Feature Article November 4, 2004
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Aboriginal playgroup grand opening by Jeff Green
Marci Webster has worked for several years as playgroup instructor for the Ontario Early Years Centre based in Sharbot Lake, and the idea of developing a playgroup that would celebrate the aboriginal culture of the region has been something she has been thinking about for a couple of years. Last week, with a traditional Algonquin smudging ceremony, performed by Marcis elder Faye Hollywood, and repeated in the Algonkian language by Robert Lovelace of the Ardoch Algonquins, the aboriginal playgroup was inaugurated.
This playgroup is not set up exclusively for aboriginal kids. It is meant to bring the aboriginal heritage to all children who live in the area, Webster said after the ceremony.
Once the smudging ceremony was completed, a drumming circle followed, and children from the kindergarten class at Sharbot Lake Public School then arrived for a reading by Algonquin writer Jane Chartrand. Jane Chartrand read from her book, How the Eagle got his White Head, which is richly illustrated in the pointillist style of Wade Tsun, a former Arden resident who now lives in Kingston.
Told as a story from a grandmother to a granddaughter, How the Eagle got his White Head is an explanation myth about the Eagle, the bear, several other squabbling animals, and the heroic hummingbird.
Using a variety of stuffed animals as a visual aid, Chartrand kept the young listeners attention as she explained how the animals moved to the new world, why eagles look the way they do now, and how the ruby-throated hummingbird got its ruby.
Jane Chartrand came to storytelling later in life. She worked for 20 years as a prison guard at the Prison for Women in Kingston, until the institution closed in 1996. She has since devoted herself to telling stories, through writings and recordings, from Algonquin myths she learned as a child, to the harder stories she learned as an aboriginal prison guard in the only federal womens prison in the country, which had about a 25% aboriginal population.
She wrote the poetry for a CD, based in large part on some of the stories she learned in her years at the Prison for Women. The CD has been nominated for a Canadian Aboriginal Music Award. She will be going to the awards ceremony in Toronto at the end of November.
After the reading, the drummers came back, and this time they ended up drumming for a circle dance. Marci Webster then received a $100 donation towards the playgroup from the Ardoch Algonquins, represented on the day by Randy Cota and Robert Lovelace. The Sharbot Lake Algonquins were represented by James Webster.
It was an auspicious opening for the new playgroup. (The Aboriginal playgroup is open to all pre-school children. It takes place on Friday mornings from 9:30 until 11:30 at the Child Centre in Sharbot Lake.)
