October 7/9 Blog Post
Cynthia Chambers’ article: “We are all Treaty People”
Dwayne Donald’s lecture: “On What Terms Can we Speak?”
Michael Cappello’s video featuring Claire Kreuger: ECS 210, 8.4, Q&A: “Teaching Treaties”
At the beginning of Clairs Kreugar’s video, she discusses how she adopted her nieces and this allows her to feel and see things different than a lot of her colleague. I find I can relate to this. As someone who began travelling at a very young age and seeing the poverty of third world countries, I have always had outside perspective than many of my peers. Also from working with new comers and refugees as a cultural liaison between families and schools, I have had to stand up for cultures and problems school of occurred on these peoples and also vice versa.
During the talk of the Q and A about learning treaty ed it discusses having that ‘ah hah’ lightbulb moment. I am lucky that my father has always been an extremely strong advocate for teaching indigenous studies and he taught high school social studies my whole life and incorporated a lot of first nation content in his lesson. So our dinner table growing up was full of conversations like we have had in class in a kid and sometimes even more personal I would say as I was engaged with them and as I grew older I was challenging my own thoughts and my parent’s thoughts to developing my own theories. We would watch videos that my dad would be testing out for his classes such as 9th fire. So for me or my sister, I don’t think there ever has been or will be a coming out of the box moment of understanding these issues we have in society. Of course, we can all always become more educated to understand them better but and gain more information. I hope with the strengthening curriculum with the treaty ed outcomes that this is going to become more normal for more students. They grow up with this information their whole lives and build on it. Growing up in Moose Jaw was quite homogenous. It is changing now but there was little to no teaching of treaties. There was also no way of learning about any other culture than European cultures because of how homogenous your friends, neighbours, and community were.
I enjoy the part during the conversation when Mike and Claire discuss that it’s not just content to teach but the moral that is processed. And the empathy piece. This is where the deeper level of learning takes place that makes an actual difference to a student and how they live the rest of their lives.
One thing I never thought about is making Treaty Ed its own subject. Much of how we have been taught is to incorporate it into our lessons in other subjects but it is its own in the curriculum. Yes, cross-curricula it but also I think it would be great to make some time to solely teach treaty ed.
Another thing I found interesting is how Mike talks about cooperating teachers having interns teach the treaty ed and I think this happens all too often. Personally, I can think of many examples of this happening. I appreciate that this was acknowledged,
Fort Qu’Appelle from Moose Jaw, by the way, is a common trip for schools in Moose Jaw, both highschool and elementary to go skiing so to go for a treaty event should be well prioritized by schools especially since there are no reserves near to Moose Jaw and when I lived there there were not any Pow Wows so to have that cultural experience for Moose Jaw kids is very important. I am glad to see an effort being placed that having a first-hand interaction with treaty ed as extremely valuable. This unfortunately, was not the case when I lived in Moose Jaw. In grade 12 we had an elder come speak to our social studies class and this is only First Nations from first-hand experience or a First Nations person that I had in school from K-12.
In the video with Dwayne Donald in ‘What Terms Can We Speak’, I appreciate how he discusses how people can be quite hard on teachers and what they discuss and how. This is something that can really set teachers back or frighten them, especially talking about difficult issues such as residential schools.
I could not agree more when Dwayne says the way the teacher feels about the treaty relationship will directly influence the way they teach it. Sometimes I have this selfish feeling with treaty ed like OK, we get it- every lesson plan you must add your treaty ed component, every ed class with having a mention of treaty ed. BUT IT IS IMPORTANT! For too long there was no treaty ed or discussion of it, and Canada does have a horrendous past. For this reason, it does need to be engrained in us future student how important treaty education is, the context of it and the true understanding of it. This will influence the way we teach it.
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