Sunchild School offers indigenous educational programs designed for learning from elders of the Cree community. Our learning sessions bring Cree elders into classrooms and community activities. They share stories, impart traditional values, and reflect how the Cree community supports one another.
Children learn from Elders and the community through listening, discussion, and activities that portray daily life within the First Nation. Our thoughtfully curated and culturally rich programs strengthen trust between indigenous students, families, and school staff, making learning a combined community effort.
Elders are Cree community leaders who preserve and share knowledge passed through generations. They influence students through history, storytelling, language, and cultural practices.
Elders are also spiritual guides who initiate prayers, ceremonies, and educate indigenous students about interconnectedness with nature, including land, animals, and water, promoting children’s spiritual and emotional health. They are cultural mentors and healers teaching values, ethics, kinship, and ways of life by acquainting youth with their cultural history and struggles.
Elders also strengthen social bonds, encourage mutual respect, and help students preserve their cultural identity. They connect learning to the land, teaching respect for the
environment as a source of life and livelihood to the students.
An Indigenous Elder is a respected community member. They are not defined only by age, but by earned wisdom and knowledge. This may include life experience, deep knowledge of traditional teachings, cultural protocols, and spirituality. Elders are consulted in all matters of importance in the community.
Sunchild School sees Cree Elders as community knowledge keepers and teachers of traditional values.Elders teach students about family roles and how to care for the land. shared responsibility, and balance within the community mean.
Their guidance ensures continuity and healing from colonial impacts by connecting indigenous youth to their identity, land, and holistic well-being through wisdom, traditional laws, and spiritual practices such as smudging.
Most weeks during the school year, two community Elders come to Sunchild School to provide teachings to the students.
Yes, our Elder learning programs are for all students from grades K-12. Activities and classroom sessions with Elders are designed in a way to suit the student stages of learning.
Families are welcome to many school events to create a shared learning environment between students, their parents, and Cree Elders.
Yes, Elders and community involvement in education bring spiritual, emotional, mental, and physical growth in students, creating balance.
