Learning From a Place

This week we were given an article by Jean-Paul Restoule, called “Learning from Place: A Return to Traditional Mushkegowuk Ways of Knowing,” is about showing the ways that cree students connect to the land and there culture. This child are going on a 10 day river trip with adults and elders, and as they travel up the river they will learn about there people connection to the land and how important it is to them. This story show us examples of decolonization and reinhabitation, and it is allowing them to have a chance to reconnect with the lands. This trip helps to bring back things that were lost in the process of colonization, like the connection with land, the value of their knowledge, and the connection between generations. Both the children and the elders learned from each the different perspectives they have, and how they can be a lined. “The river trip helped members of the community share linguistic, cultural, historical, and geographical knowledge” (page 81).

In the future I hope to be bring these ideas of decolonization and reinhabitation in to the classroom by have an educational environment, these subjects are really important to be taught in schools, but it is often taught in the same ways with no real change to the system. New ways of teaching such as recognizing treaty lands and that we are all treaty people, having speakers come into classrooms so students can see the real effects. It all depends on the community you are teaching in, on how you bring these new ways of learning, and how you can have students understand the actions, and how they can change it, decolonization is not something that will happen overnight, it is going to take many more years, and we have a long road ahead of us.

One Reply to “Learning From a Place”

  1. Accepting the challenge of bringing in the idea of both decolonization and rehabilitation into your classroom is a large topic to take on, that is why it is important to have new teachers, with new ideas introduced to the classroom environment. Taking action and understanding that it will take many years to teach and make a change is a huge step and a great start to making a change within the education system and classrooms.

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