Having spent the last four weeks investigating the Indigenous sides of Victoria that I knew very little about, I decided to spend this week reflecting and researching more intentionally on how to incorporate these learnings into the classroom.

To start, I watched a webinar put on by SD61 entitled Lekwungen Tung’exw: Learning from the Land. In it, I learned more about land acknowledgements, Land-based learning, and the importance of centering these perspectives in the classroom. Land-based learning is an Indigenous principle of education that holds that learning should happen on the Land. More than that though, it brings attention to the ways we can learn from the land (note that Land here refers to the entire natural world). The idea that we can learn from the land reflects the humility of traditional Indigenous value systems, and points to a way forward in which we understand ourselves as part of a complex whole, rather than as separate. I hope to incorporate this idea of humility and Land-based learning in my classroom by getting my students out of the classroom, observing the world around them, and reflecting on their relationships to what is around them. I think modeling humility and curiosity is a critical first step, so it is something I know I must commit to in my life; you can’t just step into the classroom and think you can fake it.

I also think an important aspect of decolonization and reconciliation in education is reframing the widely told victim narrative around Indigenous issues. There’s a tension here of course; we should acknowledge the past and current injustices that are occurring, yet we must also center and incorporate Indigenous resilience and strength. Taking this approach helps to acknowledge the agency and actions that Indigenous nations like the Lekwungen and WSANEC have been taking for centuries against colonial encroachment. For this, I will draw on some of the examples in my last post of Indigenous resurgence, as well as look for historical examples of resistance. For instance, I know that many Indigenous families resisted sending their children to residential schools, and continued to practice Potlaches even after they were banned.

Another part of this is centering Indigenous culture, values, and communities in the classroom. It was powerful for me to begin to understand the ways Indigenous values such as collectivity, humility, and relationship to the land, reframes world views and provide an alternative to the extractive western models that much of our world operates on. By introducing students to alternative ways of thinking, we can advance more sustainable and compassionate practices. In a previous University class on Indigenous Knowledge for instance, my teacher, Professor Wemwigwans would devote time at the beginning of the class for each of us to share how we were doing; this action helped affirm our value as whole people and not just learners, and developed a shared empathy and responsibility in that class. A challenging component of this for me as a settler however, is to not romanticize or stereotype Indigenous cultures; the differences with Western worldviews may be noticeable on the whole, but there is of course plenty of diversity, especially in today’s world. I wouldn’t want to alienate any Indigenous students who didn’t feel that they related to these ideas I was sharing.

A final tension I have been grappling with is the idea of grouping all Indigenous cultures together under a single umbrella to highlight the similarities vs. focusing specifically on individual nations to acknowledge the diversities and differences. In my previous posts, I was specific about the Lekwungen and WSANEC nations that I was researching, because I wanted to better understand the place-specific culture and history of Victoria and Saanich. At the same time, there may be times when it is appropriate to use the umbrella term “Indigenous” in the classroom. This is something I would like to research and reflect on more.

If anyone wants resources for integrating Indigenous principles of learning in the classroom, first check out the “First Peoples Principles of Learning” document from the FNESC. Then I’d recommend reading htrough this great resources called “Weaving Ways of Knowing,” that provides more details and examples for how this could actually look in the classroom. They even have some example videos for inspiration, like the one below.

And for a Victoria-specific example, check out this unit outline by a teacher for Victoria High School, Anne Tenning. Let me know if you have any recommendations that I should check out!