Dozens of Regina’s children gathered today Vaskana Park On Thursday for the celebration of traditional indigenous games.
It’s called the “Get-Out-Kids-Club” and is organized by SaskOutdoors, nature saskatchewan and the Canadian Wildlife Association.
Some of the games played included hand-ball, hoop-and-arrow, rock-in-fist, and hoop-and-stick.
“Today I learned that First Nations are very unique and they play a lot of fun games and their games are different and with their games, we make progress,” said Brielle Gardner, one of the kids who participated in the program.
It started with a TP raising and knowledge sharing session from an indigenous knowledge defender about the importance of TP.
“We are really engaging with various indigenous cultural games today,” Shannon Chernick, said youth leadership expert from the Canadian Wildlife Federation.
He said the goal of the event is to support reconciliation in the community. “These are traditional indigenous games, so they would have been played at the time of buffaloes.”
The games were gifted to us from an indigenous knowledge defender from the ‘Pie Pot First Nation. It wasn’t about sitting down and writing stuff. It was ‘Let’s play this game that’s going to develop your hand-eye coordination, a game that’s going to develop your lung capacity.’ It was all just about skill development,” she said.
“It’s been really fun to learn these indigenous games and I and I have learned a lot from every single game we’ve played,” said another young man, Adley Gardner.
Chernick said that the games are played by a lot of First Nations, “Luckily, we are very grateful that despite all that has happened in our community over the past 150 years, the Pi Port First Nation was able to keep the knowledge and therefore the game.” , we think, it’s just so important to maintain an understanding of that culture.”
He said that being on Treaty 4 it is important for him to understand the traditions of the Treaty and the land-based learning. The children had the opportunity to actually have different parts of the teepee and learn about the cultural traditions.
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