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Riled by headdresses

A Quebec mother says she was shocked that two Grade 3 teachers were wearing aboriginal headdresses and handing them out to students on the first day of classes Monday.

Jennifer Dorner said she found the scene in the Montreal schoolyard distressing and offensive and posted a photo and commentary on Facebook, where it began making the rounds.

"I was pretty horrified, I was hoping that this kind of thing stopped happening a long time ago, but apparently it continues so I took a picture and posted about it," she said in an interview.

Dorner, whose daughter and niece are both Grade 3 students, said her niece Zoe was particularly upset by the headdress and wanted to rip it up.

School board spokeswoman Gina Guillemette says the headdresses — fashioned from cardboard and coloured feathers — were distributed to students at Ecole Lajoie as part of a focus on teaching about native communities in Quebec.

Dorner said that explanation is even more upsetting given the very people introducing the topic don't seem to grasp the disrespect of portraying the headdress in this way.

"How can they possibly be teaching an authentic understanding of indigenous culture?," she asked. "It doesn't help their cause to say that. If anything, it makes it even more distressing."

Such headdresses are generally only worn by elders or those who've earned the right to do so.

Non-natives donning them is seen as disrespectful as there is a spiritual and cultural significance attached to them.



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