they know that they're safe and feel included." In October 2023, Saskatchewan passed Bill 137, also known as the "Parents' Bill of Rights" which requires parental consent for students under 16 to use preferred names and pronouns at school, and invokes the notwithstanding clause to override certain sections of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Janvier said there was no consultation with Indigenous communities on the bill, and it has caused more harm to two-spirit youth. CBC Indigenous asked the Ministry of Education if it consulted Indigenous people in the creation of the bill. In a written statement, the ministry said it heard from concerned parents and guardians across the province regarding sexual health education, including many parents and guardians of school-aged children. Janiver said things like Bill 137 prevent two-spirit youth from having a chance to be able to safely explore who they are and that puts them at risk when they do leave the safety of the school and their community. "We have to think about the next seven generations ahead of us, so the legacy that I am hoping for is that when a two-spirit or Indigenous queer youth enters a school, they know exactly who they are and it is reflected to them as well," said Janvier. Madelaine Enns, who is Métis and lives in Saskatoon, leads the workshops with Janvier. She said she is just coming to understand herself as a two-spirit person. Enns said sometimes schools aren't the safest spaces, even for 2SLBGTQ+ teachers. "If I'm feeling uncomfortable going into schools and not feeling like I can be myself, I can only imagine what it's like for students," said Enns.
CBC
01-03-2025
- General
- CBC
This First Nation is recruiting its members to do archaeology and prove their oral history is true
Social Sharing Chipewyan Prairie First Nation has taken part in archaeological digs in its territory for several years now, according to Shaun Janvier, director of Chipewyan Prairie Industry Relations, who says the work proves what the community's always known. "The stories that we have are truth. They're not lies. They're not made-up," Janvier said. "I'm 51 years old and I have stories that date back to my great-great grandfather… Then you do archeology to find out, and it just proves it." Recently, the Dene community 320 kilometres north of Edmonton decided to host a field school. Field school allows participants to learn the hands-on parts of archaeology, like excavation and processing artifacts. For the Chipewyan Prairie school, students also got a week of in-class training at the university where they heard lectures from experts. For members of nearby communities, the process was particularly meaningful, Janvier said, because of their connection to land and its history. "You're finding artifacts that your ancestors were there," he said. The process began when community members, along with University of Alberta archaeologists, were researching in the Winefred Lake area. For non-Indigenous archaeologists like Ave Dersch and William Wadsworth, a PhD candidate who helped lead the field school, drawing on Indigenous knowledge is a key part of their work. "Chipewyan Prairie knows their history already, and they know that they've always been there," Dersch said in an interview with CBC Edmonton's Radio Active. "Almost exclusively as an archaeologist, you're working on Indigenous heritage context. So we need to also change archaeology to be better," Wadsworth said. At Winefred Lake, he added, they found "cultural continuity" of the Dene community dating back a few thousand years. That aligns with what is well-known within the community, Janvier said. All this led Wadsworth to say he hopes that every First Nation can have its own members working as archaeologists to interpret their findings for their own communities. That sentiment is echoed by Eldon Yellowhorn, an archaeologist and professor of Indigenous Studies at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, who is from the Piikani Nation in southern Alberta. Yellowhorn got his own start in archaeology doing field work and says digs like the ones at Winefred Lake can be the starting point for people to begin academic careers. "I wish more [Indigenous people] would go to university and then become archaeologists who will be able to make valid and accurate claims based on their research and their own cultural knowledge," he said. That is a crucial part of his own work, Yellowhorn said, as he's been using the stories he heard growing up to interpret archaeological records. "This [traditional knowledge] has all been kind of dismissed. That it's just myth, and there's no truth to be found there," Yellowhorn said. He said he's used archaeological records to trace traditions — which are often referred to as dating back to "time immemorial" — back to their likely origins. Who gets control of what's found Items discovered during the Chipewyan Prairie field work are being held only temporarily at the University of Alberta Institute for Prairie Indigenous Archeology, Dersch said. That is different from what usually happens when artifacts are uncovered. In Canada, provinces and territories decide what happens with archaelogical artifacts. "So in Alberta, this means listening to the Archeological Survey of Alberta and following the artifacts submission guides by the Royal Alberta Museum [RAM]. Because in Alberta, everything's going to the RAM," Wadsworth said. However, since reserves fall under federal jurisdiction, First Nations are able to decide what to do with artifacts found on reserve land, he added. In this case, the artifacts from Winefred Lake belong to Chipewyan Prairie. Janvier said the community plans to open a museum or heritage centre in the First Nation or in Fort McMurray, Alta., so that all First Nations in the area have equal access. Yellowhorn said often provincial rules around archaeological findings alienate Indigenous people from their heritage. "It has effectively put a rift between descendant communities and the artifacts that we find in the ground, because now they're saying, since these are resources, they now belong to the province and you have no say in what happens to them," Yellowhorn said. Yellowhorn said recent land claims agreements have tried to address this issue by giving First Nations back the control over these finds — but that requires each community to address the issue on an individual basis.
