Education and Early Childhood Learning

“Without knowing my identity and where I belong, there is a good chance I’d still be searching for direction and belonging as an adult.”

Taanshi. My name is Reid Bouvier. I grew in and around the small Métis community of San Clara/Boggy Creek, Manitoba. The original families built their homesteads on the fringes of the Duck Mountain, where they thought the Government wouldn’t bug them. Growing up, my family moved around quite a bit but always stayed relatively close to our home community.

Before the Manitoba Act of 1870, my family lived in the Red River Settlement but were expelled from their homesteads through the Land Scrip process following the Red River Resistance. Some went to live with our First Nations cousins in Turtle Mountain. Others went further west to Batoche. We have historical roots in the Shell River Valley/Duck Mountain region that stretch back to the 1700s. I think that’s why they came back to the area and settled in Boggy Creek.

I consider myself a proud citizen of the Métis Nation. My ancestors were fur traders, buffalo hunters, farmers, and freighters. After the fur trade dried up and the buffalo disappeared from the Prairies, we followed the seasonal work instead. We have always been hard-working people that lived in small, tight-knit communities.

When I was in my early twenties, I worked on the oil rigs across Western Canada while attending the University of Manitoba in the winter months. I credit my parents for instilling this hard-working attitude and for their encouragement to do something none of my family had ever tried. Attending post-secondary education was something that seemed foreign to all of us, but my parents knew that it was something I would do well at, and that support and encouragement is what brought me here today.

I attended the University of Manitoba and graduated with a Bachelor of Education in 2015. During my education, I attended the Faculty of Education’s Northern Practicum experience in Gillam, Manitoba. I specialized in Indigenous Education, Canadian History, and English Literature.

I am currently teaching humanities courses in an alternative education program called Flexible Education at Steinbach Regional Secondary School. The teachers in our program create individualized learning plans for students who have learning gaps and other challenges that prevent them succeeding in the mainstream classrooms. We provide additional support like mentorship, relationship building, life skills, community engagement, and culturally specific education. I also teach Grade 12 Current Topics in First Nations, Metis, and Inuit Studies and Grade 11 Canadian History.

More recently, I was appointed as the Indigenous Learning Coach in our division. Starting in February of 2025, I will be taking on that role full time. In that role I hope to empower educators across the division in integrating Indigenous Education into their daily teaching practices and to help to build relationships with Indigenous communities in the area. This will shift my focus away from my role as a classroom teacher but will provide new opportunities and adventures that I am very much looking forward to.

I often stop and think about how I got to where I am today. Based on the career choices of family members before me, it would have been pretty typical for me to gravitate towards something like construction, logging, or truck driving. Most of the men in my family worked long hours, away from their homes for weeks and months at a time. My sister always loved animals and the outdoors. She became a very good barrel racer and is a much better hunter than me. Often, while she was outside practicing for the rodeos, I’d be hunkered down with a book or writing on my computer. I was lucky to have a few friends attending university that helped me acclimate in my first year. I was lucky to have two parents that cared about my success in life. I was lucky to have an interest in working with people and studying subjects like Indigenous Education and Canadian History.

I think it was my grandfather who inspired me as well to become an educator. It was through him that I started seeking out my Métis heritage. Before he became ill and began forgetting things, I remember we travelled to the birthplace of one of our distant ancestors. We walked on the same lands that he walked. We put our hands through the soil and felt the wind coming off the lake. I think we both felt an attachment to the land and the experience. It felt like connecting to something important. After that, I knew I wanted more for myself, but I also wanted others to be able to connect to their culture, often lost or forgotten, in a meaningful way.

I think it is incredibly important that we empower Indigenous youth in this way. Without knowing my identity and where I belong, there is a good chance I’d still be searching for direction and belonging as an adult. I am grateful for my upbringing and the opportunities I’ve been able to access through education. I hope to be a part of the re-indigenization of Canadian society through education as we move towards the future.