Introduction

Background

Over the past few decades, public awareness has evolved regarding the need to change what and how Canadians learn in school with and about Indigenous people. Canada began to take responsibility for the criminal acts they performed on Indigenous communities. They created residential schools which abused, exploited, colonized, and erased Indigenous identity. In 1996, the Royal Commission of Aboriginal Peoples released a 4,000-page report, which included 440 recommendations for the Canadian government to begin to acknowledge and reconcile for the years of oppression they committed. The report aimed to change the relationship between Indigenous peoples, non-Indigenous people, and the government of Canada (Nagy 2013,p.58), but most of the recommendations were ignored. The one positive was that the report changed the conversation about the reality of the Indigenous people of Canada. The truth came into the conversation. In 2007, the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement (IRSSA) was enacted to monetarily compensate survivors of residential schools. The IRSSA goal is to mitigate harms caused by the legacy of Indian Residential Schools through monetary compensation, however, Indigenous communities do not solely want just monetary compensation, but rather sovereignty. In 2008, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) was created to document the experience of students in residential schools (Nagy, p.58). In addition to the documentation, the TRC held events for Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people to talk about their experiences. 

Most recently, in July 2021, more than 1,300 Indigenous children’s remains were discovered on the grounds of former residential schools in Kamloops, Cranbrook, and Marieval (Norris 2021, p.2). While Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau and the parliament dedicated large sums of money to further the discovery of all the unmarked graves across Canada, his “thoughts and prayers” weren’t nearly enough for the families that suffered great loss and continue to struggle with intergenerational trauma (Macdonald 2021). According to the findings of the TRC, the Canadian government does see the need for education to play a role in the quest for justice and sovereignty of Indigenous peoples. However, this government ideal is only an aspiration; they have not achieved this or created any nationwide policy to realize any justice; reparations and reconciliation are critical to achieving healing and developing a sovereign future. 

Foreground

The hope is that this website will be accessible to people inside and outside of academia to use as a resource for their own learning and teaching. 

Teaching communities and groups of educators is key to developing sovereignty and justice. How can knowledge be democratized in teaching communities to (re)build a society where humanity is centered? What does tangible change in curriculum look like? Can knowledge bring justice? While there is no universal approach to curriculum that uplifts and upholds Indigenous people, there are small communities of educators and organizations that we can look to, like the Canada branch of Facing History and Ourselves (FH), for its work with their Indigenous educational partners. FH is a global non-profit whose mission is to introduce teachers to alternative curricula “to stand up to bigotry and hate.” Facing History Canada does this through a justice framework anchored by a community-based learning approach. A justice framework, in this case, refers to Indigenous educational partners having full autonomy throughout curriculum development related to colonialism and Indigeneity. In contrast, many educational institutions use a framework designed to promote equity, which leaves out the element of sovereignty. Canada’s collaboration with Indigenous partners, institutions, and teachers illustrates how the mindsets, actions, and dialogue enable non-Indigenous educators in Canada to work with Indigenous educators in a respectful, and perhaps decolonial manner. To avoid the approach many researchers share – to focus on a subject “about us, without us” – I reached out to Facing History Canada to ask them if any of their Indigenous partners would like to be involved with this project as a thought partner. I knew that in order to have a genuine partnership, it was imperative that rapport and trust were built over time. Andrew McConnell, coordinator of First Nations, Métis, and Inuit Education at York Region School Board District, and I began working together to develop the research questions. We realized that, ultimately, this project has the potential to inform institutions and teachers on how to support Indigenous educators and ensure that they are the main authors of curricula concerning Indigeneity, to be sovereignty-seeking rather than solely equity-seeking. 

Utilizing community-based research and participatory research methods over the course of several months, I conducted semi-structured interviews with five educators who shared their vision of what educational partnership looks like and how it impacts not only their classroom but generations of students who will uplift and uphold true narratives of history. The community partners included Elder Shirley John, Anishinaabe wisdom keeper; Grandmother Kim Wheatley, Anishinaabe Cultural Consultant and wisdom keeper; Andrew McConnell;  Leora Schaefer, executive director of Facing History and Ourselves Canada; and Jasmine Wong, senior programs associate at Facing History and Ourselves Canada.

