Learning from Place
“Learning from place has concrete and meaningful community-building consequences, as Gruner (2012) articulates” (p. 83). This is a quote I want to acknowledge from Learning from Place: A Return to Traditional Mushkegowuk Ways of Knowing, because I find it to be quite powerful. Although our Canadian education is exceedingly Eurocentric, we do not recognize, respect and honour the land we are all privileged to live on enough. The quote mentions the idea of ‘meaningful community building’ and I believe if society recognized our land more, and took the time to learn about it, we would have a much more tight community and our Journey to Reconciliation would be growing immensely. We need to listen and share the stories we hear about our land and make an effort to pass them onto new generations so they are to never be forgotten.
A time I notice decolonization throughout the narrative is when they mentioned that the map for the river used the English names instead of the names it was given in the Inninowuk language, which came before the English names did. The main purpose of having the names in the Inninowuk language was to help the youth learn and remember words from the language they originate from. “Names for places in the Inninowuk language were marked as an effort to bring the original names and Cree concepts to more common use among the youth.” (p. 76).
When I was in ECS 100, I noticed our professor(s) always acknowledged that we are on Treaty 4 Land before we started lecture. Because I experienced that, I will now never forget that I am living on Treaty 4 Land and I am sure I am not the only student from that class who will never forget it either. I think consistently acknowledging in classrooms that we are living on Treaty Land is such a significant way to teach students to have respect and appreciate the land they are on. I would hope that young students would eventually feel connected to the land we are on, and then be able to gain knowledge about Indigenous people and their values, beliefs and stories so those can be passed down onto future generations. We cannot let important knowledge about our land get lost due to society’s lack of interest and not taking the time to learn these stories that mean so much to people who were here well before we all were.