Author Archives: ravneet sandhu

I found the following website to be of interest:

https://indigenousstorywork.com/

This Indigenous Storyworks website has been developed to help educators learn about Indigenous cultures and ways of knowing, through Indigenous traditional and life-experience stories. According to Dr. Jo-ann Archibald, stories guide the development of our heart, mind, and spirit. Each page contained valuable information. I was most excited about the resources page.

On the home page, the video by Dr. Archibald reflects on the role of Indigenous stories, Indigenous pedagogies, the role of storytelling in Indigenous education, ways to help children and other learners make story-meaning, and educators’ considerations for using Indigenous stories today.

Iseke, J., & Moore, S. (2011). Community-based Indigenous digital storytelling with elders and youth. American Indian Culture and Research Journal, 35(4), 19-38.

According to Iseke & Moore (2011), Indigenous digital storytelling has the potential to integrate indigenous artifacts, sacred places, and stories in innovative ways. It also creates spaces for indigenous youth to affirm their identity and become agents of social change. These digital videos can ensure that future generations of indigenous people use technology to sustain their indigenous worldviews. This article looks at four particular community-based digital storytelling projects. Through these projects, the authors consider the importance of Indigenous storytelling and explore some of the strategies for creating and designing Indigenous digital stories. It’s challenging to tell the story that the community or Elders intend to share based on the collaborative dialogue between the digital storyteller and community members regarding the intention of the video project. It’s easy to alter the story that is being told and to replace it with another story that the researcher writer, or editor wants to tell. It can help if the filmmaker is involved in a real way with the community and has a sense of the story.

I find great value in inviting an Elder into my classroom, but we don’t always have the opportunity. I feel that a story such as the one I’ve linked above can be valuable in its own way. I like the way that Elder Hazel Dixon is telling this classic story of what happened when Turtle met Nanabush the Trickster. I can sense her enthusiasm as she orally tells the story. This is presented with the support of SaskCulture and their partners in education at Saskatchewan Teachers’ Federation.

Below are a few other YouTube clips of stories told by Hazel Dixon:

McKeough, A., Bird, S., Tourigny, E., Romaine, A., Graham, S., Ottmann, J., & Jeary, J. (2008). Storytelling as a foundation to literacy development for Aboriginal children: Culturally and developmentally appropriate practices. Canadian Psychology/Psychologie canadienne, 49(2), 148–154. https://doi.org/10.1037/0708-5591.49.2.148

This article discusses the importance of oral narrative in Aboriginal children’s literacy instruction. It is argued that oral narrative or storytelling fits with Aboriginal epistemology. Storytelling is a traditional Aboriginal teaching tool and so it is familiar and culturally relevant to the children. McKeough et al. (2008) suggest that language leads to fundamental differences in our worldly perspectives, knowledge conceptualization, and our relationships and interactions with one another. The authors start off by describing Aboriginal ways of knowing, highlight research conducted in non-Aboriginal contexts, and link this to an ongoing study that is aimed at supporting early literacy development through a developmentally appropriate oral storytelling instructional program. I was surprised to find that many Indigenous languages are verb rather than noun-based compared to English. Such a big difference in language structure has the potential to create challenges for some First Nations children who don’t have a firm foundation in either their native language or English. It is suggested that coupling oral storytelling with the written form supports literacy development because when we recognize language patterns that correspond to the children’s experience with Indigenous oral narratives, we can start to remove gaps between community and classroom (McKeough et al., 2008). By focusing on oral storytelling instruction, there is a lesser cognitive demand placed on young literacy learners compared to written text (McKeough et al., 2008). So, working with oral stories is a precursor to working with written text. I think that I can certainly pull some ideas from this resource in writing my final paper.

“Storytelling was a social institution, an “oral university” that taught people young and old about being “human” (MacLean & Wason-Ellam, 2006, p.9).

Storytelling_As_An_Instructional_Practice (1)

This report contains valuable information about storytelling as an instructional practice. It is noted that sharing stories builds classroom community by creating a relationship between the storytellers and listeners (MacLean & Wason-Ellam, 2006). In the study conducted, the research team interviewed seven classroom teachers of First Nations or Metis ancestry, from two Saskatchewan school divisions, who use storytelling in their professional practice. The following research question was studied: How do First Nations or Metis teachers use storytelling to create a more culturally relevant and empowering learning environment?

An idea that piqued my interest from this report is that “storytelling is never the same twice, even when the same words are used, because the dialogical relationship is always shifting” (MacLean & Wason-Ellam, 2006, p.9). This idea urges me question the reliability of oral storytelling. So much meaning can be lost in translation as we move from generation to generation. I can see how digital storytelling practices could help preserve the original story.

MacLean, M., & Wason-Ellam, L. (2006). When Aboriginal and Métis teachers use storytelling as an instructional practice. Aboriginal Education Research Network.