Renae Hemsing
APPLYING FOUNDATIONAL KNOWLEDGE ABOUT METIS, FIRST NATIONS, AND INUIT

During Field III, I had the privilege of integrating Science with Art to create a lesson that considered the unique cultural perspective of the Haida people. The Haida are a group of First Nations peoples that live in an archipelagos off of British Columbia. During this project, my Grade 6 classes read the book, Taan’s Moons: A Haida Moon Story by Alison Gear. Reading the book as a class provided us with the opportunity to collaborate and discuss the perspectives of the Haida people that are based on their unique history, culture, language and experiences. Together, we developed understanding and respect about how the perspective of the Moon from our Science class was different from the diverse perspectives of First Nations, Metis and Inuit peoples. After reading the book, students reflected about their personal meaningful experiences, and created their Taan’s Moon art project, which symbolically represented their meaningful experience.
Below is a photo of a Grade 6 class Taan's Moons art project. Each Moon represents an important phase of each student's life. For each moon, the students had to include a description explaining their Taan Moon (examples included in the pdf viewer below).

Examples of student's written descriptions about their Taan's Moons.