This resource ties together BC Science Curriculum content with Indigenous content. It provides the Indigenous perspective on topics such as evolution, energy systems, and climate change. By giving additional perspectives, students are able to get a deeper understanding of the topics. In this case, with energy systems and climate change, students are able to see how different cultures viewed where they got their energy from and also how they are affected by climate change differently. In addition to information, it also provides various activities for students to work through to build their understanding.
For my third post, I am drawn back to the question of how to amplify Indigenous voices, especially for the youth. I have heard a lot about the hip hop group Snotty Nose Rez Kidz. Growing up on the Kitamaat Village reservation in northwest BC, they fuse indgenous culture with a modern hip hop sound. They have acheived immense success, most recently winning Hip Hop Album of the Year at the first ever International Indigenous Music Awards.
They counter indenous stereotypes by embracing them and taking ownership of them:
Though they’ve heard of kids being sent home from school for wearing a T-shirt with their band’s name on it and had a (now former) manager who insisted they change it to something more palatable, the Rez Kids say it’s important to embrace negative language that has been directed toward Indigenous people in Canada and claim it as a point of pride.
“When we interact with these slurs, we are confronting them, deconstructing them and regurgitating them to create our own impressions that exemplify us as the strong, creative, and intelligent Savages we know ourselves to be,” they wrote in liner notes to their album, The Average Savage.
Not only do they amplify indigenous culture, they produce fantastic hip hop, using impressive flow to communicate ideas. Some of my favourite lines so far:
“Smudging before judging.”- Screaming Indian
“She not pochahontis, more like Buffy Saint Marie,” (refering to his wife)-Boujee Natives
As I continue to encounter new modern Indigenous music, I look forward to learning more about this genre which is terribly under appreciated.
CBC Article:
Click below to read more about their recent award for Best Hip Hop Album at the first ever International Indigenous Music award:
Friend, David. “Snotty Nose Rez Kids Lead First-Ever International Indigenous Hip Hop Awards Nominees | CBC News.” CBCnews, CBC/Radio Canada, 26 Jan. 2021, www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/indigenous-hip-hop-award-1.5888427.
Kurjata, Andrew. “How Haisla Hip-Hop Duo Snotty Nose Rez Kids Took on Stereotypes and Won Fans in 2017 | CBC News.” CBCnews, CBC/Radio Canada, 1 Jan. 2018, www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/snotty-nose-rez-kids-2017-1.4468282.
When working on a paper for another MET course, I discovered that a lack of remote/flexible approaches in publicly funded post secondary institutions limits the availability of education to Indigenous Peoples living in areas such as reserves. This is demonstrated by the Aboriginal peoples census data in 2016 which reports that only 37% of all Indigenous people living on reserves in B.C. had completed high school by age 25 (Statistics Canada, 2020).
Given that this is only pertaining to people living on reserve, I wonder about the statistics for those not living on reserve – are they better or the same?
Most health care education programs require high school and even post-secondary level pre-requisites, along with a high GPA. This makes these programs, such as nursing, unavailable for many Indigenous students living on reserve.
An ongoing discussion in the class has surrounded the question, How can we reconcile first peoples theories of learning with larger technological goals in education? I found an interesting article about Holo-Demonstrations. This involves the use of Holograms to speak at rallies, making it easier for the image of a speaker to be seen over large spaces (multiple holograms can be projected.)
The demonstration in this green peace article was a campaign speaking to Chase Bank, encouraging them to defund oil projects which interfere with indigenous land all over North America. Justin Morris, the leader of this demonstration, had this to say about using technology to spread the groups message:
This day in age, all the technology and distractions that we have in the world, the traditional tactics . . . kind of falls flat in people ears. Because of this, extraction of fossil fuels and the damage it does to Indigenous communities has been ignored for far too long. That is why we set out to amplify the voices of Indigenous peoples who are demanding that large corporate banks like JPMorgan Chase defund big oil projects. [Using this technology] was an effective and efficient way of reaching and expressing our message to the world.
While there are many ways in which first peoples theories of learning are contradicted by technology (place and placelessness for example), it cannot be ignored that there are opportunities to reconcile these contradictions through innovation. I think this is especially the case with Oral Storytelling.
