‘I
grew up in North Vancouver, and in school I never really learned about
First Nations at all,’ says Ridgeway elementary school parent Arieanna
Schweber, who led a community fundraising drive for the playground
project. ‘I learned a lot about France and Britain, but not what was
going on in Canada.’ Photo by NICK PROCAYLO /PNG
By Denise Ryan, Vancouver Sun
When the concrete is poured this week to create the footings of a
teepee in a new playground at Ridgeway Elementary School in North
Vancouver, the foundation will secure more than just a physical
structure.
Brad Baker, principal of the North Vancouver School
District Indigenous Education Program, said the Indigenous-focused
playground will support the three pathways of Indigenous education in
the school district: students, educators and community members.
Most important among them, of course, is the children.
“The
entry to learning is play, and for us as Indigenous people, that also
means learning from the land,” said Baker. “This is a permanent example
of play and learning from the land.”
Arieanna Schweber, 39, mom
to two kids at Ridgeway elementary, led a $200,000 community fundraising
drive to finance the project. From the beginning, the idea for a new
playground was inseparable from the community’s commitment to honour the
history and culture of the Skwxwú7mesh and Tsleil-Waututh First
Nations.
“I
grew up in North Vancouver, and in school I never really learned about
First Nations at all,” she said. “I learned a lot about France and
Britain, but not what was going on in Canada.”
Schweber said she
wants her children’s education and experience to be different. “Our
school and our district has been trying to indigenize the curriculum and
we’ve tried to educate ourselves, and this is something that we can do
to express our desire for reconciliation.”
The new playground
will be fully accessible and pay respect to the natural environment,
featuring First Nations design, including a blue river motif with
swimming salmon, a teepee structure and five custom-designed natural log
and rope play pieces to encourage “unstructured play.”
Schweber said she is deeply grateful to Houston Landscapes, which partnered with Projects in Place Society,
a design-to-build non-profit society that together donated time, labour
and equipment to help push the project to completion, albeit a little
later than expected due to the pandemic.
Brad Baker is principal of the North Vancouver School District Indigenous Education Program.
Photo by NVSD.
Baker said his first thought when Schweber and Ridgeway principal
Dean Yeo reached out was gratitude. “There was Indigenous consultation
from the outset, not as an afterthought,” said Baker
“Folks are trying to get a stronger understanding and see the importance of including Indigenous voices in the school system.”
The
teepee structure and the nature-themed playground will be a place both
to learn and play, said Baker, who is a member of the Squamish Nation.
When the playground officially opens sometime in the spring, there
will be a smudging ceremony, followed, no doubt, by the raucous sound of
children at play, and perhaps a generation or so down the road,
something more.
“I’m the first generation in my family not to go
to residential school,” said Baker, “and one day the kids of the kids
who are in this school will be able to tell about how Indigenous
perspective was brought into their playground.”
