“As part of my classes for my three week block I have picked up a Social Studies 30 course. This past week we have been discussing the concept of standard of living and looking at the different standards across Canada . I tried to introduce this concept from the perspective of the First Nations people of Canada and my class was very confused about the topic and in many cases made some racist remarks. I have tried to reintroduce the concept but they continue to treat it as a joke. The teachers at this school are very lax on the topic of Treaty Education as well as First Nations ways of knowing. I have asked my Coop for advice on Treaty Education and she told me that she does not see the purpose of teaching it at this school because there are no First Nations students. I was wondering if you would have any ideas of how to approach this topic with my class or if you would have any resources to recommend.”
In response to this email that Dr. Mike Capello received, my first thing that I related to was when Claire had said in her intro, that many teachers believe Treaty Education is only important for schools with a higher population of Indigenous students, where-as she stated that it’s very important for schools with a low population of Indigenous students to learn about treaties. This is because often the racism comes from white students, or students from a non-Canadian background because they do not understand or do not try to understand. Claire believes that because her school has so few Indigenous students, it is more important to put more effort into educating on Indigenous cultural programming and teaching the histories (7:30), so that those few Indigenous students feel like they belong, instead of the opposite. I really enjoyed how Claire had stated that instead of calling it Treaty Education, she sometimes refers to it as Settler education, as the majority of her students are settlers and they need education on sharing land and honouring the histories of treaties and relationships.
For me, “We are all Treaty People” is such a strong statement, because when the word Treaty comes up, so often, settlers automatically think Indigenous people, and disconnect the word and the events from themselves. We are all a part of the treaties and the agreements, and broken promises that came along with them. The fact that our ancestors treated these lands as unclaimed or used phrases like “they weren’t using land productively” (as stated in Dwayne Donald’s lecture). I also connected strongly with around 13:20 in Dwayne’s lecture and how he said, in the curriculum, we tend to pass over the history of the relationships and try to deliver the curriculum as if it’s an information problem, as if it’s a timeline to learn to repair the relationships. This is not the case, or at least cannot be solely thought about delivering a historic timeline to right the wrongs. I agree with him, we need to focus on the relationships and educate on those. Indigenous people and settlers had many positive relationships off the start, that’s why we have the Metis nation! It wasn’t until power driven influences started corrupting peoples minds and decisions, telling us to disconnect and belittle (because we couldn’t understand). Treaty education should be about repairing and renewing the Canadian Culture.
