Using the art of storytelling, this BCTF resource focuses on Gladys, an Indigenous girl from Spuzzum, and her life in a residential school. I appreciate its BC centered focus relating it directly to where students live and explore. It links to additional sites throughout the each lesson that enhance learning, but the information provided within the resource itself is rich. Each lesson is easily adaptable to earlier or older grades and provoke students to make connections to their lives. It is also available in French for those teachers who are in an immersion classroom.
I had the pleasure of being introduced to this Video Game which was developed in collaboration with the Inupiat, an Alaskan Native People. We’ve spoken a lot about the themes of identity, culture, language, and tradition and the importance of ensuring that Indigenous peoples are given the opportunity to decide what is shared, how it is shared, and to whom it is shared. The link below will give you an idea of what this game entails and if you can, I would invite you to play. All the images were done in collaboration with Alaskan Elders and artists, which adds to the authenticity of this game.
“Never Alone leverages the power of videogames to share, celebrate and extend culture. These World Games will empower indigenous communities around the world to share their stories in an authentic, engaging, and entertaining way.”
Below is a link to a 20-minute video from a project called What I Learned In Class, which is “comprised of clips from videotaped interviews in which several UBC students, both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal, share their most memorable classroom experiences where the discussion of Aboriginal issues became difficult, as well as share their reflections on the dynamics underpinning these situations. Candid, touching, and provocative, their interviews highlight not only the problems themselves but also the repercussions that these experiences can have, as well as potential ways to move forward.”
When developing a Unit on Identity, it is important that I continue to recognize that many issues will be difficult to discuss for many of our students and it’s important that I am understanding of this and do my best to learn how to approach these topics with care and compassion, knowing that there will be feelings of trauma that could arise.
I came across this article from the University of Kansas on the Impacts of Hyperdocs on Education. What I was most intrigued with was the connection between the impacts mentioned and the themes of the course so far. Most of the educators talked about how they were able to spend more one-on-one time with their students, building relationships and learning alongside one another, or, how the use of Hyperdocs allowed them to meet the individual needs of each student and provided the opportunity for students to reflect on their learning. As I am focussing on how learning requires exploration of one’s identity, I found this article very helpful in forming a foundation for using this format in my final project.
Also, if you aren’t sure what a Hyperdoc is, I’ve attached an example of one for the Novel “Amal Unbound.” You can click the link below to view it – feel free to use with your students!
In my class, I have historically used Food Plants of Coastal First Peoples by Nancy J Turner to help my students learn about the plants that grow around them. And while it is a comprehensive book, through this course I have begun to wonder, in a book like this, who is getting credit for Indigenous knowledge. While Dr. Turner seems to be supportive of Indigenous rights and works with Elders to gain her knowledge, I could find no indication that the proceeds are being returned to the people who helped her. As a result, I have been looking for resources that are made by Indigenous people that could help inform my plant instruction. This website by the Comox Valley School district, produced by their Aboriginal educators, offers some rich material that would certainly work in the elementary classroom. Island Health also has this video (below) on Indigenous Plant Healing that I thought was very interesting and would tie into many areas of the curriculum.
I have also found these school-appropriate plant cards published by Strong Nations publishing that I will be adding to my classroom as well.
The importance of location was highlighted in this module, and I was inspired by the Anishinaabe World in Minecraft, a collaborative project between the Louis Reil Foundation and Microsoft, that “honours, celebrates and explores a Manitoba Anishinaabe community” (Minecraft Anishinaabe World, n.d.). It made me wonder if a similar project could be created that reflects the locality of First Nations on whose territories my school resides. To that end, the Cobblestone Collective offered a more in-depth look at Minecraft and the incorporation of Indigenous knowledge through an Elder led three-part session. The sessions focused on local plants, medicines, traditions that guided cultural practice and allowed students to engage in an immersive experience. It was full of relevant information for an educator looking to expand their use of Minecraft to remove the colonizing focus while responding to the cultural knowledge of their students.
