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Article scientifique

The Akwesasne Cultural Restoration Program: A Mohawk Approach to Land-based Education.

This article tracks the creation of a cultural apprenticeship program in the Mohawk community of Akwesasne. The program aims to give youth in the community the necessary skills, knowledge and experiences in land, language and culture to help the Mohawks of Akwesasne retain and regenerate land based practices in the community. The program arose from Akwesasne’s participation in the Natural Resources Damages Assessment (NRDA) process. This is the legal process that resulted from the 1981 “Superfund” legislation in which corporations must provide redress to communities that have suffered from the egregious pollution of their local environments. Although constrained by the legal requirements of the process, the Mohawks of Akwesasne re-envisioned the process within a context of their own nationhood by focusing on these two questions: How has industrial pollution affected the Akwesasne Mohawks’ people’s way of life? And, what can be done to restore that way of life? This article explains how the research was carried out of the NRDA process and used to negotiate for the funds necessary to establish the cultural apprenticeship program.

Article scientifique

The Ancient Nuu-Chah-Nulth Strategy of Hahuulthi: Education for Indigenous Cultural Survivance.

In the process of exploring a collection of Nuu-chah-nulth narratives about the provider “Umeek” as learning sites, it became critical to understand the epistemological relationship between Nuu-chah-nulth ways of knowing, the territory, and the relationships between the two.The epistemology of Hisuk ish ts’awalk, or “oneness” (E.R. Atleo, 2004) provides clues to thelearning process in Nuu-chah-nulth culture. This paper begins to look at how territory isembodied by Nuu-chah-nulth and how Nuu-chah-nulth are/have been “embodied” by theterritory. Specifically, I look at some of these relationships within the territory of the confederated Ahousaht First Nations with a focus on sacred sites as touchstones for embodied knowledges.

Article scientifique

The Best of Both Worlds: A Critical Pedagogy of Place.

Taking the position that “critical pedagogy” and “place-based education” are mutually supportive educational traditions, this authorargues for a conscious synthesis that blends the two discourses intoa critical pedagogy of place. An analysis of critical pedagogy is pre-sented that emphasizes the spatial aspects of social experience. Thisexamination also asserts the general absence of ecological thinkingdemonstrated in critical social analysis concerned exclusively withhuman relationships. Next, a discussion of ecological place-based ed-ucation is offered. Finally, a critical pedagogy of place is defined. Thispedagogy seeks the twin objectives of decolonization and “reinhab-itation” through synthesizing critical and place-based approaches. Acritical pedagogy of place challenges all educators to reflect on therelationship between the kind of education they pursue and the kind of places we inhabit and leave behind for future generations.

Article scientifique

The Changing Face of Aboriginal Education in Rural and Northern Canada.

La tâche initiale de ma quête a été d'examiner ma propre experience d'apprentissage au sein du systeme scolaire officiel a Onyota'a:ka. Je me rends compte aujourd'hui a quel point ma voix etait alors brimée, etouffée. La politique gouvernementale d'imposer le programme d'enseignement officiel et de transformer les esprits a eu un effet devastateur sur les collectivites autochtones. L'héritage de nos ancêtres - soit les connaissances, valeurs, aptitudes et interets traditionnels- a été occulté pendant un certain temps. De nos jours, ces traditions et valeurs ont été revitalisées dans de nombreuses collectivités autochtones au Canada qui ont retrouvé leur voix et la force de créer une education qui leur permette de grandir et de se développer.

Article scientifique

The Double Force of Vulnerability. Ethnography and Environmental Justice.

This article reviews ethnographic literature of environmental justice (EJ). Both a social movement and scholarship, EJ is a crucial domain for examining the intersections of environment, well-being, and social power, and yet has largely been dominated by quantitative and legal analyses. A minority literature in comparison, ethnography attends to other valences of injustice and modes of inequality. Through this review, we argue that ethnographies of EJ forward our understanding of how environmental vulnerability is lived, as communities experience and confront toxic environments. Following a genealogy of EJ, we explore three prominent ethnographic thematics of EJ: the production of vulnerability through embodied toxicity; the ways that injustice becomes embedded in landscapes; and how processes like research collaborations and legal interventions become places of thinking and doing the work of justice. Finally, we identify emergent trends and challenges, suggesting future research directions for ethnographic consideration.

