Kids from KA-NA-TA meet face-to-face

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For the past nine years, students taking part in the Kids From KA-NA-TA program have communicated with their partnered classes via computer. This year, for the first time, six participating classes will meet their partners face-to-face.

A class of students from Rocky Mountain House, Alta. will be doing an exchange with a class from Fort Simpson, N.W.T. A class from Bamfield, B.C. has been paired up with a class from Kingston, Ont.

And two KA-NA-TA classes have paired up with two non-KA-NA-TA classes, with students from Chippewas of the Thames First Nation doing an exchange with another Native school in B.C., and a class from Port Alberni, B.C. doing an exchange with a non-member Native school in Ontario.

The exchanges are being funded through the YMCA Youth Exchanges Canada program, which funds exchanges designed to promote understanding and appreciation of the diversity of Canada.

The Kids From KA-NA-TA program has been running since 1992, providing a technological link between First Nations and non-Aboriginal schools from across the country. This year, about 50 schools from across Canada are taking part in the program.

Michael Lea is project co-ordinator with Kids From KA-NA-TA. He explained that, once a class signs onto the program's online system and logs in, Kids From KA-NA-TA matches them up with two other participating schools, and each group of three classes is given a conference area.

"Ideally what we do is we take a Native class and pair them up with two mainstream classes," Lea said.

"The mainstream classes and the Native classes, what they do then is they just talk to each other. They e-mail each other, they chat with each other on-line, and they just start realizing not only their differences, but also the commonalities between them. And they share their culture, their language, their arts," he explained.

"One of the interesting parts of the program is that they actually send each other what we call a wampum box. And in those wampum boxes, they can include anything. A map, a video tape that they've made, arts and crafts, anything that represents their individual culture. And they exchange that."

Although Native classes taking part in Kids From KA-NA-TA are usually paired off with two non-Native classes, this year one of the program groupings actually has three Native classes matched up together, each from a different part of the country.

"So they're actually learning about other Native cultures," Lea said.

In addition to providing participating students with an opportunity to learn about each other, Kids From KA-NA-TA has joined forces with the SchoolNet GrassRoots program to provide schools with a financial reward for taking part.

For more information about the Kids From KA-NA-TA program, visit the project website at www.kidsfromkanata.org, or e-mail your inquiries to info@kidsfromkanata.org.