RRC Polytech: June is National Indigenous History Month
Press Release
June 2, 2026
This month, we celebrate and recognize Indigenous History as Canadians. Indigenous Peoples have shaped Canada as it is today and have been part of the land since time immemorial. June is a focal point to celebrate and appreciate the unique histories, cultures, and contributions of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis people throughout the history of this land. The Summer Solstice, which lands around June 21 every year, is a celestial event observed by countless Nations for generations and is designated as Indigenous Peoples Day.
Opportunities at RRC Polytech
Truth and Reconciliation and Community Engagement is offering two professional development opportunities to staff and faculty to increase their knowledge of Indigenous histories and realities. Indigenous Education is hosting events for staff and faculty to celebrate and engage with culture.
Witness Blanket Tour at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights
The Witness Blanket is a permanent installation at the CMHR in its own gallery with open space for observers to reflect and consider the stories of each object woven into the Witness Blanket. The installation is composed of reclaimed objects from Residential Schools, churches, government buildings, and cultural sites across Canada and organized into the pattern of a blanket. Each object in the Blanket carries a story – memories of suffering, survival, and resilience.
Staff and faculty are invited to join Knowledge Keeper and Instructor Marilyn Dykstra to tour the Canadian Museum for Human Rights and learn more about the histories left unwritten by mainstream textbooks.
If you would like to register for the upcoming tour on June 23, staff can go to HRIS > My Portal > My Learning > Learning Library > More > search “Witness Blanket”.
National Indian Residential School Museum Tour
The National Indian Residential School Museum, located in Portage la Prairie, is the site of the former Portage la Prairie Residential School. The building was designated a national historic site in 2020 and has been transformed into a museum that explores the raw experiences of children that attended Residential Schools throughout Canada, including the Portage la Prairie Residential School. Tour guides walk participants through the rooms of the school and describe the many stories left by students.
This experience is ideal for educators and staff committed to advancing truth and reconciliation through education, and those seeking to advance Truth and Reconciliation. To register for the June 10 tour, go to HRIS > My Portal > My Learning > Learning Library > More > search “Residential School”.
Staff Sweat Lodge Ceremony
On June 11, Indigenous Education will be rebuilding the Sweat Lodge in the Medicine Wheel Garden under the guidance of Elder-in-Residence Paul Guimond and participating in a Sweat Lodge Ceremony. Participants will be building the Lodge throughout the morning while the sacred fire burns, and will enter the Lodge around midday, followed by a Feast around 2pm. Please note that this is a full-day commitment.
The Summer Solstice and National Indigenous Peoples’ Day
On June 19, Indigenous Education will be hosting a Pipe Ceremony in the Medicine Wheel Garden to celebrate the Summer Solstice and National Indigenous Peoples’ Day. Everyone is invited to observe the Pipe Ceremony at 10am and join in the Feast around 12pm in the Indigenous Support Centre. Bring your feast bundle and help us reduce waste!
Opportunities in the Community
Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs is hosting a walk to honour Blue Jean Jacket Day on June 6 starting at the Manitoba Legislative Building, an observance to recognize and raise awareness of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Men, Boys, and Two Spirit People. The movement began in Edmonton in 2023 and has been gaining momentum since then to remember lost loved ones and support families of victims.
The Southern Chiefs’ Organization has started a month-long campaign to promote events in Winnipeg and beyond, including the Indigenous Reconciliation Gathering on June 20 and the Movement is Medicine initiative with the Winnipeg Football Club on June 25 at the Princess Auto Stadium. They also have online listings for various Pow Wows throughout the month to share more celebrations widely.
The Winnipeg Indigenous Peoples Day event at Assiniboine Park will take place on Saturday, June 20, from 11am to 5pm at the Indigenous Peoples Garden and The Leaf, hosted by Assiniboine Park Conservancy Inc.
The TOOT AASAAMB Annual Métis Picnic in Winnipeg will be held on Saturday, June 20, from 11am to 2 pm at 866 St. Joseph Street, hosted by the Manitoba Métis Federation.
