Bow Valley High School recently piloted Alberta Tomorrow’s new Indigenous Voices Module with its grade nine social studies class. Students used the Alberta Tomorrow simulator to look at past and present landscape imagery and learn more about sustainable planning and balancing land use with ecological integrity. Two Elders from the Stoney Nakoda community—Margaret and Terry Rider—spoke with the students, sharing narratives about the Stoney Nakoda community. “Students asked them some pretty complex and interesting questions about what life was like on the reserve and how it’s changed over time. The Elders talked about residential schools. They talked about the fact that they couldn’t leave the reserve until I think it was 1965 without asking permission,” said Alberta Tomorrow Foundation Executive Director Jennifer Janzen. “The whole point of it was some of these students may have never spoken to someone from Stoney Nakoda. So the Elders came into the class, we all sat in a circle and just had conversations and listened.”
