Winnipeg principal 'dumbfounded' after 4-metre teepee stolen from elementary school's lawn

Lauren Scott · CBC News

· Posted: Jun 12, 2025 6:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: June 12

The main of an East Kildonan simple schoolhouse says the theft of a teepee that was enactment up connected the school's tract has robbed its students of important land-based learning opportunities during National Indigenous History Month. 

The four-metre-wide teepee was erected connected Monday by a cognition keeper who has a narration with Angus McKay School, said main Jean-Paul Rochon. 

It was gone the adjacent morning. 

Rochon said the theft happened sometime betwixt 11:30 p.m. connected Monday and Tuesday morning, erstwhile schoolhouse unit arrived. 

"I'm inactive rather dumbfounded, due to the fact that it would person taken a batch of effort to get that teepee down," Rochon said, adding that moving a teepee of that size and its dense woody poles would person apt required a ample truck.

The teepee was expected to basal connected the lawn of the kindergarten to Grade 5 school for 2 weeks during June, which is National Indigenous History Month and includes National Indigenous Peoples Day connected June 21, and was ample capable to accommodate afloat classes of much than 20 students, Rochon said. 

"If we're going to speech astir learning from the onshore and learning astir antithetic cultures, it would beryllium important to larn wrong the discourse of those pieces. So to person an existent teepee that the kids could spell into arsenic they talked astir it, to beryllium wrong of a teepee, would person been extraordinary," helium said. 

He said different teepee has been acceptable up in the schoolhouse library, acknowledgment to the cognition keeper. It volition enactment determination until the extremity of the month. 

"We'll beryllium capable to inactive bash immoderate of those activities. It won't beryllium retired connected the land, but astatine slightest we've not mislaid retired connected the accidental of the existent carnal teepee," Rochon said. 

Winnipeg constabulary confirmed to CBC News that a constabulary study has been filed and officials are investigating. No further accusation has been provided. 

Rochon said the schoolhouse custodian checked successful the wooded country down the playground to spot if thing had been near there, but recovered nothing. 

The schoolhouse hasn't heard thing astir the teepee's whereabouts yet, helium said.  

'Like it had vanished': parent

Parent Chelsea Dyck, whose 2 children spell to Angus McKay, said the tight-knit and quiescent assemblage has been shocked and upset by the theft — and however rapidly it happened.

"I didn't adjacent cognize that the teepee had adjacent been present until we got the email astir the quality that it had been stolen. It got enactment up, and the adjacent greeting it was similar it had vanished," she said. 

She said parents and assemblage members are shaken by the information that idiosyncratic would bargain thing truthful ample and culturally important from the tract of an simple school. 

"This isn't the benignant of happening you tin conscionable tuck nether your overgarment and locomotion disconnected with," Dyck said. 

Kelli Johnson, whose 2 children besides be the school, said galore of the houses successful the country person doorbell cameras, but galore look distant from the thoroughfare and apt wouldn't person video of the crime. 

"It's not conscionable immoderate petty vandalism. It's got to beryllium thing that indispensable person been planned," Johnson said. 

She said it's disappointing to suffer some the teepee and the learning experiences that students would person had wrong it. 

"I deliberation being successful that teepee would person been a truly awesome acquisition for the children of Angus McKay," Johnson said.

CBC News was not capable to interaction the cognition keeper who works with the school as of Wednesday.