Blog 5

When teaching Treaty Education it is important to remember that it is new and will take time to learn and teach it. We must encourage our students to take a deeper look at the information and have them look at it from different perspectives, by doing this it shows them how it may affect others or if it were them, themselves. In the video of Claire, she mentioned the importance of Treaty Education to educate white people, not only to include Indigenous people. She mentioned how her children want not to be taught about the things they already know but not have people come up and question them in public. They want their classmates to be educated and understand just as they are.

As for responding to the email, I would send some sources for deeper understanding and suggest ways to keep the classroom a safe environment and highlight the importance of the subject to the student. Just because there are no Indigenous students in the classroom does not make the subject any less important outside of the classroom, most students will have jobs when they grow up that will require them to know Treaty Education and have respect towards Indigenous people, their communities, and their culture. Additionally, Indigenous people are aware of the history of their people in regards to Treaty Education, they are not the only ones the curriculum is aimed for, if anything it is aimed at the students who do not know this history and therefore most non-Indigenous people.

We are all Treaty people because we use and live off the land every day. It is important to acknowledge that the freedom we have and the land we have would not be here for us if it wasn’t for the Treaty agreements. We need to understand the history of our land and the Treaties to work towards reconciliation.