Integrating Treaty Education

Treaty Education and First Nations, Metis, and Inuit Content and Perspectives (FNMI) is important in Canadian classrooms for a multitude of reasons.  Whether the particular classroom it is being taught in has Indigenous students or not, it is imperative for our students to understand our country’s history, and how it affects settler descendants, as well as Indigenous peoples to this day.  Although it may be a difficult topic at times, by teaching Treaty Education and FNMI we are recognising how damaging the Crown’s actions were in creating the treaties to our First Nations populations, and how it was formed to benefit the colonists.  Our Canadian history affects all Canadian citizens, and it is our duty as educators to inform our students of what that history entails.  

After reading and listening to this week’s resources, I have a more refined idea of what “we are all treaty people” means for my understanding of the curriculum.  Engaging my students with the course contents of Treaty Education and FNMI allows us to create a sense of unity within the classroom and community.  In “We Are All Treaty People”: The Contemporary Countenance of Canadian Curriculum Studies by Cynthia Chambers, she says, “It is our story: the one about the commons, what was shared and what was lost.  It is an elegy to what remains to be lost if we refuse to listen to each other’s stories no matter how strange they may sound, if we refuse to learn from each other’s stories, songs, and poems, from each other’s knowledge about this world and how to make our way in it.  Old-timers and newcomers alike, “we are all treaty people” (Epp 2008).” pg. 29.  By teaching these course materials we will continue to grow towards reconciliation, and healing as a country.