Getting Ready for CO[I]IL

CO[I]IL braids togeth­er Indige­nous and inter­cul­tur­al ways of being and know­ing with­in an inter­na­tion­al Indige­nous-focused project. In this sec­tion, we will briefly explore:

• what it means to be Indige­nous-focused
• inter­cul­tur­al flu­en­cy

Read on to find out more, or down­load the fol­low­ing PDF for more infor­ma­tion: Braid­ing dif­fer­ent ways of being and know­ing

What does it mean to be Indigenous-focused?

Being Indige­nous-focused means weav­ing togeth­er var­i­ous threads to cre­ate a tapes­try of under­stand­ing. This begins with ensur­ing we are ‘Walk­ing in a good way.’

As indi­cat­ed in the Inter­weav­ings sec­tion, this begins with rig­or­ous and ongo­ing self-reflec­tion. It means know­ing where we are, where we come from, the sto­ries that have shaped us, and how we walk ‘in’ and ‘on’ the world. It means being aware of our inher­ent con­nec­tions to oth­er beings and the unavoid­able and sig­nif­i­cant impact we have on all beings around us. In her book,  Wayi Wah! Indige­nous Ped­a­go­gies — An Act for Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion and Anti-Racist Edu­ca­tion, Chrona (2022) shares:

“[o]ne impor­tant aspect of Indige­nous Knowl­edge Sys­tems is that they respond to, and hon­our con­text. Who I am, where I write from, and the land I am now on informs what I share with you. Knowl­edge and under­stand­ing are entrenched in rela­tion­ship and con­nect­ed to peo­ple and place (p.1).”

Reflect­ing on who we are as holis­tic beings shaped by sto­ry is an ongo­ing and iter­a­tive process, that goes hand-in-hand with under­stand­ing what it means to be Indige­nous-focused.

NIC’s Work­ing Togeth­er Indi­g­e­niza­tion Plan defines Indi­g­e­niza­tion as:

“nat­u­ral­iz­ing Indige­nous knowl­edge sys­tems to make them respect­ful­ly evi­dent in the places, spaces, and class­room envi­ron­ments of North Island Col­lege. This includes infus­ing Indige­nous ways of know­ing and being into course­work and pro­grams so that they are seam­less­ly rec­og­nized, acknowl­edged, and respect­ful­ly treat­ed as equal to all oth­er per­spec­tives reflect­ed in cam­pus cur­ricu­lum. Indi­g­e­niza­tion requires recog­ni­tion that Indige­nous world­views have been sig­nif­i­cant­ly affect­ed or over­looked and there­fore require restora­tive process­es.

Indi­g­e­niza­tion goes beyond includ­ing Indige­nous con­tent and requires uti­liz­ing a dif­fer­ent approach to learn­ing entire­ly, one that is embed­ded in rela­tion­ship to spe­cif­ic lands, cul­tures, and com­mu­ni­ty (p. 13).”

As instruc­tors, it is not our role and respon­si­bil­i­ty to become the experts and dis­sem­i­nate knowl­edge of cul­ture, intan­gi­ble cul­tur­al her­itage, world­view, or cus­toms of oth­ers.

It is our role and respon­si­bil­i­ty to draw on the knowl­edge of our stu­dents, to facil­i­tate their learn­ing and dis­cov­ery of one anoth­er.

Reflecting on decolonization 

In sim­ple terms, decol­o­niza­tion includes (and is not lim­it­ed to), mov­ing away from Euro­cen­tric cur­ric­u­la con­tent, ped­a­go­gies, assump­tions, and bias­es and includ­ing more diverse ways of being and know­ing. The process of decol­o­niza­tion of edu­ca­tion is inti­mate­ly con­nect­ed to Indi­g­e­niza­tion. Click here for resources on Indi­g­e­niza­tion and decol­o­niza­tion.

Understanding our role in reconciliation

In the Cana­di­an con­text, rec­on­cil­i­a­tion usu­al­ly refers to rec­og­niz­ing the his­to­ry of harm done to Indige­nous Peo­ples and work­ing toward rebuild­ing rela­tion­ships with Indige­nous Peo­ples. Since each of us has a unique sto­ry, rec­on­cil­i­a­tion will mean some­thing dif­fer­ent for each of us. The Jus­tice Insti­tute of British Colum­bia sum­ma­rizes the Truth and Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion Commission’s prin­ci­ples of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion.

HonoUring the local: Prioritizing the land we walk on

In its broad­est sense, this means learn­ing about the Indige­nous com­mu­ni­ty in which we live and work and ensur­ing that all that we do keeps the local Indige­nous com­mu­ni­ty at its heart. It means:

• acknowl­edg­ing in mean­ing­ful ways the ter­ri­to­ries on which we live and work
• cre­at­ing Indige­nous com­mu­ni­ty-cen­tered col­lab­o­ra­tions

 What is Inter­cul­tur­al Flu­en­cy?

