At the start of a new term for the Four Winds Learning Centre in Punnichy, students and staff gathered for a celebration and traditional learnings revolving around a central feature of traditional indigenous life – the tipi.
On Wednesday morning, September 18, everyone gathered under the ornate mural in the commons area of the Centre to listen to the teachings of Elder Ed Bitternose. The intent had been to erect a tipi on the grounds while Ed shared his knowledge, but a rainy morning put the construction on hold.
Instead, the crowd gathered to listen to the meaning of the tipi, its components and its design as Elder Bitternose wove in his own life experiences and the evolution of his thinking about the tipi throughout his own learning journey.
Bitternose has shared his learning with many over the years. He has been a mainstay in K-12 education governance since his election to the Board of Education in the legacy Govan School Division. His involvement continued through successive amalgamations into the Horizon School Division where he continued to sit as a trustee until recently.
At 75 years of age, Bitternose continues his own learning journey as he generously shares his own story with listeners. The understanding of and reverence for the tipi has built up over the years.
“I’ve been constructing tipis since about the early 1980s, and when I first started, I had it in my yard because it was cool,” he admitted. “Then I went to a workshop in Prince Albert, and there was an older lady there, and she mentioned that in First Nations, the tipi was the first classroom. As I put up the tipi, I found that it was almost the same as life skills in understanding who we are, how we feel, and what the Creator gave us to work on.”
As he built that teaching tipi, Ed discovered that each of the poles had a distinct meaning as did each of the pegs as supports in the ground. Through the years, he said he began to evolve his own meaning and understanding, adding bits of his own narrative and journey.
Bitternose teaches that the three pillars or key poles in the structure represent love, faith and hope.
As a child, Ed attended a residential school, where he, like so many others, experienced the heartbreak, pain, and undue punishment as he was separated from his family. He admits to struggling with his own interpretation of love, given the emotional isolation he experienced in those formative years.
In conversation following the talk, Ed Bitternose spoke about the deep meaning beyond the mere iconography of the tipi.
“To me, it’s a spiritual connection about who we are as a people and understanding our spirituality. With the virtues that the poles and the structure represent, lots of us forget about that. We go about our daily lives without understanding about being thankful – about not being respectful, about not having humility.”
It even comes down to the difference in the size of the poles, Bitternose says. Like human beings, each has a different stature and characteristics, without uniformity, but in the end, they lean in and work together to form a sound structure that serves a greater purpose.
“As human beings, we’re not all the same; the structure shows us that. Yet, we can still be supportive of each other in understanding the virtues of those poles. Without faith, hope and love, what do we become?”
Ed reflected on the experience of education, from the traditional learnings passed on to him, to his years in residential school, to the new curricula being developed to share understanding with Indigenous and non-Indigenous people alike. He says the residential school system was focused on an end product, and not how we got to that product. The reliance solely on obedience in those schools had a profound impact.
“If I am totally obedient for the 12 years of my life that I go to school without having any self-teaching, I’m not going to become a very good human being or a very productive person in life after my schooling.”
Without self-motivation or direction, Bitternose said many of his classmates found their paths a struggle and fell into ways that saw them eventually institutionalized. Through the support of his family and his own path of learning, Bitternose found his way to teaching these virtues and values to others with the tipi as one of the cherished lessons.
Now, he says, schools are looking to foster an exploration of feelings, self-understanding and tolerance to help support children into a positive view about themselves and others.
The generosity and wisdom of teaching elders like Ed Bitternose is just one of the factors in the success of students at the Four Winds Learning Centre in Punnichy.
Find out more in our upcoming second segment on the Learning Centre and its partnerships.
Enjoy our conversation with Ed Bitternose.