These Children Are Pearls

A beautiful new resource for children has been released in Canada.

These Children Are Pearls: Bahá'í Teachings for Tender Hearts is a booklet containing all the prayers and quotations from Ruhi Institute Book 3 Teaching Children's Classes Grade One. A special feature is the inclusion of some of those prayers that have been translated into the Hul’q’umi’num’ language of the Quw’utsun and the Kwak'wala language of the Kwakwaka’wakw. Illustrations were created by Thomas Wilson of the Heiltsuk Nation of Bella Bella.

This resource was developed to respond to the desire of Indigenous families in the Cowichan and Nanaimo communities for their children to have access to prayer in their own languages. 

An added feature is QR codes that allow readers to access accompanying video and audio of the translated prayers. 

"There has been a core group of people who have played a role in developing the booklet. It was a collective effort every step of the way,” said Deloria Bighorn, a member of the Publication and Distribution Board of the National Bahá'í community of Canada, who also serves in the Cowichan community. “Elders and tribal language specialists, children's class teachers, and artistic, design and production resource people worked together,” she said, emphasizing that the motivation to take on projects like this, which can be complex, needs to come from the Indigenous communities when they feel it is time.

It is hoped that this booklet will be useful not only to Vancouver Island communities but by families and teachers across the land looking for uplifting resources to teach their children.

These Children are Pearls, published by Bahá'íCanada Publications, will be available through Bahá'í Distribution Services Canada.