Parent Indigenous Knowledge in the Public-School Curriculum

How can indigenous parent knowledge be incorporated into the school curriculum? Can we infuse the curriculum with Indigenous knowledge from parents and others and fold it into a curriculum that is westernized by nature?

Join host Tom Claxton as he unpacks his conversation with Linda Young and forays into the world of the public school curriculum. Tom Claxton is an Education Instructor at Northwest College, and Linda Young is a Traditional Knowledge Keeper and Sessional Lecturer. The two discuss the challenges of grafting parents’ Indigenous ways of knowing onto westernized school curriculums. This exploration delves into how we, as parents and teachers, will walk alongside and create new understanding and a more inclusive curriculum. 

Resources:

Learn more about Linda Young: https://www.debbiepushor.ca/grad-students/hylq12p55v57z0zzxov3ptnc4pom66

Young, L. (2020). Acimowin. Telling and retelling my residential school story. What was lost? What replaced it? What is needed to heal, reconcile, and reclaim Indigenous education for the benefit of students, families, & communities?

https://vimeo.com/543353638 In-depth video

https://vimeo.com/543372833 Overview video

For both videos, the download password is acimowin.

Pushor, D. (2015). Mapping parent knowledge. In D. Pushor and the Parent Engagement Collaborative II, Living as mapmakers: Charting a course with children guided by parent knowledge (pp. 20-41).Sense Publishers.

