One of the most simple and effective applications for critical, place-based literacy is to ask who's land you make your home on and to acknowledge that. As an educator, it is important to me to first educate myself and to reflect. In addition to university classes I found the following resources to be helpful.
Native Land is a mapping website that challenges the way we see borders, territories, and ownership. By typing in your address you can see the Indigenous lands which you reside on. For my school this is Treaty Seven land, including the Blackfoot Confederacy, Iyaxe Nakoda, Tsutina Nation, and Metis Region 3. More specifically the location of the school is on Niitsìpiis- stahkoii (Blackfoot Confederacy) land.
Native Land seeks to "provide educational resources to correct the way that people speak about colonialism and indigeneity, and to encourage territory awareness in everyday speech and action." (Native-Land.ca) |
In order to implement this information into a grade one and two class, I found a poem created by Indigenous Services at the Calgary Public Library with actions and child-friendly language to integrate into our classroom morning routine. Everyday we would practice and recite this poem and talk about a different element each day. Some discussions included physical features of the land such s the confluence of the Bow and Elbow river as part of physical geography. We also researched the similarities and differences between different the Indigenous groups we acknowledged.
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Having the Treaty Seven Land Acknowledgement as a starting point for the social studies community unit as well as the starting point for each lesson, set a foundation for critical literacy. Students began to engage in critical literacy by asking questions and wondering about "where the Blackfoot people went?" One student responded "Wait! I'm Blackfoot!" Some students in the class began to share about their own Blackfoot heritage and describe traditions, pow wows, and parts of the Blackfoot language. Our class was corrected on the pronunciation of Oki (hello or welcome) so we thought about why it is important to say names and Blackfoot words correctly. In response, on Arabic speaking student explained that we had been pronouncing her name wrong, opening up discussion about speaking up and correcting people as well as apologizing to this student and committing to doing better.
The land acknowledgement was used in our class as a lens to look at our community through, to ask questions, and to discuss environmental issues as well as residential schools. |
A key focus in our class was learning from Blackfoot stories and Indigenous resources about balance in giving and taking from the earth. Students began noticing the seasonal changes from summer to fall as we sat in the school naturalization area, so we talked about the circular rotation of seasons. This theme of circles appeared again as we played a game about the length of time different materials take to decompose. We read about taking care of the earth from an Indigenous perspective and talked about the challenges of recycling and the cost of buying materials that last versus disposables. Students offered a poem and a promise to the land in return for taking sticks and leaves for an art project inspired by Indigenous dolls.
Indigenous inquiry inspired a focus on oral storytelling and allowing students to express their learning orally, as well as critical literacy in asking questions and place-based learning by focussing on the land we reside on and learning from the land itself.
Indigenous inquiry inspired a focus on oral storytelling and allowing students to express their learning orally, as well as critical literacy in asking questions and place-based learning by focussing on the land we reside on and learning from the land itself.