Indigenous Learning for Instructors

This curat­ed col­lec­tion of resources may assist instruc­tors incor­po­rat­ing Indige­nous per­spec­tives, ways of know­ing or knowl­edge into cours­es.

NIC Indige­nous Ter­ri­to­ry Videos

Indige­nous Open Resources and Guides

Videos

VIDEO: (18 min­utes) The Dan­ger of a Sin­gle Sto­ry (Chi­ma­man­da Ngozi Adichie) — TED Talk

• Our lives, our cul­tures, are com­posed of many over­lap­ping sto­ries. Nov­el­ist Chi­ma­man­da Adichie tells the sto­ry of how she found her authen­tic cul­tur­al voice — and warns that if few hear only a sin­gle sto­ry about anoth­er per­son or coun­try, we risk a crit­i­cal mis­un­der­stand­ing.
• Chi­ma­man­da isn’t North Amer­i­can Indige­nous but she tells a won­der­ful 18-minute sto­ry of grow­ing up in Africa and how she dealt with stu­dents’ per­cep­tions and mis­un­der­stand­ings about her when she came to school in the US. It is about Indige­nous learn­ers and mak­ing them feel wel­comed and part of a com­mu­ni­ty that is beyond our bor­ders here.

 VIDEO (16 min­utes) Indi­g­e­niz­ing Post-Sec­ondary Edu­ca­tion

• Video of post-sec­ondary stu­dents at Con­esto­ga Col­lege (Ontario) shar­ing their sto­ries about how to under­stand and incor­po­rate Indige­nous con­tent into class­room learn­ing.

VIDEO: (20 min­utes) What I Learned in Class Today: Abo­rig­i­nal Issues in the Class­room

• What I Learned in Class Today: Abo­rig­i­nal Issues in the Class­room is a research project that explores dif­fi­cult dis­cus­sions of Abo­rig­i­nal issues that take place in class­rooms at the Uni­ver­si­ty of British Colum­bia. Stu­dents fre­quent­ly report trou­bling and some­times trau­mat­ic dis­cus­sions of cul­tur­al issues in class. The video records of their expe­ri­ences pro­vides a way to think about devel­op­ing more func­tion­al approach­es and envi­ron­ments for dis­cus­sion about issues for Indige­nous stu­dents and for all class­rooms.

Radio Episode

AUDIO: (46 min­utes) Decol­o­niz­ing the Class­room: Is there space for Indige­nous knowl­edge in acad­e­mia? CBC Radio (Feb 2018)

“Edu­ca­tion is what got us into this mess … but edu­ca­tion is the key to rec­on­cil­i­a­tion,” said Sen­a­tor Mur­ray Sin­clair, who led the Truth and Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion Com­mis­sion. This week on Unre­served, three years after the release of the TRC’s final report, is there space for Indige­nous knowl­edge in acad­e­mia?

• Stu­dent Danielle Bourque on why she does­n’t like being sin­gled out for being First Nation in her grad­u­ate cours­es.
• Pro­fes­sor Sheila Cote-Meeks wrote the book, Col­o­nized Class­rooms: Racism, Trau­ma and Resis­tance in Post-sec­ondary Edu­ca­tion, which looks at the expe­ri­ences of Indige­nous stu­dents and aca­d­e­mics in post-sec­ondary edu­ca­tion.
• Pro­fes­sor Eve Tuck weighs in on the chal­lenges that face the acad­e­my as it strives to Indi­g­e­nize.
• Hay­den King on the chal­lenge fac­ing Indige­nous aca­d­e­mics and fac­ul­ty mem­bers as uni­ver­si­ties and col­leges across the coun­try look to hire more Indige­nous fac­ul­ty.
• Mark Solomon makes the case for uni­ver­si­ty fac­ul­ties becom­ing more involved with sur­round­ing Indige­nous com­mu­ni­ties.
• And Dr. Kyle Powys Whyte and Dr. Sarah Hunt dis­cuss what it’s like for Indige­nous aca­d­e­mics to go through the peer review process.

