Blog Post 6: Citizenship

The word citizen plays many roles within society and through class discussion, it was found that many people have their own understanding of citizenship. How I understand citizenship is that it is a role within a community and how you choose to act within the community. What I mean by this is that there are many roles within a community and everyone has a part to play (even if you think you don’t you most likely do). Some examples I saw a lot growing up were coaches, teachers, babysitters, and just all-around role models; but outside of those standard citizen roles, there are many others. Some others that may not be as looked at were your small business owners, shop workers, and volunteers as these are also very important. I see citizenship as well as the ability to live in a country, with this definition being one most people associate with the word. However, this definition sometimes leaves a bad taste in people’s mouths as there have been a lot of negative connotations towards it. This includes extreme patriotism, who “counts” as a citizen, and if there should be exclusions; all of which are extremely harmful as there could be many reasons why someone would want citizenship in a country.

We can relate this to treaty education in how we view Indigenization in classrooms. Taking from my understanding of citizenship, how I relate this is how/what we are teaching about Indigenous culture in schools. What I mean by this is how their culture is very much shoved aside for other “more important” things and students never being properly taught about their shared history with Canada. Indigenous culture is very important as it relates to a good amount of citizens in Canada, yet those citizens are not seeing themselves represented in communities. Continuing to relate citizenship to treaty education, I also relate it to many Indigenous groups being seen as outsiders despite being here first whereas many other cultures are welcomed with open arms to help showcase Canada’s “diversity”. Indigenous culture has taken a backseat for so many years that it’s never been properly seen as an important part of education, however, it is.