KAIROS Blanket Exercise

Lakehead University International and the Office of Indigenous Initiatives invite all students, staff and faculty to join us for the KAIROS Blanket Exercise.

The KAIROS Blanket Exercise (KBE) is an interactive learning experience that teaches the Indigenous rights history. Developed in response to the 1996 Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples—which recommended education on Canadian-Indigenous history as one of the key steps to reconciliation, the Blanket Exercise covers over 500 years of history in a one-and-a-half-hour participatory workshop.

Blanket Exercise participants take on the roles of Indigenous peoples in Canada. Standing on blankets that represent the land, they walk through pre-contact, treaty-making, colonization and resistance. They are directed by facilitators representing a narrator (or narrators) and the European colonizers.

Participants are drawn into the experience by reading scrolls and carrying cards which ultimately determine their outcomes. By engaging on an emotional and intellectual level, the Blanket Exercise effectively educates and increases empathy. The exercise will be followed by a debriefing session in which participants have the opportunity to discuss the experience as a group. This often takes the form of a talking circle.

Please register in advance at https://forms.gle/THKHU4XaZKVX7N4S9.