Month: February 2023

Citizenship means that you are part of the political process of a nation and actively participate in it. It means that you have certain rights and freedoms in your home that come with civic and social duties that are expected of each member of the society.  It involves being a member of your community, doing your part by giving back, having a job, paying bills, and so on.  Citizenship means that you get to be a part in forming the society and communities that you want.

How can we relate treaty education to citizenship?

It is our jobs as educators to establish Treaty Education into our education curriculums as much as possible so we can move away from an education system deeply rooted in colonialism. We must make room for further education and acceptance by incorporating more aspects of Treaty Education into the curriculum which will ideally get future generations invested  in the importance pf Indigenous languages and culture. The hope being that this helps make it possible for Indigenous views and traditions to live on into the future. As future teachers it is up to us to help our students live in a future that is not rooted and based in colonization.

In Levin’s article he explains that curriculum is developed through public policy, politics and the opinion/demands of the public. The curriculum is part of public policy because it involves the interest of the voters(general public). Curriculum is shaped largely by – political ideology, personal values, issues in the public domain and public interests. Curriculum decisions are often part of the larger question/topic of public good but with this we must also remember that politics/politicians are driven by interests and particularly the most vocal interest from their voter base.

Some new information I learned about curriculum from this article was the whole expert factor that goes into the building of school curriculums. I now in university we as students experience being taught by professors with PHD’s who are experts on a subject but perhaps aren’t very good at teaching it. It seems like this idea is what’s going on in the background of curriculum development with expertise being valued more than teaching knowledge. Then you add in more possibility for confusion and uncertainty with representatives from corporations or industries to throw in their 2 cents. Seems like we need a lot more representation from education people!

Some tensions that may have arose during the development of the Treaty education curriculum could have been: The interpretation of what treaties meant to each side (Indigenous and Europeans), the language and phrases used like “treaties are sacred covenants between sovereign nations“, how each side upheld or didn’t uphold the treaties and how important the input of Indigenous people would be for this curriculum and how much of it made it into the curriculum.