If you search the Inter­net for a def­i­n­i­tion of ‘inter­cul­tur­al flu­en­cy’ (also called ‘inter­cul­tur­al com­pe­tence’), you’ll find many dif­fer­ent def­i­n­i­tions. One def­i­n­i­tion com­mon­ly cit­ed comes from Dear­dorff (2008), who defines it as:

“effec­tive and appro­pri­ate behav­ior in inter­cul­tur­al sit­u­a­tions ”

Dear­dorf­f’s (2009) Inter­cul­tur­al Com­pe­tence Mod­el iden­ti­fies atti­tudes, knowl­edge, skills, and inter­nal and exter­nal out­comes as the five key ele­ments of inter­cul­tur­al com­pe­tence, high­light­ing that it is a process, not an ‘end prod­uct’ that can one day be ful­ly achieved.

Across the dif­fer­ent def­i­n­i­tions avail­able, most researchers agree that inter­cul­tur­al flu­en­cy includes the abil­i­ty to:

1. under­stand  and respect oth­er world­views and cul­tures
2. active­ly lis­ten and engage with diverse oth­ers
3. a will­ing­ness to tol­er­ate ambi­gu­i­ty
4. devel­op cul­tur­al self-aware­ness and a capac­i­ty for self-assess­ment
5. devel­op an open­ness toward inter­cul­tur­al learn­ing and empa­thy for peo­ple from oth­er cul­tures
6. adapt to vary­ing inter­cul­tur­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion styles

Learning intercultural fluency is important for all students

Help­ing stu­dents to devel­op their inter­cul­tur­al flu­en­cy is impor­tant, regard­less of whether they plan to trav­el, work abroad, or leave their com­mu­ni­ties. Every day we com­mu­ni­cate with oth­er humans, whether face-to-face or online, through email or con­ver­sa­tion. And while we have our ‘human-ness’ in com­mon, we are all unique in terms of our cul­tur­al iden­ti­ties, life expe­ri­ences, and how we engage with the world around us. Under­stand­ing oth­ers may not under­stand and view the world the way we do, is a crit­i­cal life skill for all stu­dents.

Intercultural Perspectives on Classroom Dynamics

While it’s impor­tant to avoid over­gen­er­al­iz­ing, explor­ing poten­tial dif­fer­ences in how stu­dents have been accul­tur­at­ed in edu­ca­tion­al con­texts with­in and out­side of Cana­da helps instruc­tors and also stu­dents to bet­ter under­stand the per­spec­tives and behav­iors of oth­ers. A use­ful start­ing point is Hof­st­ede’s Coun­try com­par­i­son tool, demon­strat­ed in the 3‑minute video below, which pro­vides oppor­tu­ni­ties for dis­cus­sion of broad­er cul­tur­al trends across dif­fer­ent coun­tries.

Hof­st­ede’s arti­cle ref­er­enced in the video, Cul­tur­al dif­fer­ences in teach­ing and learn­ing (Hof­st­ede, 1986), while sev­er­al years old, remains a use­ful start­ing point.

Intercultural fluency and teaching

Our per­son­al expe­ri­ences of learn­ing influ­ence how we, in turn, teach — whether we repro­duce how we were taught, or we do some­thing dif­fer­ent because we did­n’t enjoy our own expe­ri­ences of edu­ca­tion. Whichev­er choice we make, the con­text in which we live influ­ences these choic­es.

In this 19-minute TED Talk, Sir Ken Robin­son invites us to think about edu­ca­tion and the role of teach­ers.

As instruc­tors, we con­tin­u­al­ly reflect on ‘how’ we teach, and the meth­ods and activ­i­ties we use. We think about ‘what’ we teach our stu­dents. We ask our­selves, what they need to learn.

“How often do we think about the ‘why’ of what we do?”

Understanding the values and beliefs that underpin the pedagogical decisions we make

Tak­ing time to reflect on our cul­tur­al val­ues and beliefs as they relate to teach­ing, sup­ports us in cre­at­ing learn­ing spaces that val­ue the cul­tur­al diver­si­ty in our class­rooms, by:

1. help­ing us iden­ti­fy the specifics of how we see the role of an instruc­tor (sage on the stage, guide on the side, etc.)
2. high­light­ing our (often) sub­con­scious beliefs about the role of stu­dents
3. iden­ti­fy­ing our expec­ta­tions of stu­dent behav­ior in the class­room
4. high­light our teach­ing biases/preferences that may inad­ver­tent­ly dis­ad­van­tage some stu­dents

Braiding Different ways of Being and Knowing

Col­lab­o­ra­tive Online Indige­nous Inter­cul­tur­al Learn­ing projects braid togeth­er the kalei­do­scope of dif­fer­ent ways of being and know­ing across cul­tures. Such projects hon­or local Indige­nous ways of being in respect­ful and rec­i­p­ro­cal rela­tion­ships and inter­weave diverse cul­tur­al per­spec­tives from around the world, draw­ing on the sto­ries of the stu­dents and instruc­tors involved in the CO[I]IL project.