Sharing the story of the World Blanket Exercise at global Indigenous conference
“Education got us into this mess and education will get us out of it.” The late Honourable Justice Murray Sinclair, Chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada.
Alfredo Barahona, KAIROS’ KBE Global and Newcomer Coordinator, will be in Aotearoa – New Zealand, November 16-20, for the Indigenous-led World Indigenous Peoples’ Conference on Education – WIPCE 2025. WIPCE is the largest global gathering focused on Indigenous education. More than 2,000 Indigenous peoples are expected to attend.
Alfredo will deliver a presentation about the World Blanket Exercise, an experiential teaching and learning tool from an Indigenous perspective, along with two Indigenous partners from Australia: Jayde Conway a proud Noongar woman who is the Cultural Immersion Coordinator of Inclusion at the Office of the Deputy Vice-Chancellor at Curtin University, and Thelma Parkeran Aboriginal woman from the Warluwarra Wangkayujuru, Wangkaymunha Traditional Owners and a professor at the University of Queensland.
KAIROS and its partners presented the very first World KAIROS Blanket Exercise during the last WIPCE conference, held in Adelaide, Australia three years ago.
The World Blanket Exercise amalgamates scripts from Australia, Canada, Ecuador and Guatemala, highlighting common themes and unique impacts of more than 500 years of colonization on the original peoples of these lands.
“Education isn’t just about curriculum — it’s about connection, storytelling and walking together,” says Jayde Conway.
Frequently, people who have participated in the KAIROS Blanket Exercise, many of them teachers, have expressed “how come we were never taught this history?” The short answer is that colonizers have framed world history through a Eurocentric lens.
Indigenous-led education then is critical to reconciliation – to changing the hearts and minds of people as well as our collective understanding of the ongoing impacts of colonialism on Indigenous people around the world.
The KAIROS Blanket Exercise evolved beyond its borders in Canada when a workshop at WIPCE 2017 in Toronto inspired the development of Australian and Alaskan versions. In addition to Canada, the Blanket Exercise is now used in Australia, Ecuador, Guatemala and the USA.
The World Blanket Exercise is delivered in English and Spanish to raise awareness of the impact of colonialism from an Indigenous perspective. Participants representing Indigenous peoples before contact with European settlers, stand on blankets that represent the land. Indigenous facilitators lead the group through a script outlining the history of Indigenous and non-Indigenous relationships around the world from the time of contact to today.
WIPCE 2025 is a unique opportunity for KAIROS and global partners to promote the World Blanket Exercise in-person to thousands of Indigenous people from around the globe. It is an opportunity to establish new relationships and build networks with Indigenous people to forge global partnerships to bring the World Blanket Exercise to their countries, territories and communities.
Stay tuned for more about the World Blanket Exercise at WIPCE 2025 in November!
For more information please contact:
Alfredo Barahona, KBE Global and Newcomer Coordinator
abarahona [at] kairoscanada.org
