We’re proud to present a short documentary that you’ll be able to use in your classrooms in the new year. While Elder in the Making took you to the hot summer prairies of the south, our CBC short “The Land is the Teacher” takes you to the wintry boreal forest of the north. You can view it online here.
I didn’t truly understand what living off the land meant until I went trapping with a few youth in -30 degree weather up in Northern Alberta. Most of us don’t have to worry about where our food comes from. Food production whether farming, hunting or trapping is back-breaking and time-consuming work so it’s quite the privilege to be able to focus on other activities like filmmaking for instance. Unfortunately, this means we’ve also lost our connection to what ultimately sustains us. Reading about the land is quite a bit different from experiencing and observing it firsthand.
This short story should give a little jolt to the average urban youth who may have never seen where food comes from. So without further delay, here is a link to “The Land is Teacher”, a short doc we produced for CBC’s longest running program “Land and Sea”. Let me know what your students think!
Students get to go out and try to catch their own dinner