Article scientifique

The Education of Inuit Youth in Nunavik: Teachers’ and Students’ Perspectives.

This article draws on data collected in Nunavik between 2011 and 2014 to describe the perceptions of Inuit students and their teachers (Inuit and non-Inuit) about their motivation, the purpose of schooling, the quality of their relationships, and the pedagogical choices and approaches that influence their perseverance. Informed by critical Indigenous methodologies, the research was conducted with the approval of Kativik Ilisarniliriniq, the School Board of Nunavik. A wide range of research tools was used to facilitate participation by teachers from the French, English, and Inuit sectors, in elementary (Kindergarten to Grade 6) and high school (Grades 7 to 11), and participation by students from the French and English sectors (Grades 8 to 11).À partir des données recueillies au Nunavik entre 2011 et 2014, cet article met en lumière la perception des élèves Inuit et leurs enseignants (Inuit et non-Inuit), sur comment leur motivation, le but scolaire, la qualité de leurs relations, et les pratiques pédagogiques influencent leur persévérance. Informée par les méthodologies critiques autochtones, la recherche a été menée avec l’approbation de la Commission scolaire Kativik Ilisarniliriniq. Un large éventail d’outils de collecte de données a été mis en place pour faciliter la participation des enseignants de primaire et secondaire, des secteurs francophones, anglophones et inuit, ainsi que des élèves du secondaire (secteurs francophone et anglophone).

Article scientifique

The importance of place in indigenous science education.

In this issue of Cultural Studies of Science Education, Mack and colleagues(Mack et al.2011) seek to identify the necessary components of science education inIndigenous settings. Using a review of current research in informal science education inIndigenous settings, along with personal interviews with American educators engagedin these programs, the authors suggest some effective practices to use Indigenous ways ofknowing to strengthen science programming. For the past 4 years, we have been interestedin the importance of place in culturally relevant science education. We have explored therole of place and have used Gruenewald’s critical pedagogy of place (2003) to examine theimportance of place in a variety of Indigenous contexts. In response to Mack and col-leagues, in this paper we explore the importance of place as a means to reinhabituateIndigenous youth who live in urban, First Nation, and rural Costa Rican contexts.

Chapitre

The land is the first teacher: The Indigenous knowledge instructors’ program.

Livre

The Palgrave Handbook of African Education and Indigenous Knowledge.

This handbook explores the evolution of African education in historical perspectives as well as the development within its three systems–Indigenous, Islamic, and Western education models―and how African societies have maintained and changed their approaches to education within and across these systems. African education continues to find itself at once preserving its knowledge, while integrating Islamic and Western aspects in order to compete within this global reality. Contributors take up issues and themes of the positioning, resistance, accommodation, and transformations of indigenous education in relationship to the introduction of Islamic and later Western education. Issues and themes raised acknowledge the contemporary development and positioning of indigenous education within African societies and provide understanding of how indigenous education works within individual societies and national frameworks as an essential part of African contemporary society.

Article scientifique

The places of pedagogy: or, what we can do with culture through intersubjective experiences.

Beginning by highlighting considerations of the intersections among social and ecological issues and the recent diversification of critical pedagogy, this paper suggests means by which approaches such as Gruenewald’s (2003) “critical pedagogy of place” can be expanded to accommodate a broader range of possible places of pedagogy. The paper is centrally concerned with what happens when we consider socio‐ecological learning, not as occuring via cognitive critique or embodied place‐based experience, but rather as taking place in between the thought and the sensed via a range of intersubjective experiences. It suggests that these intersubjective locations that comprise the “where” of the learning of the student can be particular physical places, but can also be in and of experiences of friendship, art, literature, irony, cultural difference, community. By expanding our possible repertoire of “pedagogical arts,” or the range of intersubjective places and spaces of pedagogy engaged, we are able to conceptualise and practise education in ways that enable a deeper connection to place but also opportunities for other modes and outcomes of student learning. In particular, the paper outlines the possibilities for learning and cultural formation enabled by spaces of collective youth engagement.