The only aboriginal in the curriculum (so far)

Today my two blocks of grade 8's attended a presentation from the school drug abuse liaison where they watched a video following the tragedies faced by several different drug users.  The central figure in the film was an aboriginal youth just a few years older than myself.  Although his heritage wasn't directly referenced I realized that this was probably the first aboriginal person students have seen during my class.  This experience woke me up to the necessity to present more than a single story (especially a negative one) in my classroom.  I will be on the lookout for opportunities to include other aboriginal people in my curriculum.  3 weeks in and still no AbEd being applied =(

Some numbers

$1.9 billion set aside for Common Experience Payment
$1.6 billion paid out to almost 79 thousand individuals
Average payment = $19,412

Is this even close to enough?  Could it ever be?

"There was no one here"

Teachers have to be highly aware of the messages they send with what they say (and what they don't say).  During my school and community experiences I witnessed several social studies lessons, one of which was a discussion of global populations.  I was struck by what the teacher said when speaking about the population in eastern Canada several hundred years ago when European settlers were establishing colonies.  When pointing at Quebec he said "there was no one here before", referring to the time before New France was established.

Of course, he was not denying the existence of aboriginal peoples before the arrival of Europeans.  However his choice of words suggests his bias towards focusing on a European perspective of history.  He chose the arrival of settlers as the starting point at which to begin discussing population growth.  I recognize that it is easy to criticize him in this case, but I'm not entirely sure what I would have said instead.

The Bering Land Bridge

"teaching the Bering Strait theory dismisses as myth Aboriginal conceptions of creation and delegitimizes land claims based on the presence of Aboriginal people on this land since time immemorial." (Dion 65)

I encountered this quote while reading chapter 3 of Dion's Braiding Histories.  After reading it, I was so distracted and disrupted that I had to re-read the pages that followed at least 3 times.   I respect Dion's position that curriculum which is purely based in Euro-centric perspectives can delegitimize Aboriginal ways of knowing, however I think this is a poor example.  I've tried to re-frame her assertion here:

Teaching the Bering Strait theory of evolution dismisses as myth Aboriginal Judeo-Christian conceptions of creation and delegitimizes land claims based on the presence of Aboriginal Judeo-Christian people on this land since time immemorial

We as educators will sometimes encounter grey areas when religious/cultural beliefs contradict science.  I think other than acknowledging these beliefs we cannot let them influence what we teach as curriculum.  However this quote also addresses the issue of land ownership that is an area of uncertainty for me as well (to be addressed in a future post).


Dion, Susan D., Braiding Histories: Learning from Aboriginal Peoples' Experiences & Perspectives. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2009.

Image credits:
http://soccermachine.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/land-bridge1.jpg
http://www.artchive.com/artchive/m/michelangelo/hands.jpg

My File of (Un)Certainty

I will be "[collecting] and [writing] about a series of 'cultural artifacts' that reflect [my] relationship with Aboriginal peoples and [my] learning of and from 'indigenous knowledge'"(Dion, 2009) as inspired by Susan Dion and my Faculty Associates, Kelly Robinson and Ross Powell.

Dion, Susan D. (2009). Braiding Histories - Learning from Aboriginal Peoples' Experiences & Perspectives. Vancouver, BC: UBC Press.