Click the image below to learn more about Holo-Demonstrations and how they can be used to amplify indigenous voices around the world.
Weeks, Megan, and Megan Weeks. “Technology in Activism: Amplifying Indigenous Injustice.” Greenpeace USA, www.greenpeace.org/usa/stories/technology-in-activism-amplifying-indigenous-injustice/.
This has been an interest of mine for many years now. I chose this video, not because it inspired me to explore this topic further (I’ve been pondering this question for years), but because she tells the story much better than I ever could on why it is so important to encourage more Indigenous students into health care fields, particularly those living on reserve.
The stories she tells of Indigenous people’s encounters with the health care system, and stories I’ve heard personally from others, are the stories that have inspired me to look further into what we can do about the negative encounters of Indigenous people with the health care system. I’ve heard personally from people that have experienced directly the type of racism she speaks of in hospitals – women denied analgesics because “they’re probably addicted” anyway, I heard a story from a mother who was in active labour and was told to ‘stop drinking for your baby” (this woman does not drink, and is a lawyer – they still encouraged her to stop drinking, but were less demanding about it). I’ve heard from my mother, who was a social worker with Victims Services in Dawson Creek, stories about clients she worked with having horrific experiences with the RCMP and emergency personnel in the hospital there…These stories make me angry and ashamed for my profession, and wanting to better the health care system for everyone, not just the colonizers.
Her words, when describing the maternal-child health program, sound very much like words I would use to describe my own teaching philosophy. This video is very inspiring and helps me to know there are things we can do about the issues that Indigenous people have with the health care system – change from within the system.
This BC government site documents implicit and explicit links between Indigenous Knowledge and Perspectives and specific curricular (or cross-curricular) areas according to B.C.’s redesigned curriculum, and the links can be applied to other provincial curriculums similarly. It also links the connection to the Math First Peoples Teacher Resource Guide, which provides specific activities with developed elements to support the integration of Indigenous knowledge and perspectives.
This website promotes math and science to elementary and high school students with a focus on story-telling and hands-on activities. The Math Catcher program is based in BC and was inspired over a decade ago to help improve the math completion rates of Indigenous learners. The program offers teacher training workshops, school visits, student summer camps, and instructional activities. There is an excellent collection of video stories that follow the antics of a 5-year-old boy, Small Number, and his mathematically themed adventures – and they have been translated into different Aboriginal languages also. Although the site suggests targeting an audience up to grade 12, the materials it offers are primarily elementary in nature. The Summer Math Camp Program appears to have ended in 2018 – it hosted grade 9 – 11 Aboriginal students in math and science day camps at SFU.
This course came to my attention through an ETEC 512 discussion on “How will MOOCs (massive open online courses) revolutionize education?” It is also offered by one of the authors of this week’s readings, Jan Hare. I have yet to take Hare’s course, “Reconciliation Through Indigenous Education”, but I vowed to look into taking it after I finish this program, rationalizing that it “provides a vessel to reach out to Canadians to address the issues facing our country’s history.” Although this may not be a resource accessible right now to us in this course, it is important that educators consider joining a course like this to reach out to and connect with students that we have in our classrooms.
The Aboriginal Perspectives website contains information to help teacher infuse their instruction with traditional aboriginal perspectives. It includes 7 different lessons each consisting of several smaller video segments, featuring aboriginal role models that give interviews about their careers, education, and a bit about them as a person, plus demonstrations of traditional activities such as tipi building, birch bark biting, and counting in Cree. The site includes materials for 35 different math activities (grades 4 & 6) from delivered workshops, along with 13 different Aboriginal games and a shortlist of references.
The is an online professional learning community formed between the First Nations, Metis & Inuit Education Association of Ontario (FNMIEAO), and the Mathematics Knowledge Network. Their goal is to promote Indigenous education in Ontario for the Indigenous community and all learners in education.
There is a General Webinar Section that has 17 webinars, all a bit over an hour, presenting such topics as the colonization of North America, oppression of Indigenous people, the Truth and Reconciliation Project, and many others. It is hosted by members of the Indigenous community and is an authentic self-representation of their Indigenous experiences and issues.
First Nations, Metis & Inuit Education Association of Ontario. (n.d.). General FNMIEAO Webinars [Video]. YouTube http://www.fnmieao.com/events/
