Indigenous
Monthly Archive: December Indi
When Whaling is Your Tradition
Guest blog written by Environmental Visual Communication student Ursula McClintock
In some Indigenous communities around the world, whaling is as much a part of their tradition as my family’s turkey dinner at Thanksgiving and Christmas. Whale hunting has played an integral role in feeding Inuit communities for millennia. Bowhead whales, among many other species of whales, were hunted to near extinction at the turn of the 20th century. Yet more often than not, Indigenous communities are cast in the same light as the commercial groups that are responsible for the near collapse of populations of these iconic marine animals.
Smudging Blue: Honouring the Spirit of Our Whale
Guest blog written by 2017 Environmental Visual Communication student Rachel Brown
Kim Wheatley is an Anishinaabe mother and grandmother of the Shawanaga First Nation. Read this blog to hear the story of how EVC student Rachel Brown met Kim at the ROM, where she offered a traditional prayer and blessing for the bones and heart of ‘Blue,’ the whale - the star of Out of the Depths: The Blue Whale Story.