About this Course

A KAIROS Blanket Exercise (KBE) is an interactive session where participants step onto blankets representing land, and into the role of First Nations, Inuit and Metis peoples. The exercise facilitators, playing the roles of a European "settler" and narrator, walk the group through a script, telling the story of the first contact between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. As the script progresses, blankets are folded and made smaller, representing the results of the loss of land by treaty and newly legislated reserves. People are asked to step off their blankets, symbolizing disease, war, and extinction. Blankets are removed or moved to other areas, showing the way land was taken and peoples relocated. The exercise concludes with participants discussing the experience in a healing circle.