National Indigenous Peoples Day will be celebrated on June 21, 2026, at The Forks co-hosted by the Treaty Relations Commission of Manitoba. The event features Indigenous performers, ceremonies, Inuit games, a handmade market, and cultural programming that honours the stories, resilience, and traditions of Indigenous communities, including those impacted by Manitoba wildfires. It launches an 11-day “Many Nations, One Heartbeat” celebration leading into Canada Day on July 1, highlighting Manitoba’s treaty regions through language, teachings, and community events.
Learn About Indigenous History and Culture Through Films and Books
Catch a glimpse of the richness and breadth of Indigenous culture, diversity, and history through these hand-selected resources. We encourage you to explore the Library’s collection further with our OneSearch tool.
Indigenous Storytelling
kisiskaciwan: Indigenous Voices from Where the River Flows Swiftly
A ground-breaking anthology from the territory now known as Saskatchewan, this book explores some of the richest and oldest stories from these lands, including voices from Cree, Saulteaux, Dakota, Lakota, Nakota, Dene, and Metis nations.
Centering Anishinaabeg Studies : Understanding the World Through Stories
Written by Anishinaabeg and non-Anishinaabeg scholars, storytellers, and activists, these essays draw upon the power of cultural expression to illustrate active and ongoing senses of Anishinaabeg life.
Coyote and Raven Go Canoeing : Coming Home to the Village
In a gesture toward traditional First Nations orality, Peter Cole blends poetic and dramatic voices with storytelling. A conversation between two tricksters, Coyote and Raven, and the colonized and the colonizers, his narrative takes the form of a canoe journey. It is a celebration of Aboriginal thought, spirituality, and practice, a sharing of lived experience as First Peoples.
Testimonial Uncanny, The : Indigenous Storytelling, Knowledge, and Reparative Practices
Through the study of Indigenous literary and artistic practices from Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States, Julia V. Emberley examines the ways Indigenous storytelling discloses and repairs the traumatic impact of social violence in settler colonial nations.
Indigenous Fiction
This historical novel reimagines the North-West resistance of 1885 through the Métis women of Batoche, and in particular the rebellious outsider, Josette Lavoie.
Blackie is out for revenge against the cop who put him in prison on false grounds. He is also craving to reconnect with his grandmother’s country. Driven by his hunger for drugs and payback, Blackie reaches dark places of both mystery and beauty as he searches for peace.
Vince lives in a small town—a town that is divided right down the middle by race. The unspoken rule has been there as long as Vince remembers and no one challenges it. But when Vince’s friend Sherry starts seeing an Indigenous boy, Vince is outraged—until he notices Raedawn, a girl from the reserve. Trying to balance his community’s prejudices with his shifting alliances, Vince is forced to take a stand, and see where his heart will lead him.
Indigenous Culinary Arts
Where People Feast : An Indigenous People’s Cookbook
Where People Feast, one of very few indigenous cookbooks available, is the culmination of a lifetime dedicated to introducing people to extraordinary foods that are truly North American.
Good Seeds : A Menominee Indian Food Memoir
In this food memoir, named for the manoomin or wild rice that also gives the Menominee tribe its name, tribal member Thomas Pecore Weso takes readers on a cook’s journey through Wisconsin’s northern woods. He connects each food—beaver, trout, blackberry, wild rice, maple sugar, partridge—with colorful individuals who taught him Indigenous values.
A Feast for All Seasons : Traditional Native Peoples’ Cuisine
Traditional Native recipes featuring products from the land, sea and sky, symbols of an enduring cuisine that illustrate respect for the nurturing land, and acknowledgment of the spiritual power food can have in our lives.
Stream Videos
These videos are available through the National Film Board of Canada and provide many different insights into Indigenous realities all across Canada.
nîpawistamâsowin: We Will Stand Up
Weaves a profound narrative encompassing the filmmaker’s own adoption, the stark history of colonialism on the Prairies, and a vision of a future where Indigenous children can live safely on their homelands.