To be a BC teacher that embeds indigenous knowledge and creates a culturally responsive classroom requires that I be aware of my own biases, privileges, and sources of knowledge. The questionnaire put out by the Alberta Civil Liberties Association asked me poignant questions that helped me understand myself better at this moment in time. I can easily see this being a tool I use before the start of each new school year. Further, the spirit of the questions could easily be adapted for in-class use, though the wording is likely too advanced for most young learners. It returns to the theme of what do we know and how do we know it; two central questions that are recurring themes in decolonizing the classroom.
Alberta Civil Liberties Association self-assessment: https://www.aclrc.com/self-assessment
In my investigation into using digital art as a means of decolonization, I came across this article (Taylor, 2021) on The Art of Education University’s website. I feel that it helps solidify the distinction of when appropriation is acceptable (such as with remixing) and when it is not. It is both easily digestible and practical for a classroom teacher. One sentence in particular stood out to me, for its simple flip-the-idea-on-its-head approach:
“Instead of using kente cloth to teach weaving, teach weaving to introduce kente cloth.”
This phrase echoes what Kawagley and Barnhardt said about learning about the greater ecology before focusing in on one particular niche. In the case of the kente clothe (a Ghanaian textile), Taylor outlines how to guide students through intentional decision making, towards creating their own personal textiles, rather than mimicking an aesthetically pleasing one from another culture.
References:
Kawagley, A. O., & Barnhardt, R. (1998). Education indigenous to place: Western science meets native reality. Fairbanks: Alaska Native Knowledge Network.
Taylor, J. (2020, October). Considering Cultural Appropriation in the Art Classroom. The Art of Education University. https://theartofeducation.edu/2020/10/23/considering-cultural-appropriation-in-the-art-classroom/
In their paper, “Digital Storytelling as Arts-Inspired Inquiry for Engaging, Understanding, and Supporting Indigenous Youth”, Englinton et al. investigated how youth explore their personal and cultural idnetities trough multimedia narratives. The creation, reflection on, and sharing of these stories provided “opportunities for these youth to represent, perform, and thus construct their identities using the cultural artifacts available to them” (p. 14). The authors argue that this medium, in this case short (under 5 minutes) multimedia narratives, is a powerful amplifier of marginalized voices. They base their workshop on the Freirean model which uses images to spark dialogue and illuminate collective themes or issues.
This process can be taken a step further into the digital-art niche by creating such narratives with animation. There is an abundance of support for stop-motion (sometimes called slowmation) animation for supporting learning. Pavlou (2019) details its strengths for facilitating digital storytelling, such as its power to encourage creativity, critical thinking, and collaboration. For an example of an Indigenous stop-motion, see the video below:
From the Video’s Description: This animated documentary follows the journey of an Indigenous photographer as she travels through time. She witnesses moments in her family’s history and strengthens her connection to her Metis, Cree and Anishnaabe ancestors. This is a personal story told through the eyes of director and writer Amanda Strong. The oral and written history of her family reveals the story — we witness the impact and legacy of the railways, the slaughter of the buffalo and colonial land policies. Four Faces of the Moon contains no English language, relying on sound, image and Indigenous voice to tell the story. This multi-layered approach to storytelling may leave you with more questions than answers: it is an invitation to look into your own understanding of history, legacy and the importance in knowing who you are and where you’re from.
References:
CBC (2017, March 21). “Four Faces of the Moon” – Canada’s dark colonial past | Animated Short Doc [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/rWe–sysNkk
Englinton, K. A., Gubrium, A., & Wexler, L. (2017). Digital Storytelling as Arts-Inspired Inquiry for Engaging, Understanding, and Supporting Indigenous Youth. International Journal of Education & the Arts, 18(5). https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1136731.
Pavlou, V. (2019). Art Technology Integration: Digital Storytellying as a Transformative Pedagogy in Primary Education. International Journal of Art & Design Education, 39(1), 195–210. https://doi.org/10.1111/jade.12254
This link specifically goes to a post about how cultural appropriation is disrespectful. However, the entire blog is very relevant and addresses a variety of issues, including the diversity of Indigenous people in Canada (which connects to my other post M3,P3). The blog posts are to the point and have links to more information if you choose to dive deeper into a topic. I hope to use the post of cultural appropriation in my final project as a reminder of how non Indigenous people simply can’t “borrow” aspects from Indigenous cultures. It is disrespectful. My partner and I plan to address this in our final project.
