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 Decolonization is a word that many educators are now using. In our ‘Canadian’ context, this word is essential, for Canada is a colonized and sometimes oppressive state. Here, anti-racist pedagogy must begin with understanding and attempting to de-colonialize our educational structures; one key component of this work includes incorporating Indigenous perspectives. Educational systems are only beginning to understand what this looks like in our classrooms.
For my particular school community, understanding and shaping curriculum around what ‘decolonization’ looks like in practice is something we too have just begun to explore.
At Burnaby North specifically, where I work, one of the things that we have discussed is how to break down walls within our curricular silos, which are often are part of our colonized structures. This is an essential part of the decolonizing of our classroom spaces. A group of teachers have come together to do this cross-curricular work.
We are trying to embed Indigenous ways of knowing and being and learning. We are trying to open the learning so that it creates spaces for all students to learn and grow.
In doing so, we are also trying to find ties between each of our curricular areas. We have looked at ways to bridge and make ties between curricular areas so that the learning students are doing is reflective of the whole human - that it connects with spirit, mind, and emotions. We are trying to embed Indigenous ways of knowing and being and learning. We are trying to have students connect to curricular knowledge, but through a larger, holistic learning frame.
What does this decolonizing look like in practice? Here is one of those stories.
I am an ELA teacher, currently teaching English 12 and 9. In English 12, the key themes we are exploring are those of oppression and empowerment. Our essential question guiding the work this semester is, "How do people find empowerment beyond systems of oppression?"
Embedded in these themes and this question is wanting to have students understand the need for justice in an unjust world; as such, an intersectional approach to teaching and learning has been an essential part of the learning and texts we are reading.
In our cross-curricular team, I immediately connected with a life-science teacher and the school’s Indigenous support teacher. We began exploring curricular links between English, Science and Indigenous learning. At first, we began looking at how the curricular competencies in our courses and content areas overlap. We began to understand that story (human and in the natural world and for Indigenous peoples) is an essential part of the learning that happens in our classrooms. This became the thread. We saw cross-curricular connections begin to emerge in regards to land and justice and truth. These themes connected through Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass. I immediately thought about Richard Wagamese’s Indian Horse, Keeper N’ Me, and One Story, One Song. And Jesse Thistle’s From the Ashes. These stories depict the connection we have to land, and how central being on the land is to healing and empowerment.
Then we talked through what learning experiences would work to help students connect to land and story and Indigenous ways of learning. We wanted our students to know about the history of the lands on which they learn and live. We wanted students to connect with land, and discuss land as an empowering and grounding thing. We wanted students to learn experientially. So, we decided to take them out to learn on the land in order to reflect and think and be there - and learn a bit of its history.
We planned to take our students to Maplewood Flats, which is a bird sanctuary located on Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh lands. There, we would have them spend the day outdoors, exploring the land. We would begin with an elder’s opening, with students spending some time listening to the story of the land’s peoples. Then, they would do some station work: mapping and plant journaling and reflection/poetry writing.
We were supported in this venture by our school leaders - this collaboration and conversation and opportunity was celebrated, for we were trying something new.
 On the day of, students began by being welcomed onto the land by Rob Thomas, Elder and previous səl̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nation’s council member Carleen Thomas’s nephew. He sang a welcoming song. Students listened as he talked about a wide range of things: the history of his people on those lands; how the people hunted there and lived on those lands; how the lands provided them with life; the connection shared between the Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh peoples, all in relation to those lands; their shared respect for protocol and land stewardship; and, how things changed once colonization happened. Rob Thomas also discussed the displacement and oppression that occurred. and also shared stories of resilience and survival - how his people are still very much connected to the land here, how the languages spoken there have survived, and how Rob’s ability to speak his Nation’s language is a reflection of that. The land, he emphasized, is tied to all of this.
Our students stood listening. Then, they went and played and learned on the land and with each other. They sat by the water and reflected. They looked at the plants and learned from Indigenous teachers. They touched the rocks and played with the crabs on the beach. They watched deer, some nearby and some far away. They looked at eagles as they flew overhead. The clouds turned into sun and warmth. And they began to smile in ways that I had never seen them smile indoors.
 
Many of them looked at the contrast between nature and industry and one student remarked that the Trans Mountain pipeline across the bay looked like a ‘scar. An ugly one.’ I told them to write that into their poetry. Empowerment begins when we understand and know and voice that knowing into the world. Empowerment begins by listening to the stewards of these lands. Empowerment begins by letting go of and changing the structures and frames we have been colonized to accept as the only options.
Students wrote and took photographs on that day. They took new understanding and pulled it into written texts.
When we talk about decolonization, one thing that I have come to learn about that process (and all learning processes) is that learning is fluid. It takes time. It does not need to be structured or created and crafted rigidly. In our classrooms, it does not need to be centered on the adults' intentions. Often, students will guide the purpose and moment.
Each student can frame that learning and the takeaways too. A day spent on the land is learning. Being in community is learning. Sharing a bit of sunlight and a moment in time is learning. Learning is reciprocal and built in relationship. Decolonization is about leading through the release of power. There is great collective empowerment in seeing that. My students have taught me that, and all of us can use a bit of that in our collective spaces, too.
Denise is a secondary teacher in Burnaby, and member of the AOEC Executive Committee.
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