Tag Archives: Indigenous perspectives

Module 4 (Post 3) – The Importance of Indigenous Perspectives in STEM

I enjoyed the following virtual workshop from the Ontario Ministry of Education about the importance of Indigenous perspectives in STEM. The workshop is presented by Joseph Pitawanakwat, the director of Creators Garden, and Haley Higdon, program director of Natural Curiosity.

Jessica Presta: Module 1, Post 4

For this post I wanted to share a resource for educators to support the indigenization of their programs, classrooms, and pedagogical practices. BC Campus is an online resource that aims to support the evolution of education across the province through collaboration, communication and innovation. One of their resources for this is their Indigenization project. The goal of this project is to offer open resources to educators to support the incorporation of Indigenous epistemologies into their practice, systematically decolonizing post-secondary education. Some of these resources include:

Learn about Indigenous histories in Canada:

Actions for teaching: Engage and collaborate with Indigenous peoples, knowledges, and cultures in your course design and curriculum.
Sign up to take Indigenous Canada, a Massive Open Online Course from the University of Alberta.
Read: Indigenous History Month Reading List from Massey Books
Indigenous Ally Toolkit, compiled by Dakota Swiftwolfe and others from the Montreal Indigenous Community Network

Learn about decolonizing your course materials and teaching practices:

Actions for teaching: Learn and integrate First Peoples Principles of Learning into your work as a designer and facilitator of learning experiences for all students.
The BCcampus Pulling Together Indigenization guides include a foundations guide as well as guides for teachers, leaders and administrators, front-line staff, curriculum developers, and researchers.
Indigenous Pedagogy: Decolonizing Higher Education resource from Vancouver Community College
Consider adopting one or more of these 100 Ways: Indigenizing & Decolonizing Academic Programs.

3 Points for Settler Educators – M1 P4

I came across the following article, Settler Educators Teaching Indigenous Perspectives and History by Dr Angela Nardozi who is an educator at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at U of T. She shares 3 points to assist settler educators in teaching about Indigenous perspectives and histories:

“Spend time remembering and unlearning your own education about Indigenous peoples.”
“Listen to Indigenous peoples in terms of what they want taught.”
“Center Indigenous peoples experiences and stories in your teaching.”

A few of the resources mentioned in the article worth noting:

Stolen Lives: A book created for Canadian educators with first-person accounts.
Shi-shi-etko: A short illustrated story that introduces residential schools in an age appropriate way

The full article can be found here.