Weblog 4.1

The material on residential schooling and its impacts has many parallels to Australian Aboriginal (and some Torres Strait islander) peoples’ experiences in Australia. In Australia from the late 1800s to the 1970s, children were removed from their families and either placed in institutions or adopted by non-indigenous families. This is called the Stolen Generation.

The Australian public were encouraged to believe that Aboriginal children were at risk in their communities and were disadvantaged, so this forced removal would provide them with better education, a more loving family and more civilised upbringing. The reality was that it was a governmental attempt to assimilate. Even the teaching opportunities were limited and the idea was to create a serving class. Many children with an Aboriginal mother and Anglo-saxon father were specifically targeted.

After Heather’s talk (not being a school teacher) I explored what the Australian teaching curriculum was about the Stolen Generation. This lead me to the:

• National Sorry Day Committee website and an overview of the new Australian curriculum

• new Australian national school curriculum from Foundation to year 10 has been released (2012) and one of the three cross curriculum priority areas was Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures. This priority area has been integrated through all levels of schooling in the areas of history, maths, science and english. It has been really interesting to explore the approach to integration and resources available.

• amazing resource Scootle that provides resources and teaching plans.

What I couldn’t find was any parallels of Heather’s resource for Indigenous children for teaching.

Aboriginal Perspectives is a site dedicated to providing teachers with lessons, videos, games and workshops that include Aboriginal content and focus.  Each of the videos is of a First Nations person or persons, from different age groups, and is accompanied by lesson plan suggestions.  This site is a joint venture between the University of Regina and the Saskatchewan Urban Native Teacher Education Program.

Math Catcher:Mathematics Through Aboriginal Storytelling is a site dedicated to introducing math topics via Aboriginal storytelling methods.  There are stories, video clips, background, rationale and links to conferences.  The project this site stemmed from was initiated at a First Nations Math Education Workshop held at the Banff International Research Station (BIRS) for Mathematical Innovation and Discovery.

One of the goals of this project is to promote mathematics for all peoples, but particularly in a way that will allow Aboriginal children to see themselves and their culture connected to mathematics, and to promote Aboriginal traditions amongst non-Aboriginal students.  The stories on the site are available in both English and various Aboriginal languages.

The Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations (FSIN) site hosts a number of topics, identified as secretariats, including Education and Training.  Within the Education and Training Secretariat, there was a link (amongst many) to a Science, Math and Technology Outreach Program that outlined a number of events, objectives, science fairs and communique’s.  While this page is of special interest to me, there are many other educational objectives listed on the Education and Training page.

The viewpoint of this site is from the First Nation’s perspective and it spoke to a number of the neutrality issues raised in Module 1.  The 5 main goals and objectives of the FSIN are listed on the About FSIN page.