I am not a number!
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| 90 EUR |
| Duration: 180 min |
| Youth (12-15 years), Youth (14-18 years) |
| 10th grade, 11th grade, 12th grade, 13th grade, 7th grade, 8th grade, 9th grade |
| max. 32 persons |
| Belongs to: Against the Current |
What does it mean to go to a school, miles away from home when you are 5 or 6 years old? How does it feel to not be able to speak in your own tongue and only be allowed to wear a number instead of your own name? The workshop I am not a number! introduces students from Grade-7 onwards to the history of residential boarding schools – boarding schools for Native American children, which were intended to serve their forcible integration into the culture of the United States of America. Based on the illustrated book “I am not a number” by Jenny Kay Dupuis and Kathy Kacer, the workshop participants are sensitively confronted with experiences that hundreds of thousands of children had to endure: the separation from families, the loss of language, physical and psychological violence. The particpiants describe the illustrations in Dupius’ book, analyse concepts, measure distances between school and home or pen a message to Irene, the protagonist of “I am not a number”. In exchange, the students reflect on what it means when one’s culture and identity is regarded as inferior by the majority of society and grapple with the ideological background of the residential schools.
The workshop is combined with a visit to the exhibition Against the Current. The Omaha, Francis La Flesche, and His Collection, in which contemporary witnesses report on their experiences in residential boarding schools.
The offer was developed by Barbara McKillip, a member of the Umóⁿhoⁿ Nation and educational consultant for this exhibition project.