Through EDCO 3100, I got the honour and privilege to work with Roxanne Letterlough who introduced a dance play performance to 60 of us first-year education students. Roxanne is a district 73 intermediate Aboriginal resource teacher who has collaborated with local elders, community members, and students in finding appropriate movements that are culturally relevant and appropriate when choreographing a dance. I remember doing the “We are circling” dance in which this dance included symbolism of the animals, the four seasons, and the importance of the circle. For this dance, we got to be grasshoppers in which we were asked to cross our arms behind our backs in the grassy field outside of our A & E building. We then got to be a bear which we did bear scoops and two dabs. The scoops represent the bears gathering food and the dabs represent hibernation. Lastly, we got to be a fox and for this movement, we were asked to do two big running strides and a jump. This movement symbolized the fox hopping over a predator such as a coyote. We also go to do the travelling song, which included animals such as the bear- kenkéknem, the salmon- swewll, the swan- speqmic, and the coyote- skelép. Each of the movements represented something different, for example for the bear we were asked to stay low and crawl like bears, for the salmon we put our hands together in front of us and swiftly moved around the space given. For the swan, we were asked to show off our proud wings, and for our coyote movement, we were asked to do a leap, leap, and then a freeze. I enjoyed this activity as it shared some language, culture, and history of the Secwépemc people.