Transcript

Good afternoon, I'd like to welcome our listeners. The title of our podcast is walking alongside incorporating indigenous parent knowledge into the school curriculum. My name is Tom Claxton and I was a student at the Masters of curriculum studies at the University of Saskatchewan here in central Canada. And I'd like to start off our podcast just by doing a land acknowledgement. We're proud to acknowledge that we live and work on treaty six territory in Northwest Saskatchewan and the homeland of any indigenous and maytee people. We pay our respects to the ancestors of this land and reaffirm our relationship with one another. I would just like to introduce our guest today, her name is Linda young, she is a knowledge keeper. She is known by many names. One of them is qoocam. Linda when she worked in the public school system, as a knowledge keeper and an elder. We'd like to welcome you to the podcast today and would like to introduce what we're going to be talking about. That's how we're going to incorporate First Nations knowledge into the public school system. Because right now we have a westernized viewpoint in our school systems. I think most of our listeners would agree, and it's sort of a one voice fits all perspective. And we want to include many voices, a new alikat Linda to introduce herself and her background. Welcome, Linda. Thank you, Tom. So my name is Linda Young. I'm originally from Onion Lake Cree Nation. And in Korea, we say we take a suicide, agony or tinea. I am presently living in Saskatoon. I did work as a knowledge keeper or as a co GM for Saskatoon public schools for about 10 years. And so I had an opportunity to, you know, to interact with students from pre K to grade 12. And that was wonderful experience for me. I'm a grandmother, I have 12 grandchildren. And I have one great grandchild, I have five kids, three sons and two daughters. I have been in a really good marriage with my husband grant for the last 42 years. Thank you very much, Linda, and welcome to our show. I guess it's only fair listeners that we should try to talk about the different terms we might be using. And one of the terms that we will be using today's in today's podcast you might have heard will be colonization. When we talk about colonization and talk about indigenous peoples in an area what we're meaning is this. Colonization hasn't been defined by some as the action or process of settling among and establishing control over indigenous people of an area. It's appropriating a place or domain for one's own use. The process of decolonization has has tried to deconstruct the cultural and institutional norms that the colonizers created, or settlers, I'm sure listeners will agree that many of the changes that colonizers made in Canada did not result in positive outcomes for Indigenous peoples. Many of our institutions, justice, social institutions, health institutions still carry the stain of colonization within them in the form of racism and discrimination towards indigenous people, we can see the disproportionate representation for example, of indigenous peoples in the justice system, we can see the socio economic despair between the standard of living between Indigenous and largely non Indigenous groups. And sadly, listeners, our schools are no better at projecting inequalities and promoting a Western way of thinking and education. One of the solutions is to have more equanimity in our school curriculum, and to incorporate more indigenous knowledge into the school curriculum. But how that is precisely what we'd like to discuss in this podcast. And I guess we can lead off with our first question. And the most pressing question is, Linda, what do you think indigenous parent knowledge is? How would you define that? And how, why is it important to have it in our school curriculum? Well, I think the the first thing is that there has never been an opportunity to entertain the idea of having indigenous knowledge in the curriculum or in the school. So that in itself is important and to you know, just to be able to, to consider it to to open the doors for that possibility. And I, to me, that's a first indigenous parent knowledge, how would we start to incorporate that what why do you think it's important that we honor it in schools? We just need to rectify or talk about the
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The idea that indigenous knowledge is needed to be identified as whether it's cre or whether it's Northwest Coast knowledge or, you know, because each area has a different way of understanding where they live, the language that they speak, the land that they live on, and the ceremonies and the culture that they practice based on that I'm playing scree nail school, a person. I don't even know if I want to be able to answer the question the way that you might want for me, but I think as a residential school survivor, I guess I can say that, you know, my first introduction to Western education was through residential school and for about 10 years. So I know what I lost. I know the process of being colonized. I know what it was like to be separated from my family to be separated from my language and my culture, the land. And I think right now, you know, part of the focus that we see in the schools today, some of the schools are now bringing culture back that is identified as powerhouse or singing more, you know, the language the of the area of so for example, I'm playing Scree. So we have a school here in Saskatoon. That is an immersion school for learning to speak Cree, and to learn about language. So I wanted to talk to just respond based on what Sylvia CCLI macadam writes, in her book nationhood interrupted, that she talks about how she says we have to call on our elders, the ones that know how things were conducted and how they observed, listened and properly learned information that can be passed on to the young people. She talks about how you know that each human being had a sacred beginning, if you were to think about the way that children were brought in, were welcomed indigenous media, like plains, Cree, Cree, children were invited are welcomed into this world at the time of their birth. To me, that's the beginning of the education. When we were taken from our homes, we lost those ceremonies, and that welcome and any of the transition ceremonies that helped us become more balanced and who we were as indigenous or may HELOC as Cree children. And she talks about how that prior she says prior to the arrival of the Europeans and the heel child would have been taken into a ceremony, a welcoming ceremony to establish who their relatives were. What that means is this whole idea of Waikato and kinship is really important for, for Cree people. When we talk about knowledge, one of the things that is really, to me, that is critical for schools to understand is kinship, How are we related to each other as human beings? But also how are we related to the world to the earth to all the, you know, the animal kingdom, the all of the different creations in this world? So understanding what that means the kinship, local twin, what does online relations mean? All of that is to me as is what's missing, because that was what was taken from me as a child. But I think the challenge really is how do we take this knowledge and bring it into the schools in a way that that follows all of the traditions required to share that information? So what is kinship from a First Nations plains Cree perspective? And why is that important? To have that in an indigenized? Curriculum? Do you think Linda,
