First Person is program designed to maximize our boarding campus location and our relationship with our hosts, the ʔaq’am Community. First Person enables and supports students to engage cultural exchange, language learning, and volunteer opportunities toward the following goals at the only on-reserve international boarding school in Canada:

• Min. 30 hours volunteering and/or sharing their culture with ʔaq’am Community members and/or other Ktunaxa Nation communities
• Min. 40 hours participating in activities and events in the ʔaq’am Community or via other Indigenous engagement opportunities elsewhere
• Min. 30 hours learning the Ktunaxa language and/or about First Nations history and culture

First Person activates PCS’s acknowledgement that it sits on the traditional, ancestral homelands of the Ktunaxa Peoples by engaging the Truth and Reconciliation process in a meaningful and powerful way: face to face and person to person. Students who successfully complete their hours will earn a badge for their college admission portfolio and, more importantly, contributed to a better future for themselves and Indigenous peoples worldwide.

First Person brochure

Students who successfully meet the above-listed Indigenous-engagement requirements will receive a First Person badge for the Passport for Good portfolio.

“Education got us into this mess and education will get us out of it.” –The Honourable Justice Murray Sinclair, Chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission