Week 7:Treaty Education Response

Reading Cynthia’s article gave me a new perspective of what treaty education encompasses. On page 29, It states that treaties are something “we” share, Cynthia uses the word “we” because treaties are our stories and since we are all treaty people we must learn from each other. Cynthia stated treaties of Canada “As long as the sun shines and the river flows” (Chambers, 30) This means to me that the sun is gonna shine no matter if there is clouds covering it or not it is always up there, the river is constantly flowing. This relates to treaties because we are constantly learning new things about everyones cultures, beliefs, and backgrounds and we never stop learning. Learning about these treaties encompasses many things like new relationships, our shared ways of life, and the historical aspects of the land we live on.

Dwayne states how when aboriginal people and non aboriginal people are sitting across from each other you see a type of “disconnect”. This relates to colonialism as Dwayne says is a “denial of relationship”. Everyone has been colonized at some point in their lives whether its skin colour, etc. Dwayne said that when teachers teach about aboriginal perspective they teach according to how they feel about that said relationship. Therefore, I think teachers who are not comfortable with teaching about content like this they should be given the opportunity to reach out to other cooperating teachers who are comfortable to take it up in their classroom.

I understand it would be hard to teach a classroom of no First Nations about First Nation culture. For example, In my first year at the university I took Indigenous 100 and it was taught by a white male. A aboriginal student raised their hand and said to the prof “why is a white male teaching me about my own culture” this really made me think about how weird it would be for a prof to teach First Nations about their own culture. I still believe it is so important because you get to develop your own beliefs and connect yourself to the land that existed before you. You get to know about different diverse traditions that exist outside your own. Maybe try to make it more fun and engaging for your students. For example, in my grade 5 class we built a teepee in our gymnasium, we learnt how to Metis square dance. Making learning about other cultures in ways children will be more engaged like art, dance, etc can help them find more joy and creativeness with the topic.