Blanket exercise at RCMP Training Academy in Regina on December 4, 2017. Photo by Manfred Joehnck.
Instructors at the RCMP Training Academy in Regina took part in a blanket exercise on Monday. It gave them a unique and emotional connection to the Indigenous community and will become part of the training for all new recruits beginning Tuesday.
The 25 instructors gathered in a circle then stood on blankets representing a 500-year time period from pre-contact to the resistance to the displacement and oppression of Canada’s First Peoples.
As the instructors went through the training, they were removed from their blankets representing Indigenous people who died of European diseases, starvation or were just displaced from their land.
All of this took place under the watchful of a First Nations knowledge keeper.
The training began with a smudging ceremony and ended with a closed-door debriefing session where members talked about the training and how it affected them and their perception of the pain and suffering endured by generations of First Nation peoples during the last 500 years, including recent legal victories on First Nations and Metis rights.
The blanket exercise has been around for 20 years since the release of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples report in 1996, but this is the first time it has become part of routine trading for the Mounties.
Up until now, the training on Indigenous history consisted of PowerPoint displays and lectures.
Instructors say the blanket exercise is a way to experience and appreciate the hardships faced by Indigenous nations over the last five centuries, providing a better appreciation and understanding of the difficulties still experienced today.