After the interviews concluded, I found four main themes that the partners spoke to:  1) Honoring Legacies and Indigenous Futurities, 2) Introspection: Change in Mindset and Practice, 3) (In)Justice, and 4) Building Relationships and Trust. These core themes turned into a series of four short videos which combine all their voices into digestible sound bites for both the academic and non-academic listener. At the core of the project is storytelling, which explores the relationship between the institution and community members. Drawing Upon the Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative by Thomas King says, “the truth about stories is that is all we are” (2003, page 2).  The book was originally published in an audio format so that the audience could feel a connection to the words spoken by King in oral histories. Once we hear stories, they become our own, “It’s yours. Do with it what you will. Cry over it. Get angry. Forget it. But don’t say in the years to come that you would have lived your life differently if only you had heard this story. You’ve heard it now” (page 119).  Storytelling creates connections that transcend time, language, and power. Listen to these stories and find connections to yourself, your students, and the world around you. 

Political Choices

I decided to display my thesis work on a website because digital storytelling spaces can operate as political arenas to inspire community action and even policy change. When thinking about form, I question how we can challenge conventional and western ways of disseminating knowledge. Typically, within the realm of studies on education pedagogy, the information is presented in a textual format that includes jargon that is not accessible to people outside of higher education. A website invites accessibility by creating other epistemological approaches to learning.  This mode of presenting my thesis and findings provides many ways of learning, which “work independently and collectively to impart messages to the audience.” (Gray et. al 2015,  p. 635). As stated by Gray and colleagues in Altered Lives: assessing the effectiveness of digital storytelling as a form of communication design, “Storytelling is to act as a form of political activism as it has the capacity to mediate the perceptions of others challenging dominant value systems that seek to exclude.”  (p. 635-6). 

The methodology that I chose – community-based research and participatory action methodology – are inherently political because they (in theory) dispel hierarchies established between the interviewer and interviewee. These methods emphasize political choice in confronting structural concerns through democratic practices of inviting partners to engage through every step of the research practice. The initial thesis project questions were created in conversation with others. I am very strategic with language. I do not want the community partners that were interviewed to be limited to interviewees, but rather collaborators or partners. My language is intentional. 

Liberatory education practices are intentional, if subtly, subversive. They disrupt the current system that institutions have become accustomed to. It is how we have seen change come about. Even the genesis of FH was to combat Holocaust deniers by teaching with the words of survivors. FH goal is to teach teachers to inspire generations of learners. Educator Jesus Jaime-Diaz explains that “Critical pedagogues offer that teaching is a political act and not an objective one where content is solely delivered...hierarchies must be dismantled, as teachers collaborate with their students to create a community of learners built upon a mutual respect, whereby culture, language, and customs are valued as resources in the production of knowledge through holistic dialogue” (2020, pg. 52). The curriculum that FH creates allows for teachers to create subjective environments where children can reflect on the material and their own positionality. It creates space for imagination and dialogue. 

My thesis project is a “political act” that sets out to understand new ways in which people can work together to uplift and affirm the voices of those who have been neglected in our history and, to be sure that their stories are told. It is an approach inspired by hope. It imagines a future where justice is central and creates substantive ways as outlined by my partners of how the quest for justice is not linear and can be realized through education. The supplemental curriculum education partners are ultimately an offering and/or aid for teachers when fostering a space for social transformation. 

Personal Groundings

Stories are at the heart of understanding how we all make sense of the world. It is important to reflect on my own positionality and why this research was important to me to see how I am reflected within the world -- in understanding my own identity. “Research represents a shared space, shaped by both researcher and participants. As such, the identities of both researchers and participants have the potential to impact the research process. Identities come into play via our perceptions, not only of others but of the ways in which we expect others will perceive us” (Bourke 2014). Rather than writing about myself from a scholarly point of view, I decided to write a letter to my sister through the process of journaling.  My thesis advisor and mentor, Professor Talmor, recommended that I do this because it’s a place I can be most candid with myself.  Please note that this was a stream of consciousness and the letter is exactly as I wrote it in November 2021. As I expressed in my letter, I am still learning and unlearning, and relearning and I will be for the rest of my life.  A Letter to Boozie.