Class is in session. In today's lesson, students learn how to skin a coyote

WARNING: This story contains images of dead animals that may disturb some readers.

Nahanni Shorting slips a blade between fat and fur and carefully glides it down the length of the back of a coyote, one of four strung up in Ashern Central School's wood shop.

This is the first time skinning a wild animal for some of her high school peers in Manitoba's west Interlake, but Shorting has been hunting with family since she was 13.

She got certified as a trapper six months ago and at 17, she is already thinking about how she can pass down those skills.

"I have multiple cousins, and I would teach them," said Shorting, who is from Little Saskatchewan First Nation, north of Ashern.

"It's probably what my dad would want anyways, to carry on the legacy and the knowledge of hunting and providing for your family."

A local trapper donated the coyotes to the Lakeshore School division's land-based education program, which started about a year ago.

About a dozen students took part in the skinning class. Some opted out of the session, while others were reluctant but warmed up to it.

Program co-ordinator Andrea Neiser tries to instill an appreciation for how everything is connected, sometimes by taking students to explore the outdoors through activities like ice fishing on Lake Manitoba. Other times, she teaches them skills associated with trapping and fur preparation.

"There's a variety of reactions. Some students aren't so fond of it, some students are right into it, some students have been exposed with these northern communities, so they're really interested in learning how to do it," said Neiser.

Donald Nikkel, superintendent of human resources and policy at Lakeshore, said the land-based program emerged from a growing embrace across the province for teaching Indigenous ways of knowing in school. 

That's something that is particularly important in the Interlake, where Nikkel says roughly half of Lakeshore School Division's 1,000 students are Indigenous.

"We also have this really rich history where we have folks who immigrated to the area about 100 years ago and they worked on the land here as farmers, and then we also have our First Nations communities and Métis who have been here much, much longer," said Nikkel.

"The land is a place where we can come together. Students can learn together, they can appreciate each other, and it's about appreciating our past, our history," he said.