Briercrest hosted its fifth-annual Aboriginal Awareness Week (AAW) last month. Many Aboriginal guests joined staff and students to continue the conversation about reconciliation and move forward in meaningful relationship between Aboriginals and non-Aboriginals. The week was full of sessions, traditional Aboriginal food, music, and events like tipi raising, beading, and the second-annual Restoration Cup hockey game. These activities helped create a greater awareness and understanding of Aboriginal history and culture. The events also allowed space for conversation around issues that many Aboriginals face today. Marc Levaasseur, an AAW guest, is a Métis from First Nation (Anishnabe, Wendat, and Mi’kmaq) and French Canadian who works and ministers among Indigenous people in Quebec. He works to reconcile the hurt and disrespect that the separation between western Christianity and First Nations has caused. “A week like AAW is essential to teach students— young women and men that will probably be involved in the work of God in the future— about these things and bring them to consciousness that our Christian ideas have been wrong sometimes,” Levassuer said. “Not in order to judge them or condemn them, but in order for those things to stop. Because actually they are still present and this is what most of those people don’t understand. It’s not like the residential schools ABORIGINAL AWARENESS WEEK 2017 10