Learning with Fire Cracked Rock

Welcome to the Fire Cracked Rock (FCR) page of the Commemorating Ye'yumnuts website. FCR is a touchstone technology for cooking and creating a broad variety of things. Here you will find resources aimed at sharing some of the complexity of these activities with teachers and students. Understanding how many kinds of technologies and knowledge people have carried on the land at Ye’yumnuts can help students to consider the multitude of ways that are possible to be in place here. By engaging with the materials below students can think about the breadth of activities taking place at Ye’yumnuts over thousands of years and their inherent connection to other places and relations on the Quw'utsun landscape.

The comic illustrations and associated reflexive questions provided are intended for use in the classroom to enrich engagement with place when students do visit Ye’yumnuts. They highlight the importance of contextualising Quw’utsun food systems in place. Consider incorporating these resources into classroom time in between site visits outlined on the seasonal calendar page of the website. 

The intention of these activities is for students to both develop an understanding of Quw’utsun food systems and to reflect on their own relationship with food systems. By reflecting on food systems being acted on at Ye’yumnuts students can get an idea for how inherently connected to knowledge of and relationship to place Quw’utsun food systems are and how colonial policies and legislation on the land have ripple effects that influence relationships to food in daily life. Similarly, they can contemplate their own engagement with food systems. This place-based curriculum material could be taught in tandem with broader narratives of food systems and food sovereignty, relationships between species across different cultural frameworks, and methods of knowledge sharing. 

Resources provided here:

• Illustrated guide to some of the different technological innovations that are possible using FCR

• Graphic novel exploring connections to food and food systems

• A list of suggested topics of discussion and associated activities to accompany your reading.

Below please find the teachers guide complete with suggestions for connections to place at Ye'yumnuts, BC high school curriculum, and other learning resources both generated by the Commemorating Ye'yumnuts Project and beyond.