What strategies can be used to further promote TK in educational settings?
As Marker (2011) identifies traditional western education history classes can be the most difficult courses for aboriginal students, due to the fact that what the dominate society suggests counts as history, does not match-up with how traditional indigenous communities make meaning out of the past.
Bennett (2012) encourages teachers that are looking to integrate traditional knowledge into the classroom, to learn to listen. The traditional didactic classroom teacher is conditioned to speak, and “teach” when in fact we should be taking back seat and learn to “listen”.
She encourages teachers to take risks, and be open to make mistakes. It sets an example for students that it is OK to make mistakes in our learning. First Nations protocols can be challenging and intimidating, but Bennett suggests being mindful and respectful, but willing to ask questions.
As an educator, dipping our toes into First Nation’s traditional knowledge, we need to ask if we are making it clear that this is a different worldview. We do not have to “fit it into our own worldview”, but rather learn that this is another perspective that might not easily fit into our framework. This can be done while still maintaining the integrity of our worldview (Bennett, 2012).
While researching how to integrate traditional knowledge into the classroom, I came across the Handbook For Culturally Responsive Science Curriculum– By Sidney Stephens. Stephens provides a basic starting point for the uninitiated that includes: Elders in the Classroom, Best Practices & Assessment to name a few.
Preserving Traditional Knowledge with Technology
I would be remiss to not touch on the aspect of using technology to further promote traditional knowledge, but it too is a matter of debate.
Prins (2002) discusses how many American Indian activists have come to recognize the value of modern visual media in creating an archive of their cultural heritage for future generations. Video now acts as a tool for self-reflection and starting conversations about identity. Prins goes further to say that although previous generations may have had the means to create media of self-representation, they rarely controlled the means to distribute it beyond their own community. As more indigenous people gain the skills and the means to capture and distribute self-reflective media we will see a greater representation.
But not all are onside with using technology to archive traditions. Bowers, et al. (2000, p.188), cautions that the culture-transforming nature of computers compromises the passing of traditions in intergenerational communication by decontextualizing, and changing community participation into “the reading of text by an objective and detached individual”.
There is a difficult balance to maintain, when talking about self-representation, in determining what cultural practices should be archived and shared, as conventions often suggest that some traditions are only meant to be passed down to their own people at specific milestones of their lives (Prins, 2002. p.p. 67-68). The Plains Apache struggle with a loss of culture with a diminishing number of elders, but the constraints that traditions should remain hidden from the general public. Similarly, the Coastal Salish are taught to keep longhouse rituals to themselves (Marker, 2011).
Not only is the act of archiving certain rituals and traditions a contentious subject, as Smith (1999) points out, contemporary indigenous groups have legitimate concerns about research that is conducted by outsiders. These concerns include: who will own the research? Who will benefit from it? How will it be disseminated? These are very real concerns that need to be addressed.
Bennett (2012) talks about adapting with contemporary times, but with forethought and prudence. She cites an example of a school whose goal is developing responsible first nations citizens that are competent with 21st century technology. She believes that relying on modern technology is a large part of preserving traditions. Lessons, with an elder are important for the transmission of traditions. Young students are already engaged with the technology. It can be used as “connector” to further engage them, but being taught respectful use at the appropriate time is also important.
Bennett, M. (2012). Traditional Knowledge Interview. From: http://youtu.be/kL8puPG8mrk
Bowers, C.A., Vasquez, M., & Roaf, M. (2000) Native People and the Challenge of Computers: Reservation Schools, Individualism, and Consumerism. American Indian Quarterly, 24(2),182-199.
Marker, M. (2011). Teaching History from an Indigenous Perspective: Four Winding Paths up the Mountain. In P. Clark, New Possibilities for the Past, Shaping History Education in Canada (p.). University of British Columbia Press
Prins, H. (2002). Visual Media and the Primitivist Perplex: Colonial Fantasies, Indigenous Imagination, and Advocacy in North America. In F. Ginsburg, Media Worlds: Anthropology on a New Terrain (p.p. 62 & 70). University of California Press Books
Smith, L. (1999). Introduction to Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. London: Zed Books Ltd, (p.p.1-18)