While helping a student look for local endangered species for her project, I decided to look up Indigenous or TEK views on endangered species. I came across the site below entitled, “Species are Sacred – A Sto:lo World View on Species at Risk in the Fraser Valley”. The site discusses how oral traditions have passed on knowledge about maintaining these species for many years. Individual Species Fact Sheets are on the site for download and teacher lessons. There are Sto:lo legends written about some of the species as well as pictures and interesting information.
Maintaining and conserving our land is a topic that I am passionate about and also one in which I teach in Grade 7. We typically do either a project or a few lessons using digital technology (the Internet) to research local species that are endangered. I have not specifically looked for Indigenous sites on this, but now I that I have taken this course, I will continue to look. With the growth of more information being documented on the Internet for teachers to use, Western science teachers can incorporate more TEK into their classrooms. However, the oral tradition of passing on information through generations is at risk when doing this. Almost a catch-22.
http://www.sccp.ca/sites/default/files/species-habitat/documents/pws_sccp-stolo%20factsheet_0.pdf