Siksikakowan: The Blackfoot man
Sons, fathers, brothers, riders, racers, dancers, dreamers… Sinakson Trevor Solway introduces us to the many lives, identities and stories of the boys and men of the historic Blackfoot Confederacy.
Director Mirjam Leuze’s The Whale and the Raven illuminates the many issues that have drawn whale researchers, the Gitga’at First Nation, and the Government of British Columbia into a complex conflict. As the people in the Great Bear Rainforest struggle to protect their territory against the pressure and promise of the gas industry, caught in between are the countless beings that call this place home.
Jordan River Anderson, The Messenger
The very timely Jordan River Anderson, The Messenger completes, on an optimistic note, the film cycle devoted to the rights of Indigenous children and peoples that began with The People of the Kattawapiskak River.
The Road Forward, a musical documentary by Marie Clements, connects a pivotal moment in Canada’s civil rights history—the beginnings of Indian Nationalism in the 1930s—with the powerful momentum of First Nations activism today. The Road Forward’s stunningly shot musical sequences, performed by an ensemble of some of Canada’s finest vocalists and musicians, seamlessly connect past and present with soaring vocals, blues, rock, and traditional beats. A rousing tribute to the fighters for First Nations rights, a soul-resounding historical experience, and a visceral call to action.
Our People Will Be Healed, Alanis Obomsawin’s 50th film, reveals how a Cree community in Manitoba has been enriched through the power of education. The Helen Betty Osborne Ininiw Education Resource Centre in Norway House, north of Winnipeg, receives a level of funding that few other Indigenous institutions enjoy. Its teachers help their students to develop their abilities and their sense of pride.
In this feature film, the profound impact of the Canadian government’s residential school system is conveyed through the eyes of two children who were forced to face hardships beyond their years. As young children, Lyna and Glen were taken from their homes and placed in church-run boarding schools, where they suffered years of physical, sexual and emotional abuse, the effects of which persist in their adult lives.
Warning: this film contains disturbing content and is recommended for audiences 16 years of age and older. Parental discretion, and/or watching this film within a group setting, is strongly advised.
This short documentary offers a portrait of a group of women who led their community, the largest reserve in Canada, Six Nations of the Grand River Reserve, in an historic blockade to protect their land.
Martha was only 5 when she and her parents were lured away from their Inuit village. Along with a handful of other families, they were moved to Canada’s most northerly island, Ellesmere, to ensure Canadian sovereignty in the Arctic. They were told that game would be plentiful and life would be easy. Instead, they discovered that the islands of the Arctic are among the least hospitable to human life in the world. For years, they endured hunger and extreme cold.
Niigaanibatowaad: FrontRunners
At a special ceremony during the opening of the 1999 Pan Am Games in Winnipeg, Manitoba, seven Indigenous men in their fifties entered the stadium in war canoes. One of them held the Games torch. In 1967 when Winnipeg first hosted the Pan American Games, ten outstanding athletic teenage boys were chosen to run 800 kilometers over an ancient message route with the Games torch. When the runners arrived at the stadium, they were not allowed to enter with the torch. Instead, a non-Indigenous runner was given the honour. Thirty-two-years later, the province of Manitoba issued an official apology.
The Sacred Sundance: The Transfer of a Ceremony
This feature-length documentary chronicles the Sundance ceremony brought to Eastern Canada by William Nevin of the Elsipogtog First Nation of the Mi’kmaq. Nevin learned from Elder Keith Chiefmoon of the Blackfoot Confederacy in Alberta. Under the July sky, participants in the Sundance ceremony go four days without food or water. Then they will pierce the flesh of their chests in an offering to the Creator. This event marks a transmission of culture and a link to the warrior traditions of the past.
Explore More with the Library’s Indigenous Guides
Delve further into Indigenous subjects with the Indigenous Education guides. Subject-specific collections on the following topics:
- Community Economic Development
- Indigenous Culinary Arts
- Indigenous Health and Well-Being
- Indigenous Languages
- Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women and Girls
- Residential Schools
ILR5
