Kairos Blanket Exercise for OSHN

The Kairos Blanket Exercise (KBE) is an interactive learning tool used across Canada to teach the history of colonization in Canada from an Indigenous perspective. The Steering Committee of the Ottawa Social Housing Network believes that anyone working in social housing who is not Indigenous should have this experience, to increase the commitment to reconciliation in our sector and reflect more on what this could mean. Doing this before participating in fall confernces in our sector feels particularly important. There is room for 40 people. Organizations are welcome to send more than one person.

The 1996 report of the Royal Commission of Aboriginal Peoples determined education as one of the key steps to reconciliation and improved relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2015 again identified education as a key recommended action.

The Kairos Blanket Exercise, first developed in 1997 in response to this call for education and popular across the country, is now offered by Indigenous owned small businesses across Canada. In Ottawa/Gatineau it is run by Mahingan Consulting Plus.

In an experiential approach, participants stand on blankets representing the lands and territories inhabited by First Nations, Inuit and eventually Métis people. The exercise is an oral recount of Canada’s history, narrated by an Indigenous person who is the lead facilitator for the event. The co-facilitator , who plays the role of a European "settler", walks amongst the participants further describing first contact between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people and moving participants through a representation of the loss of land through disease, displacement, extinction and relocation.

Participants then share and discuss their experience in a Sharing Circle.

Host or Publisher Ottawa Social Housing Network (OSHN)