Upon reading the article by Cynthia Chamber’s We are all Treaty People.  I found her perspective regarding how she perceives her culture identity as something she could not connect with since she was born of Irish and Scottish descents but on Canadian soil.  I appreciate this perspective as I find my own self challenging how I feel about my European descents and how my culture has faded over the generations.  I cannot help but think that the first peoples of Canada (Indigenous people) must also feel this way and this is their place of origin.  The purpose of teaching Treaty Ed is invaluable for all of us to understand.

Dwayne Donald also interpreted his own disconnect to his home reserve where in 1888 that land was expropriated by the Canadian Government as they did not want the reserve to get in the way of the growth of Edmonton.  His father’s family being from that reserve met his mother who was a European Settler from Norweigh who grew up on that reserve land. Dwayne speaks about the two separate lives that were affected by colonization one being positive (mothers’ side) and the other more negative (fathers family losing their original reserve land). He describes it as a Conflictual story and asks how does one interpret each story?  He begins to speak about curriculum and how teaching Treaty Ed has become more of an Information problem…. a Timeline of info.   He believes that curriculum and pedagogy have impairments- he expresses that you will teach and interpret how you think about the relationship.

Claire Kreuger expresses the concern that is associated with the “settler ed” vs Treaty Ed she expresses that Treaty Ed is primarily education that is for the settlers of Canada and that First Nations want to feel accepted and ‘fit in’.  She expresses the that the underlying curriculum of racism and colonialism and its negative affect in our classrooms and how our future Maclean’s magazine writers are our past students. 

When I think of my own understanding of curriculum “we are all treaty people” is that I am on borrowed land being of white settler descent but this is still my home.  I want to educate to all students in the class on the truth of our dark Canadian history.  The history I learnt was from the views of European settlers with a biased view, which I feel so blinded by.  “We are all treaty people” and that can mean different things to different people, and to me it is recognizing my ancestral roots and the affects of what colonialism had and still has on our classrooms today. These articles have stirred up my own connection to ancestry and my views on how I can bring in Treaty Ed properly into my classroom?