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one of the reasons that kinship is really critical to for knowledge for indigenous Cree children, when you can relate to your teacher is your auntie or is your mom rather than a person of authority that helps develop the relationship into more of a family unit. So the teacher then sees you as a relative, rather than a student who is one of 25 students in the classroom. So it becomes another human being in the classroom that needs to be taught a particular stream of knowledge. So I think the importance of kinship is critical in terms of how a classroom can be, you know, like the energy in the classroom can change when you practice kinship. So when I was at the school at Waikato in school, when I first started as a knowledge keeper, I actually didn't know what to call myself in it, because I was told you are going to go and support the Cree language and Greek culture program at the time, it was called Confederation Park School. And so I was basically, you know, dropped into the school didn't quite know what my role was. And so I was kind of, you know, fumbling around in a sense as to how I could support the students and the teachers. It didn't take long before the students started calling me go home. And it was at that point that I realized how important it was for us to have that consciousness of being related to each other. As soon as they started calling me Coco, my relationship with them changed and I began to have them in, visit me
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He as if he would visit a grandmother or a COCOM. And it just, you know, like it, I became the goals grandmother and my relationship changed with the staff with the principal and with the students. And it was just a wonderful learning experience. For me. When I was in residential school, we had my great aunt used to work as a domestic for the nuns, even though we were I was related to her, she was actually my grandmother. And she was my mom's mother's sister. So we were in kinship, she is my grandmother, in kinship terms, but I couldn't relate to her as my grandmother in the school, because we weren't allowed to speak with her. So I would see her in the hallways, and I would quietly wave to her and she'd wave back or smile, just that alone helped me to continue with my day to feel like that I would be okay that day. And so when I went to the school, and students began to refer to me as go home, that's the memory I had, of how I could be of support to the students, I was called into the classrooms to talk about indigenous, you know, like to talk about our history, First Nations history to talk about residential schools and the treaties. And, you know, so there's a portion of the curriculum that needs to be fulfilled in terms of having indigenous content in the curriculum, and the teachers are doing are doing that. And so it turned out that my role was more of a guest, you know, speaker in the classroom, which is really different from having a relationship with a student's physical, because you can incorporate all of those topics in one visit with the student. And one of the really wonderful memories I have, I would have five great five boys who would come to my office once a week, because they wanted to have tea with me. And so they would say, Go, come, are we having tea today. So when I would have an opportunity, and some time, they would all come in and we'd squeeze into my office, that was their time with me, we would have that during lunch sometimes would have the tea during recess, but that was really an important connection. And in that time, I would share knowledge, I would share stories I would share, you know, sometimes maybe things were going on in the school, and I would share with them how we talk about a balanced life. You know, based on what we were taught by our grandmother's one of the things that Sylvia says that the women's teachings are the educational system of the Navajo Nation. I don't think it's any different than any nation because most indigenous nations in Canada anyway, are matriarchal. It's the women who are sharing the teachings. It's the women who are educating the children. And it's the women who welcome the baby, when they first enter in this world, they become the first teacher and remain the first teacher throughout her life with all of the children, the grandchildren, great grandchildren, and their own children. And so in that group, when they welcome the baby, they welcome the baby by saying welcome, I am your mom, or I am your auntie, I am your Coco. And so the little baby is introduced to kinship. In that welcoming ceremony, we have forgotten about that, when you grow up in an institution, it's really easy to be disconnected to to that way of relating to each other to supporting each other. Although I remember hearing some stories from residential school survivors who said that they didn't lose that. But in some times, I remember feeling like I wasn't related to the people that I thought would recognize me as a relative based on Wako twins. So kinship is an extremely important foundation, because we have that in our memory. And this is what the students taught me, because they said you are go home. And they established within me an understanding of how important it is to be able to relate to each other and treat each other as family. And once that is established, there is better communication, there is caring and sharing, you know, whether it's words or food or tea or making art or either, but it's a whole classroom in itself. Elders and knowledge keepers are not called teachers, but we are the teachers, under you've suggested in some of your writing that indigenous parents have lost touch with the traditional teachings of their culture because of residential schooling and you assert that teachings continue to exist within the DNA within the fiber of who they are, is that what a blood memory is? For me, blood memory is tapping. For example, we'll just go back to the school when I was in school for me, the students, you're tapping into their memory of how I should relate to them and how they should relate to me who that memory was, I am a grandmother and they are my grandchildren. And that to me is part of that remembering those relationships that we had a long time ago. So I think that it is I actually I believe that it is
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that is within us. Thank you. And I just wanted to remind our listeners when Linda says Coco, Coco is the Cree plains Cree word for grandmother. So we might not have mentioned that earlier. But yeah, and it seems to be an affectionate kinship term, compared to that of a distant term of a teacher or principal or superintendent COCOMO be considerably closer in scope. I think everyone would our listeners would agree with that. Just a fascinating Linda, I see that Dr. Pusher has coined the term walking alongside it. Could you define for listeners what walking alongside is? And what does it mean for indigenous parents and family members to walk alongside? Like him? Cree, when you say walk alongside you're saying we tell we tell means to go with somebody. And so I've heard it, sometimes it's a command. Like you'll say, though, etail means go and walk with them. So that's a command or a talent, you tell somebody what to do, when somebody says, and don't wait till that means go and help them out, go and walk with them. And that, to me is what walking alongside is walking alongside doesn't mean that you're telling that person how to live their life, you're not telling them what they need to do to solve problems, what they need to learn what they need to know, you're just you're listening to them, you're walking with them, listening to their stories, getting to know them, befriending them. For me, it's all about listening. It's about caring for that individual, but not overwhelming them with solutions and ideas of how they should live their life when they start sharing stories with you. So that to me is walking alongside is just knowing how to support silently. And without thinking that you have the solutions to the issues. I love that idea to support silently in our westernized culture of verbosity that the idea of, you know, supporting one silently and having that infused into a curriculum that's just not Eurocentric, and that is westernized only how, what that would look like. And that leads me into my next question, and How might our indigenous parent knowledges be used alongside what is our typically Eurocentric teacher knowledge? So you've touched on in a few different areas of how we can incorporate some customs and some practice into our Eurocentric curriculum? And what other ways do you think that our parent knowledge can be used alongside typical teacher knowledge that is distributed in our schools today? I was actually at a symposium and education symposium recently, I was there as a guest knowledge keeper, one of the things that my role was to, you know, to be available to the participants. I had a group of teachers and the principal, come and sit with me from a First Nation, and everything that they talked about is what will be the question you're asking, they're not asking themselves, Well, should we invite them? Should we invite the parents over? Should we do this with the parents? Should we, you know, they throw the doors open, they say, we're doing this tonight, and people show up. And I think it's such a different way. It just reminds me hospitality, my mum always would tell us and will teach us while she never really, she wouldn't really tell us, she always showed us people would come and visit us. And within about 20 minutes of people showing up at the door, and my mum would have the table set, and she would have started cooking to feed the people who came to our house. And that to me is hospitality. You don't ask people to knock on the door, and you decide whether you're going to welcome them in or not. It's to practice hospitality is really important in terms of welcoming and inviting indigenous parents to feel comfortable to go into an institution that is a school, I think people are practicing right now, which is, you know, people get invited, if they have expertise and beading or expertise and in drumming, or expertise, and maybe millwork, or turning height, those are the things that are that are being brought into the schools right now as in terms of bringing in knowledge, land based knowledge into the schools, which I which is a good thing. But I think it's a whole different thing when we started talking about curriculum, inserting indigenous knowledge into the curriculum seamlessly, because there's a sense of ownership that happens with teachers, for one. And the other thing is fulfilling outcomes at certain times of the year. There's really in this and all these topics they are to teach and honestly to take time to say I wouldn't bring or invite this parent to come in share their knowledge along with me, as I teach this portion of the curriculum. I think it's you know, I often think there's an intention there but to actually do it is different story. This is why on one level, having knowledge keepers in schools kind of takes us away from how indigenous parents can actually participate in the school because then there's an established way of relating to elders and knowledge keepers.
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So you can say, oh, we'd like you to come into our school and do storytelling. There's an assumption that we're all storytellers. But we're not. And sometimes storytelling is considered storytelling if you read from a book, and but it's not. And so I think getting to know that developing relationships and friendships with the parents is the first step to inviting them into the classroom, because then you build trust. And that trust means trusting in that knowledge, indigenous and or First Nation knowledge isn't all about knowing how to do to make things. It's many things, you know, some of these parents that have never been asked to participate as coal writers of curriculum, we've always been taught, this is what you're going to learn. We've never been told or asked, What can we teach your grandchildren or your children?
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What can we teach in conjunction with your knowledge, and still we persist? I think in the education system that wanting to impose our curriculum on First Nations people, it runs opposite to what First Nations culture plains Cree, in particular, would suggest that we want to have an inviting sense in the school. We don't have an invitational sense. Now we, our schools are, like I said, protect roads that are closed off. And you're saying, I believe what you're saying, Linda, is that in order to move forward, we need to open the doors, we need to have people come in and we need to share knowledge. And then what I'm hearing you saying is that you're at First Nations, people aren't all storytellers. We're not they're not all crafts persons. We are layers upon layers, just like the diversity you'd find in any other culture to suggest that we generically put a First Nations plains Cree people into one corner of the room and see this is imposing a sense of identity of this is what you are, and instead of saying, Please will be quiet, it will be silent. Please tell us share knowledge with us. And you tell us what you think that you might impart upon us in terms of a cultural identity. I think I understand what you're saying, yeah, we've got a long way to go. I have a question for you. Sure. How would you invite? Or what would you in the curriculum that you work with? What part of your curriculum? Or is it all of it? And when would you see it would be a time to invite parents or adults into your program as CO writers of that curriculum? That's an excellent question. We follow the five basic principles of adult education where I'm sort of an anomaly listeners, because I work in the area of adult basic education. And a lot of the students I work with our parents, one of the major aspects of the curriculum is to understand that when adult learners come into the classroom, they offer their own wealth of experience, right? They're not just a blank slate, they're going to offer their own experience. And this is especially true with First Nations culture, in particular plains Cree culture, which is a major demographic of my composes of what my students are, why have people come in and they talk about their own experience, they talk about their experiences, second generation people, survivors of Indian residential school, being the children of those survivors, I have elders come in and talk about what it means to be a First Nations person in this age, and how we can move forward from here, how we can prevent further stereotypes of indigenous people, and how we can further stratify the ideas of culture in terms of how that culture is going to be implemented in the curriculum. So you've given me a really good, really good piece to chew on. Yeah, I need to do more as myself as an individual educator in our system, I need to do more than simply allowing a voice to I need to allow space for that voice to to be heard. And then to formalize that voice in terms of the curriculum development, which is was just the area that both Linda and I want to work in the area of curriculum development, and it's the purpose of our podcast today. So yeah, no one. Thank you for putting that back on to me. How would I incorporate First Nations knowledge and like I said, I would have to pair it with Linda is also saying I'd have to have an an invitation to the students, that their voices are important that their voices will be heard that their knowledge is important, and that we can codify that knowledge in the curriculum in a formalized way. You know, talking about how important language is Linda and as many consider it to be a living thing in and of itself, just as a rock has life to be infused in a curriculum. How important is it that language be put in the curriculum that has an indigenous focus? You've you've you've taught Cree language in the public school system. How important is it to celebrate indigenous languages in our school curriculums? Oh, I'm still learning Cree.
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So I actually am a Cree student myself. When I was growing up, I was raised. I lived with my great grandparents so I only spoke Cree prior to going into residential school. And then I had to learn how to speak and write in English. But thankfully, I was able to maintain the language in my memory. Somewhere in there, it was just hanging in. I lived away from my first nation for 55
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yours in some wonderful guided way I managed to be able to speak my language, therefore being able to hang on to my culture, and then being introduced and reintroduced to ceremony, part of learning the languages. Once you know the language, it is connected to the land it connected to the people, it connected to everything, it just gives you autonomy, it's just so important for identity, it's important to be able to feel like you belong to a particular linguistic group. And so I think it is I'm learning that the way that I need to know my own language is to be able to understand and to write in Slavic, it's actually has been very difficult for me, because I have been well entrenched in the English language, the English alphabet, the you know, the English grammatical structure, everything is English, English ABCs in my head. So when I started writing and learning about syllabics, and this is like my own my second year learning, I still can't figure it out, I still get stuck. It's very difficult to undo that learning of the English language in all these, you know, since the time since the first time, I learned that when we talk about language in the schools, I really feel that we need to figure out how we can introduce syllabics not introduced but teach syllabics. Because once the students can grasp that we have reclaimed our language, it is really amazing how you can learn Cree a having the knowledge to be able to write in syllabics, it's quite fascinating. I have learned an incredible amount of my history, just because I took those classes, increase logics. And it's amazing, it's mesmerizing, it's you know, multi layered. And the more I learn about, you know who I am as a Cree person, the more I am amazed at how fantastic and wonderful and incredible being Cree is. And that's what I would like to see in students, that's what I would like to see in the schools is that the students can feel what I feel, and I'm a Cree speaker in and I still feel that awesome. Knowledge, the Insight is incredible. We have words, inquiry words for everything, and being in residential school cut us off from the spirit of our language. And when we were cut off from our language, we were cut off from our laws, the two laws that are Cree laws, you know, we were cut off from our kinship. So that's what we need to reclaim is we need to reclaim our language, and that that's why I think land based learning is so important because it connected to the land and also to the language at the same time. So I think it's I don't think I really believe my grandchildren do their best to speak Cree. And I love it. My grandchildren are not all Cree like they're they're many, they're multi layered backgrounds, but they identify as crazy. They have crazy names, they're not afraid to try out words. And to me, I'm very happy that my grandchildren are feel that strongly about knowing their own culture, decree culture. And that's excellent. It offers hope, and just whole podcast I've been it's an offering hope that there is a chance that we can further indigenized the curriculum just from a cursory level and really inculcate plains Cree values into our local curriculums and have indigenous values as a whole put in. It is very interesting. Thank you so much for your time, Linda. Today, I just wanted to recap with our listeners, what we talked about some talked about indigenous parent knowledge and why it's important to be honored in schools and what an indigenous curriculum would look like from a kinship perspective. And we talked about the idea of walking alongside and the detrimental effects of colonialism and the detrimental effects, of course of Indian residential school here in Canada. Linda's has offered us some hope. And I think that's very interesting. It seems we need to latch on to that. So we've got a long way to go in our school curriculums. But for our part here, Linda young, and Tom Claxton, and this is our podcast, walking alongside incorporating indigenous parents knowledge in the school curriculum. And you can find it on distro or anywhere that you can get your podcasts you'll be able to find a centralized and able to download us at your leisure and you'll be able to take us with you where you go. So please, please listen further. We've got a whole series and coming your way, and we hope you enjoy it as much as we enjoy creating it. Thank you so much. Thank you, Linda. You're welcome. Thank you