Students from Mosquito School and St. Vital Catholic School gathered at Mosquito First Nation Tuesday afternoon to make history.
They were there for the signing of a co-created treaty between the senior-level students from the two schools.
The "Joining Nations" treaty was negotiated between Mosquito's Grade 7/8 class and St. Vital's Grade 7 class over the past several weeks.
According to those involved, the signing was history making. According to organizers' information from the Office of the Treaty Commissioner, no treaty between students of different schools had ever been done before.
The signing ceremony took place at Mosquito First Nation, with various representatives from the schools and the OTC taking part. Among the dignitaries there were Living Sky School Division Director of Education Randy Fox and Mosquito First Nation Chief Daniel Starchief.
It was the high point of a year of activities and collaboration between the classes of the schools from neighbouring communities - one located on the Mosquito reserve, the other in Battleford.
Both were involved with Free the Children and We Day the previous fall and became interested in that organization's initiative promoting aboriginal awareness.
Students at St. Vital, and their teacher Kelly Waters, have been active in Free the Children over the years and came up with the idea of partnering with a First Nations reserve school.
"I know Miss Waters started having visions of this when we went to our first We Day," said Emily Simon, a Grade 7 student from St. Vital. "She's like 'we should team up with a reserve school.'"
Everyone was enthusiastic about the idea and contacted Free the Children to find a willing partner.
Through Free the Children, they found Mosquito School.
What motivated the students at the beginning of the process, they said, was a desire to put an end to the racism and the bullying they were witnessing.
"The reason why we started this was because there was racism in their school and their school and we wanted to stop that," said Kiona Moosomin, a Grade 7 student at Mosquito School.
"So we got together and we got to talk about why is there racism with different natives and non-natives."
"I know there was a little bit of racism in our class at the beginning of it," Emily said. "It has definitely gotten better over the course of the year. I think we realize it goes both ways."
Mosquito School teacher Lamarr Oksasikewiyin was particularly enthusiastic about the idea.
"He was so excited that he wanted to keep doing this just to get us to all know each other and stuff like that," said Tatsianna Sauvie, a Grade 8 student at Mosquito School.
The two schools started getting together on projects to promote understanding. Students from Mosquito joined the St. Vital students in North Battleford in March, spending a day visiting the Allen Sapp Gallery.
There, students learned about various aspects of native culture, including their history and traditions. Some guest speakers were brought in and the students were able to tour the gallery and see Allen Sapp's works of art.
More importantly, the students also got to know one another and formed friendships. Tatsianna thought it was productive to help the students "not (be) so shy around other people."
The next step was for St. Vital to accept an invitation to attend the Treaty Youth Symposium held at Mosquito School Tuesday. That day included displays and guest speakers, designed to allow all students to learn more about the treaty-making process and the First Nations culture.
As part of that effort it was decided to have the students come up with a treaty among themselves. Teachers and students from the schools saw it as a way to further understanding of treaty making.
It meant "a lot of meetings," said Kiona. "We met five times to agree on different things, but there's a whole process of everything and there were a lot of things we had to do to do this."
Students came together on the wording they wanted to see in the treaty. They wanted provisions to protect all the students from bullying and belittling, as well as provisions to share knowledge and to gather together at least twice per school year.
The final draft was presented to the Office of the Treaty Commissioner for review before the signing ceremonies took place. A total of 18 different representatives, including students from the two schools, signed copies of the four treaty documents at the ceremony at Mosquito School.
The treaty provisions read as follows:
"We, the Grade 7/8 class of Mosquito School and the Grade 7 class of St. Vital Catholic School, hereafter called "Joining Nations," agree to live in a state of peace and mutual aid.
With this pact, all parties, individually and collectively, ensure and assure one another that:
No member of either "Joining Nations" will, at any time or for any reason, unlawfully belittle a member under the protections of this treaty.
If called upon will come to the willing and generous aid of the other.
Sharing of knowledge between the 'Joining Nations" will be conducted in a fair and open manner. Each alliance will stand responsible for any failure of good faith.
At least two gatherings of the alliance "Joining Nations" per school year.
Conditions and limitations of this treaty include but may not be limited as follows:
The protections of this treaty are limited to the signatories of this pact, and do not extend to further allies of either party.
Either party may select to act according to its own laws and policies, but the other is not obligated to join any activities initiated by the free will of the other party to this agreement.
Let this document serve as a bond between our people for as long as the waters flow, the sun shines and the grasses grow. We agree to the terms of this treaty on May 20, 2014 and will strive to honour it fully. We also recognize that "Joining Nations" has the power to officially cancel this treaty should time or circumstances require it, through consensus."
In addition to the wording of the document, the treaty needed a name.
The biggest surprise was "probably how long it took for us to pick a name. It took longer than anything in any other process, the name caught us," said Peter Moosomin, a Grade 7 student at Mosquito.
The teachers noted the students from each school kept coming up with different names and couldn't agree on a single one. They tried incorporate Mosquito's school name "Grizzlies" and the St. Vital school name the "Ice Wolves," but nothing seemed to work. The schools eventually decided to convene a smaller committee of students from both schools to work on the name.
The teachers found the struggles of the students to come up with a name to be the most fascinating part of the whole process. During the signing presentation, Oksasikewiyin noted this was exactly the type of thing that actually happened during the times of treaty-making years earlier.
"When it was time for decision making, people said what they thought," he told the students. "Some people were marching back and forth about it for a long time before they decided, together, this is what it should be on."
In the end, and after several rounds of voting, the smaller group of students finally agreed on "Joining Nations Treaty."
"It definitely speaks to what we're trying to do," said Emily. "I guess we have our faith and they have their beliefs, and it's just nice to learn about each other."
The students say they gained knowledge and understanding of one and feel they made progress in learning about one another. Not lost on them was the historical nature of what they were able to accomplish.
"It's definitely something historical that we were proud to do," said Emily. She could point to new knowledge of First Nations as something she learned.
"We've never really learned too much about aboriginal history so this is definitely much deeper than what I thought we were going to go, so it's definitely a nice learning experience to learn about everything."
The treaty signing was also an accomplishment the students and teachers were anxious to tell the world about on social media. Kiona said her teacher at Mosquito had been keeping track of developments on Twitter, noting there were some 500 Tweets on their treaty signing.
The same was true for St. Vital School. "I know Miss Waters has been Tweeting about this all day," said Emily.
The intention now is for the treaty to be passed on to future students in Grade 7 and 8 at Mosquito and in Grade 7 at St. Vital School.
The plan is for those students to be able to review the treaty for themselves and use the document as something from which to learn and gain ideas about treaty making.
The students from the two schools also intend to continue with their joint activities, with Mosquito students invited to an event at St. Vital School two days later on May 22.
