A Trip to The Museum

It’s another Friday at Brentwood: busy students rushing off to classes, jotting down messy notes for their first period test, some wishing their adopted Brentonian siblings a good day. A regular day for all but the Grade 9s.   A large mob of us waited outside of Crooks Hall, waiting excitedly for the bus to come.  We separated into our respective Social Studies groups and boarded our buses. Forty-five minutes of waiting, sleeping and chatting later, we had arrived at the Royal BC Museum. Still in our groups, we left for different exhibits. We started out at the ‘Living Languages’ exhibition, one showcasing the dozens of First Nations languages found in British Colombia, some of which were dying out or ‘sleeping’, a term used for languages with no current fluent speakers. It also featured interactive stations, where everyday sentences and phrases were played out in a First Nations’ language, some sounding fairly simple and some with guttural and complex accents. We then made our way through the ‘First Peoples’ Galleries, featuring monumental carvings from the Kwakwaka’wakw, Heiltsuk, Nuxalk, Gitxsan, Haida and Nuu-chah-nulth communities.  Other parts of the Galleries included Haida argillite carvings, archaeology and an exhibition featuring the Nisga’a Treaty and culture.  We then gathered for a fascinating film featuring the Vikings and their domination and exploration of the world, from Iceland to Greenland to Newfoundland. Shot on the sites of the areas shown, the movie truly represented the fiery hearts of these exploring warriors.   After a brief visit to the other exhibits, we gathered in the lobby and left the museum for Brentwood. It was a highly informative field trip; the knowledge of our connections and history with the First Nations people of BC was treasured and captivating, and we hope to discover more in our Brentonian days. Amber G, Mackenzie ‘18