Primary Junior Social Studies Teacher Resources

The Mystery of the Underground Railroad

This video is in the On-Core collection.

"In Aunt Tilley’s inherited old house, Kyla and E.B. investigate random objects in file drawers that reveal how history is connected to the present. Today's mystery objects include a postcard, a dream catcher and a lamp. Kyla follows the postcard clue to the Salem Chapel BME Church in St. Catharines, Ontario, a part of the Underground Railroad which helped American slaves escape to freedom. She learns about black slavery in North America, about anti-slavery activity in Canada, and Harriet Tubman's role in helping slaves. Teresa sings some spiritual songs that communicated secret escape instructions. Meanwhile E.B. learns about dream catchers, designed by First Nations people to catch bad energy in its spider-web shape. He is surprised to learn that First Nations people helped Underground Railroad escapees by guiding them through swamps, showing them how to cure rattlesnake bites and how to make a smokeless fire. E.B visits Bertie Hall in Fort Erie, a first safe house for many slaves crossing the Niagara River from the US side, and finds a lantern in the window that solves their third clue. Slaves were still in danger of being caught by US bounty hunters when they were in Canada, so a secret room was used to hide them. By 1865 slavery was abolished in the US, and the Underground Railroad was no longer needed."

Inuuvunga - I am Inuk, I am Alive

This video is from the National Film Board of Canada.

"In this feature-length documentary, 8 Inuit teens with cameras offer a vibrant and contemporary view of life in Canada's North. They also use their newly acquired film skills to confront a broad range of issues, from the widening communication gap between youth and their elders to the loss of their peers to suicide. In Inuktitut with English subtitles."

No Fish Where To Go

This video is from the National Film Board of Canada.

In this short animation based on Marie-Francine Hébert's 2003 book of the same name, a friendship unites two little girls from opposing clans in a village where tensions are mounting. The citizens with the red shoes clearly despise those without, and one fateful morning, one of the girls and her family are accosted at gunpoint by their oppressors. The little girl barely has time to grab her beloved pet fish before the men are herded to one side and the women and children to the other. So begins our protagonist's long and painful journey as she seeks shelter for herself, her mother, and her fish. This modern tale compassionately and poetically addresses intolerance and the consequences of war.

Inuit Odyssey

This video is in the Curio collection.

Inuit Odyssey follows Canadian Arctic anthropologist Niobe Thompson on a visually stunning journey across the North to trace the origins of the modern Inuit. In a circumpolar expedition stretching from the ancient hearth of Thule culture in Siberia, to the high Arctic home of the gentle Dorset people, and to the final battleground of the Thule and the Norse in Greenland, Inuit Odyssey explores the mysteries of the Thule conquest of the Arctic.