Educators Welcome and Introduction

Dear Educators,

We would like to introduce you to the first in a series of instructional suggestions from  Not Extinct: Keeping the Sinixt Way.   Funding for the project was generously provided by Marilyn Burgoon in memory of her sister Yvonne Woods, by the Slocan Valley Legacy Fund and by Lori Barkley. Additional funding has also been received in 2020 from the First Peoples' Cultural Council and Heritage Canada to  support the Sinixt language aspects of this curriculum.
  
Honouring the oral tradition, Not Extinct: Keeping the Sinixt Way is a unique publication in that it is
an audio file/book collection of Sinixt stories. The actual stories are available ONLY in audio form and may be downloaded using instructions provided with the purchase of the book. The book itself supports the audio files in multiple ways.
This project is designed to present Sinixt culture and teachings to students and the general public. After engaging in a listening session to hear a story, the book supports the audio files with cross-cultural perspectives offering two world views. These world views are profiled in discussions between the Sinixt storytellers and the settlers who participated in the project, as well as through the illustrations. This sets a path for a deeper cultural exchange by fostering community relationships between Sinixt and settler or non-Sinixt peoples and sharing the resulting work with the broader community.
Before you engage in utilizing this resource we feel it would be critical to provide you with two key points of information not included with the publication. These can be utilized as a part of the curricula delivered to your students and/or you can utilize these two critical pieces to assist in setting an educational path for your students. These two critical points demonstrate the importance of the oral tradition and stories to cultural practice that has been maintained over millenia. Providing students with these two critical perspectives of cultural practice will broaden their cross-cultural experience with this resource.  
We have utilized the B.C. educators guide to identify how each story meets the learning outcomes across K-12 grades and subjects. We encourage your creativity in delivering these stories in as many subject areas and grade levels as you may discover appropriate. Please do not limit yourself as an educator to utilizing these stories solely in the areas that we have identified. Also, as of 2020, we are adding more Sinixt language learning opportunities to this curriculum. 
The new guidelines for the B.C. educational requirements insist that there be First Nations/ Aboriginal content through BC curricula. We are committed to assisting educators in the search for appropriate and adequate resources to meet those requirements. We are releasing these educational materials as an introduction to the resource and to receive feedback from you. We look forward to your utilization of these introductory pieces and to your constructive comments to assist in developing lessons for the rest of the stories in Not Extinct. The lesson plans, including a comment section, for this pilot project will be available on the maapress.ca web site. Your feedback, comments, and suggestions will be instrumental in how we move forward. We encourage you to share how you have engaged with this resource and the outcomes whether negative or positive.
We thank you for taking this cross-cultural journey with us.
Lim limpt / Thank you,
Marilyn James, Taress Alexis 
Curriculum Developer, Jacqueline Heywood
with input from the Teacher’s Resource Team: Nazli Izmirli, Jesse Halton, Sarah Simonet

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