Some Cree Immersion students at a Saskatoon school have created a collaborative, spoken-word project, thanks to a Treaty ArtsSmart grant.

Grades 4-6 students at St. Frances Elementary School were broken into three groups to write a verse on an assigned subject from a third-person perspective from three different time periods.

The spoken-word project focused on the subjects of the buffalo, a First Nations perspective, and the Saskatchewan River.

The three subjects assigned here the buffalo, a First Nations perspective, and the Saskatchewan River, and the three time periods were pre-contact, signing era, and contemporary.

The chorus was written by the whole class using their "word bank" of descriptive words regarding the treaty. 

The project was done in partnership with Eekwol, WriteOutLoad, and Oskayak High School. Oskayak's Cree and Drama classes were given training the same as St. Frances, and they also came to mentor St. Frances students after four of their sessions.

Eekwol and the WriteOutLoud facilitators held workshops  at Oskayak and St. Frances on personal and collective/local indigenous history and how to connect the past and present in a creative way using language.

The artists helped students to engage their inner artist by either writing (righting) the past through poetry or assisting with the performance aspects of hip hop/spoken word poetry. This collaborative project encourages both students and teachers to explore and express the Treaties, through spoken-word, in the creative context that they have been inspired to.