Beginning at 2 p.m. Monday, students, teachers and adults from the Battle Creek First Nations set out on Highway 16 to march for the Idle No More international day of action.
They had been blessed by a surprisingly warm day, especially considering the cold snap that followed Tuesday. The group of around 40 people marched, waved signs and did a round dance at the Railway Avenue-Battleford Road intersection, before returning to their schoo lbuses and trucks at the Tropical Inn parking lot.
Lamar Oksasikewiyan, a Grade 7 and 8 teacher with Mosquito School, was participating in the march with his students. As we walked along the highway, he explained his and his students' motivations for being there that day.
Oksasikewiyan had started teaching at the school only a few weeks prior, on Jan. 3. He and his students shared an interest in the Idle No More protests that had already happened, and this shared interest led to them checking each day for updates from around Canada and across the world.
But the students were not content to simply read updates about events elsewhere in the country, and they began to research the issues themselves, making presentations on the bills that Idle No More was protesting.
The Idle No More movements around the country have organized and co-ordinated themselves through the Internet since the movement began, and Oksasikewiyan's class was no different. He mentioned that the students had watched clips from Australia, Sweden and the United Kingdom, as well as all over Canada. As we spoke, one of the Idle No More founders was actually speaking in the UK.
Reading about Idle No More was invaluable to Oksasikewiyan's class, he said, especially their education on global citizenship. Youth on reserves have often been isolated, whether geographically, culturally or linguistically, the teacher explained. By following and learning about Idle No More and its issues, they had inserted themselves into a global conversation about issues that affect all Canadians, connected with protesters around Canada and across the world, and even taught themselves about Canada's government. Issues that were once distant or unsolvable become immediate, and students gained the power to co-ordinate, argue and take action on a national and international scale. Ultimately, the decision to participate in the protests themselves was an easy one.
"It's just like wildfire," Oksasikewiyan commented, describing the role that technology has played for his class and for others.
To other march participants, much of the value of the Internet lay in how it brought out young protesters. As Sandra Arias, a member of Red Pheasant, explained to me, the bills that Idle No More is protesting were going to most affect children far more than the current generation.
"It's very meaningful because we're walking with the children," she explained. "That is who we're doing it for. The travesties won't occur tomorrow, but they'll occur when they have children."
The Internet's decentralized, hyper-connected nature has made organization and communication far easier. But it has also introduced another layer of complexity. Idle No More is an inclusive movement, and goes to great lengths to include both non-Canadians and non-aboriginals. The enormous variety of voices means the movement often struggles to stay on-message. Participants, for example, stressed that, whatever national media thought, Theresa Spence was only tangentially related to Idle No More.
Marching in support of the movement they had followed for over a month, the children were exposed to some of the negativity the movement has attracted. Oskasikewiyan explained to me that this negativity should be educational for his students.
"Not to sugar coat it, but racism has gotten more brave in Canada. The only way to combat it is through education. I tell these people to not react to it, or not to react negatively to it."
The police were omnipresent during the march, redirecting traffic, blocking off an entire intersection for the round dance, and maintaining peace and safety. Oksasikewiyan and others eagerly thanked police at the event's conclusion, and the police, for their part, seemed happy to have helped.
