 I have on the phone line with me now Katie Quinn who will be talking about the blanket exercise and the Kairos organization. Good morning Katie how are you? Good morning hi I'm great thanks. What is the Kairos organization and who are the people behind the organization? Kairos is made up of 11 churches and religious organizations. Those are the core groups that came together to found Kairos but we're many grassroots activists across the country, we're educators, we're made up of also our indigenous partners and the communities that work at the local level so Kairos is very much a broad organization that stretches both within Canada and internationally through our international partners and together we work on human rights, ecological justice, we do research and education and we build partnerships to form these networks to move forward on different issues and increase capacity to advocate for human rights and environmental issues. Why did Kairos decide to get involved in the blanket exercise? Well I think for Kairos our involvement in the blanket exercise goes back quite a long way right back to the 70s with Project North and that's when the churches really began to build partnerships with First Nations communities and to become much more aware of the indigenous rights issues here in Canada. So come forward to the 90s and this very important report was released, the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples for five years looked at why our relationship as indigenous and non-indigenous people was so fraught and full of conflict and why we're having so much difficulty and that report which was 4,000 pages half of it is history because the Royal Commission said we can't understand this relationship as indigenous and non-indigenous people unless we understand the history and everybody needs to know this history. That report was immediately shelved and was not very available to the public and so Kairos with this history of working with First Nations communities and indigenous organizations sat down with the Amblia First Nations Education Department and with elders and with that experiential education specialists and they said how can we make sure that this information, this crucial information in the Royal Commission report so this group of people got together to make sure that this information in the Royal Commission report didn't get lost but there was a way to get out there and share it broadly in a way that would be accessible and that's how the blanket exercise came to be so that was in 98 and since then it's just continued to grow and as every time it gets used it increases the strength of that teaching tool and so that's how we ended up with this blanket exercise that very tied to the grassroots and to communities across the country because literally hundreds of people have contributed to bringing this experiential tool to the place where it is today. Can you explain a little bit about what the blanket exercise is? What happens during the exercise? Yeah, so it's experiential as I said which means that everyone is involved it's participatory and you're learning with more than just your head, you're learning with your heart and with your body so we lay blankets on the floor to represent land and then we invite everybody to step onto those blankets and in stepping onto those blankets you're stepping back in time a long long way to before the renae Europeans here in this territory we now call Canada on this landmass and we go through the story. There are a couple of narrators, a couple of Europeans and everybody's part of telling the story. We pass out pieces for different people to read and so you're walking on these blankets that represent the land, the Europeans arrive, there are treaties that are made, go through colonization. People are placed on a blanket off to the side that represents the residential school so all these things that happened we tell it through everybody being involved and through using blankets and there's index cards that also determine your fate and then we make our way to the present day and it gets everybody on the same page about what happened in the past so that we can then have a good conversation about how do we move forward together in a better way. The blanket exercise is also very much about that conversation that happens afterward and everybody's responses if they want they have a chance to speak and respond at the end and so that can also be a very rich part of the experience. Now this is going to take place in Shevree in Harrington. When will the blanket exercise take place in our communities? It's going to take place on May 2nd in Shevree from 6.30 to 8.30 p.m. at the Netagamu School and then in Harrington the next evening on Tuesday May 3rd also from 6.30 to 8.30 p.m. You've mentioned that this has grown over the years. Where are some of the places that the Cairo's group has traveled to bring the blanket exercise to the public? It's being used in every single province and territory in Canada. We've brought it to small communities. We've brought it to cities, to government, organizations, schools, First Nations communities. You know whenever we're invited into a place we've never been in a situation where that hasn't been well received so it's very diverse in terms of where it's being used and where we've traveled with it and every new situation I think just strengthens that movement that's happening across the country because every place is slightly different in terms of how they're going to experience it, how they're going to respond and so that diversity of response to the blanket exercise is also what makes it so strong and has made it into something that's both accessible but also really powerful and meaningful. And if there are people who may want to get involved with the blanket exercise is there a way they can do that? Yes certainly. We try to be very responsive when we do receive an invitation to bring it somewhere but the hope is that we're introducing it and that if it feels right and if people want to use it themselves that that's part of that process of bringing it somewhere and so we have an online resource center that has how-to videos and different versions of the script and all kinds of resources that are there to help people use the blanket exercise in a good way and I consider it a responsibility because it's a difficult story that you're sharing and it can raise emotions so it's certainly a responsibility to use it but we really don't put a limit on who can use it. If it's done well and respectfully it can be adapted to include more local information so if people visit that resource center kairosblanketexercise.org they'll see that different communities have adapted it to their area. And how has the blanket exercise been received by the public over the years? The response has been overwhelming. Right now we're having difficulty actually keeping up with demand. It grew from humble beginnings into what is now this movement happening across the country and people are really hungry for this information. It's a part of our history that's been kept from us and we've sort of known that we don't know the whole story but maybe haven't known where to look to get good information. So this is the right tool at the right time and it's just being incredibly well received and is in very high demand so we hope to just continue to see that grow because you know I feel that if we understand our past then we're really well placed to build a good future and so we just want to make sure that this reaches as many people as are open and wanting to have this experience. Is there anything else that you would like to mention about either kairos or the blanket exercise that we haven't spoken about? I just want to say that there's a really wonderful local organizing committee that has been working on this and it's been such a pleasure to work with them and so I'm very grateful for the invitation to come and visit your communities as Chevri and Harrington and also to be working with a member of Unumun Shippu who will be traveling to both communities with us as well to help contextualize what you're hearing in terms of what's happening locally and so it's just been a real pleasure and honor to work with this group of people from Chevri, Harrington and Unumun Shippu to do the groundwork to make this happen. Yeah, big thank you to both communities that you're hosting this and I'm very much looking forward to the visit. Well, thank you very much for taking time out of your schedule to do the interview. Oh, it's my pleasure. Thank you. You have a great day. You too. Take care. Bye bye.