Teaching Treaties

The teaching treaties project reminded me of the work Heather McGregor shared with us about the Residential Schools unit.  The development and implementation process has been slightly different, however both projects are trying to create a new narrative and contribute to the decolonization of education.

“(Un)usual narratives, like teaching treaties represent ways to begin developing new sets of relations, new sets of understandings and the possibilities for change (Tupper & Cappello, 2008).

The research article is a fascinating read and shares Treaty learning experiences of indigenous and non-indigenous students and teachers.

A Teaching Treaties Wiki was also developed to support the Tool Kit.   Teachers who attend the Treaty workshop develop lessons and then upload them to the wiki (also reminding me of a potential of the wiki for teachers in the North).  While looking through the lessons, I found some excellent ideas, however I was also reminded of the necessity to be critical of content, language, use of cultural components, and curricular add-on activities to ensure I was respecting Indigenous teaching and learning practices.

Tupper, J.A. & Cappello, M.  (2008).  Teaching treaties as (un)usual narratives: Disrupting the        curricular commonsense.  Curriculum Inquiry, 38(5), p. 559-578.  doi: 10.1111/j.1467-873X.2008.00436.x

Camille