Gordon Oakes Red Bear Student Centre

On the University of Saskatchewan's campus in Saskatoon, the Gordon Oaks Red Bear Student Centre is an intercultural gathering place for students at the University. While it is an intercultural gathering place, it is also a safe haven for many of the Indigenous Students on the campus. We came to the student centre on a Monday morning to meet once again with Candance Wasacase-Lafferty and to meet with the Student Centre’s Elder Roland Duquette to learn more about the centre and participate in a Smudging Ceremony, which normally occurs at the beginning of the week.

Candace took us on a tour of the center to see the various meeting rooms, to learn about the programming offered through the centre and to see some of the artwork that was commissioned for the space and to discuss it’s deeper meaning. When returning back downstairs, she introduced us to Elder Roland and he introduced himself in his native language before continuing his discussion with us and welcomed us to have a seat at the large circle with a bear skin in the center. He told us about where he came from and that he was a survivor of a reeducation program in Canada. He uses his knowledge from this experiences at the University of Saskatchewan to help students work on their own identifies and to uplift his own community.

We spent the morning learning about each other by participating in their weekly circle where sat alongside a student form the University, we heard stories from other older community members, spent time with the a poet laureate of Canada, and most important found commonality in each other. It was perhaps one of the most special and memorable moments from our time together in Saskatoon and was a wonderful connection to the next part of our day, which was a visit to the St. Francis Cree Bilingual School.

To learn more about the Centre, please see in site here:

https://indigenous.usask.ca/about/about-gorbsc.php