Tag Archives: decolonization

Module 4, Post 3 | Weaving Indigenous and western knowledge

An article focusing on the growing interest in educational and research institutions across the country embracing a holistic approach to its scientific methods, which integrates Indigenous knowledge with classroom teaching methods to decolonize education.

A response to the TRC’s Calls to Action, this collaboration reinforces the cultural values of Indigenous knowledge and highlights applicability across a broad range of subjects.

https://www.universityaffairs.ca/features/feature-article/weaving-indigenous-and-western-knowledge/

Module 4, Post 2 | Education is the Key to Reconciliation

Justice Murray Sinclair said,

Education is what got us into this mess — the use of education at least in terms of residential schools — but education is the key to reconciliation. We need to look at the way we are educating children. That’s why we say that this is not an aboriginal problem. It’s a Canadian problem.

How do we go about solving this problem? For starters, we ensure that curriculum reflects Canadian history accurately.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/truth-and-reconciliation-chair-urges-canada-to-adopt-un-declaration-on-indigenous-peoples-1.3096225

https://www.univcan.ca/media-room/media-releases/education-is-the-key-to-meaningful-reconciliation/

https://www.utoronto.ca/news/not-just-part-past-u-t-s-jennifer-brant-teaching-subject-residential-schools-canada

Decolonizing Reflexive Practice Through Photo Essay (M4P5)

The coming school year will be the first time I teach Photography 11/12, and I am hoping this resource will help me prepare for that. The paper, Decolonizing Reflexive Practice Through Photo Essay Aisinai’pi Storying Place (Walsh et al., 2018) outlines a photo essay project that situates the students’ identities with place. A photo essay is “a series of images evoking stories of original peoples and settlers on this land and fuels important questions about identity and belongingness” (p. 103).

An example of a photo essay, representing the importance of (controlled) burns for healthy ecosystems.

In the paper, the authors describe using a photo essay of the City of Calgary to orient students with Indigenous worldviews and a sense of place. Each photo has a theme, and many interconnect. For each photo, they asked students key questions, such as:

Who originally occupied this land?
How do Eurocentric societies and Indigenous societies understand Mother Earth?
What are your beliefs about live-giving forces?
What promotes health and wellness?
How do you understand the notion of all entities to be interconnected and interdependent?
etc.

I think this could be a valuable way to introduce students to both photo essays and to local history. You could extend the learning by having students create their own place-based photo essays.

Reference:

Walsh, C. A., St-Denis, N., & Eagle Bear, A. (2018). Decolonizing Reflexive Practice Through Photo Essay Aisinai’pi Storying Place. Cultural and Pedagogical Inquiry, 10(1). https://doi.org/10.18733/cpi29376

M4, P4: Professional Development Collection

For one part of my final project, I want to focus on professional development and staff training, and this amazing flipcard collection PD opportunities. There’s a huge range of learning opportunities here– from microlearning or multi-day workshops. There are labels for Indigenous, Indigenous Information, and Indigenous Language. A few of the courses I flagged to explore (many have passed but could be offered again, and the materials might be available for review):

Outreach and Engaging with Indigenous Communities
Oral History and Social Justice
Indigitization Program
Decolonization workshop
How to create an oral history collection

It looks like it’ll be a great resource for professional development opportunities for educators in many contexts.

Project of Heart (M4P1)

Project of Heart is an artistic inquiry into the history of Indigenous people in Canada and the legacies of the Indian Residential Schools (IRS). Though open to all Canadians, it is geared towards schools and students. The website is organized by Province to help provide local context and resources.

The project’s framework includes 6 steps:

Investigate the History and Legacy of Residential Schools in Canada
Look closer at a specific IRS in your local area, including whose territory it is located on and the children taken to the school
Create a gesture of Reconciliation
Survivor Visit
Social Justice Action
Finishing Up Project of the Heart

For Step 3, the website gives several suggestions for projects, from their traditional commemorative wooden tiles to crafting feather wreaths or writing a song. The provincial pages also provide blog-rolls with examples from schools. An approach that I think would be interesting is a collaborative mosaic. Ideally, this would be done in collaboration with a local Indigenous artist who would create the overall design and perhaps teach the students some art lessons. For examples of Collaborative Mosaics, check out Jen Jolliff‘s school ones, and the Global Roots Project.

M4P4: Burnaby Village Museum, a step toward reconciliation

Over the past few years, Burnaby Village Museum has taken steps to undo “the part it has played in erasing Indigenous history from the place we now call Burnaby (Vancouver is awesome, 2019). This is an important step toward reconciliation and an example that can be discussed in class.

Out of this process has come the Indigenous History in Burnaby Resource Guide. This guide is an excellent resource for grade 5 and beyond, providing local context and story to the areas in which my school is found and where the kids play and live. This guide also serves another purpose though, and that is to open up conversation about how history is written. Who funded this book? Who consulted in this book? Who received credit for this book?

Naylor, C. (2019, November 1). Burnaby museum works to undo erasure of local Indigenous history. Vancouver Is Awesome. https://www.vancouverisawesome.com/history/indigenous-history-burnaby-village-museum-1946638.

M3P5: Books to Build On: Indigenous Literature for Learning

This University of Calgary website, in combination with Indigenous and non-Indigenous people, offers a curated list of Indigenous books suitable for all ages (from child to university student). As a bonus, they have also included lesson plans with most of the books. I considered my knowledge of Indigenous books suitable for my class to be well developed, and this resource offered new books to add. In particular, I like that it is not limited to social studies or language arts (where indigenous content is often included), but rather focuses on all the subject areas (including science, math, etc).

M3P2: Location and Minecraft

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.

Cobblestone Project three part series: https://cobblestonecollective.ca/manito-ahbee-aki-minecraft-education-edition/

References:

Minecraft Anishinaabe World. Louis Riel School Division. (n.d.). https://www.lrsd.net/What-We-Offer/Pages/Minecraft-Anishinaabe-World.aspx.

M3P1: Where are we starting?

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