Regina children gather at Wascana Park to celebrate and play traditional Indigenous games – Regina
Dozens of children from Regina gathered today at Wascana Park on Thursday for a celebration of traditional Aboriginal games.
It’s called “get-outside-kids-club” and is organized by SaskOutdoors, Nature Saskatchewan and the Canadian Wildlife Federation.
Some of the games played included handball, hoop and arrows, rock-in-fist, and hoop and stick.
“Today I learned that First Nations are very unique and they play very fun games and their games are different and with their games we move forward,” said Brielle Gardner, one of the children participating in the event.
It all started with a tipi lifting session and an Indigenous Knowledge Keeper sharing knowledge about the importance of the tipi.
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“We are really in touch with different indigenous cultural games today,” Shannon Chernick, said a youth leadership specialist at the Canadian Wildlife Federation.
She added that the purpose of the event is to support reconciliation in the community. “These are traditional aboriginal games, so they would have been played in the bison era.”
“The games were brought to us by an Indigenous Knowledge Keeper from the Pi Pot First Nation. It wasn’t about sitting down and writing things down. It was « let’s play this game that will develop your hand-eye coordination, a game that will develop your lung capacity ». It was just a matter of skill development,” she said.
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« Learning about these Aboriginal games has been really fun and me and I have learned a lot from every game I’ve played so far, » said Adalee Gardner, another youngster at the event.
Chernick said the games are played by many First Nations, « fortunately we are very grateful that Pi Port First Nation has been able to retain the knowledge despite all that has happened in their community over the past 150 years. and so games, we think, are so important to maintaining understanding of this culture.
She said that being on Treaty 4, it is important for them to understand the traditions of the treaty and for land-based learning. The children actually had the opportunity to put together the different parts of the tipi and also learn about the cultural traditions.
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