Pub­lished Arti­cles

• The Five R’s for Indi­g­e­niz­ing Online Learn­ing: A Case Study of the First Nations Schools’ Prin­ci­pals Course | Arti­cle from Research­Gate
• Gaudry, A. & Lorenz, D. (2018). Indi­g­e­niza­tion as inclu­sion: rec­on­cil­i­a­tion, and decol­o­niza­tion: nav­i­gat­ing the dif­fer­ent visions for indi­g­e­niz­ing the Cana­di­an Acad­e­my. In Alter­Na­tive Vol. 14(3) 218–227 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1177180118785382
  • this arti­cle high­lights what is going on across Cana­da in terms of post-sec­ondary insti­tu­tions with Indige­nous learn­ings
• Hogue, M. M. (2012). Inter­con­nect­ing Abo­rig­i­nal and West­ern Par­a­digms in Post-sec­ondary Sci­ence Edu­ca­tion: An Action Research Approach. Jour­nal of Cana­di­an Asso­ci­a­tion for Cur­ricu­lum Stud­ies, 10 (1), pp. 77 – 108.
  • this research arti­cle describ­ing a study done at Uni­ver­si­ty of Leth­bridge that looked at how both Abo­rig­i­nal and West­ern ways of learn­ing can be woven togeth­er in a sci­ence course. PDF
• Rodrigues, A. A. & Raby, P. (2019). Lessons Learned from Indi­g­e­niz­ing a Media Pro­gram at an Ontario Com­mu­ni­ty Col­lege. Col­lege Quar­ter­ly Vol. 22 (1)
  • this is a short sto­ry of how two col­lege instruc­tors cre­at­ed their cours­es with more Indige­nous per­spec­tives and ways of know­ing. Link

Report

Ind­spire (Sept 2018). Post-Sec­ondary Expe­ri­ence of Indige­nous Stu­dents Fol­low­ing the Truth and Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion Com­mis­sion Link

• In July and August of 2018, Ind­spire sent a sur­vey to 2000 First Nation, Inu­it and Métis stu­dents enrolled in post-sec­ondary pro­grams across Cana­da. We want­ed their insight and per­spec­tive on how the Calls to Action (Calls) released by the Truth and Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion Com­mis­sion (TRC) in 2015 had affect­ed their edu­ca­tion­al expe­ri­ence. All of the sur­vey recip­i­ents had received schol­ar­ships and bur­saries from Ind­spire between 2015 and 2018. Ind­spire received respons­es from 290 of the stu­dents can­vassed, a sta­tis­ti­cal­ly valid response rate of 15%.
• Ind­spire https://indspire.ca/ is a nation­al Indige­nous reg­is­tered char­i­ty that invests in the edu­ca­tion of First Nations, Inu­it and Metis peo­ple.

Books and Chap­ters 

King. A‑L, Brass, D. & Lewis, P. Indi­g­e­niz­ing the Acad­e­my: Lis­ten to the Sto­ries in Wil­son, S. Breen, A.V., & DePre, L. (2019). Research and Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion: Unset­tling Ways of Know­ing through Indige­nous Rela­tion­ships

• This is a chap­ter of three sto­ries told by three dif­fer­ent peo­ple. It is the spir­it of the sto­ry that moves through the world of being and the world of sto­ry. Anna-Leah King, Dustin Brass and Patrick Lewis are the sto­ry tellers.

Towards Braid­ing is a book that came out of a project that, “test­ed dif­fer­ent fram­ings for the dis­tinct sen­si­bil­i­ties involved in the high­ly charged con­text of settler–Indigenous rela­tions,” through con­ver­sa­tions with Indige­nous and non-Indige­nous artists, schol­ars, and com­mu­ni­ties.

Cours­es

For those inter­est­ed in devel­op­ing their indige­nous cul­tur­al flu­en­cy, there is a free course avail­able through the Uni­ver­si­ty of Alber­ta — Course — Indige­nous Cana­da 

Indige­nous Cana­da is a 12-les­son Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC) from the Fac­ul­ty of Native Stud­ies that explores Indige­nous his­to­ries and con­tem­po­rary issues in Cana­da. From an Indige­nous per­spec­tive, this course explores key issues fac­ing Indige­nous peo­ples today from a his­tor­i­cal and crit­i­cal per­spec­tive high­light­ing nation­al and local Indige­nous-set­tler rela­tions. Top­ics for the 12 lessons include the fur trade and oth­er exchange rela­tion­ships, land claims and envi­ron­men­tal impacts, legal sys­tems and rights, polit­i­cal con­flicts and alliances, Indige­nous polit­i­cal activism, and con­tem­po­rary Indige­nous life, art and its expres­sions.

Ter­mi­nol­o­gy

Some­times the vocab­u­lary we use around Indi­g­e­niza­tion changes and it’s impor­tant that we stay cur­rent in the lan­guage we use. Here’s a use­ful link to under­stand­ing the dif­fer­ences in ter­mi­nol­o­gy and what is / is no longer con­sid­ered appro­pri­ate: https://www.queensu.ca/indigenous/ways-knowing/terminology-guide

 Approach­es to Teach­ing

For learn­ing about Abo­rig­i­nal approach­es to teach­ing, check out these resources:http://fourdirectionsteachings.com/resources.html. There are dif­fer­ent resources for dif­fer­ent lev­els and com­ing from a vari­ety of Indige­nous per­spec­tives. Although the Teacher Resource Kit is aimed at grades 1–12, it’s worth tak­ing a look in terms of ideas / approach­es that could be adapt­ed for high­er lev­els of learn­ing.