Incorporating First Nations Perspectives (Part 1 of 2)

I’ve lived in BC my whole life, I was homeschooled as a child and my mom felt strongly about introducing us to the culture and history of First Nations peoples in Canada.

I was taken on many field trips, completed many projects and even attended a Pow Wow event. All homeschooling in those days was “registered homeschooling”,no one required my mom to expose us to Aboriginal culture, it was her joy and honour to make it a priority for us. My older brother's heart was so captivated by indigenous peoples because of what we learned at home, that today he is employed by the Assembly of First Nations in Ottawa, and lives his life advocating for Canada’s Indigenous Peoples.

Needless to say, I thought I would be one of the last people to find anything in my heart that would be resistant towards incorporating First Peoples worldview and perspectives into our daily curriculum, as instructed by BC’s curricular competencies.

Yet I will tell you, with sorrow, that when Professor Matthew Etherington of Trinity Western University attended our October LHEA event as a guest speaker, I was all too readily able to identify with the types of push back and questioning he receives from students on a regular basis. I too have wondered the purpose for including “so much” indigenous content, after all “Canada includes people of many backgrounds”. Why not learn about all of them equally?

I simply did not understand what was being accomplished, or how to go about it.

I am so very grateful for Professor Etherington's willingness to come and speak to us, and share his wisdom and experiences as the Director of the Institute of Indigenous Issues and Perspectives at TWU. My own personal perspective was shifted greatly, and I hope through this blog post I can share why with you.

Professor Etherington's job is to teach teachers the how and why of implementing BCs’ new curriculum into their classrooms. The biggest question he responds to from his students is the same question I wondered, why? Why do we need to teach in this way?

He explained to us first that indigenous peoples are sovereign in Canada. This is not an insignificant point. This changed everything for me, like a light bulb turning on. My understanding from what we were taught is that indigenous people within Canada ought to be and increasingly are considered to be sovereign independent nations within this country. Their perspectives are officially given at least 50% weight in educational endeavours.

The concept of Sovereignty made so much sense to me when I thought about it in these terms: If my children were being educated in Thailand, I would expect that they would be taught from a Thai perspective and worldview. In the same way, it is just and fair to expect that in a country where indigenous peoples hold 50% sovereignty, our children ought to be taught to understand indigenous worldview and perspectives.

It is a beautiful thing to teach our children that our nation, and our world is made up of a diversity of thought. That the way one culture sees the world and thinks can be vastly different from how we may see the world and that these differences are not always “right and wrong.” They are simply different.

A very simple key I learned from Prof. Etherington was that what we are asked to do in incorporating indigenous perceptive is very simply to help our children see that there ARE different perspectives. We from a western mindset may view the world in one way, and someone from an indigenous background will view it differently. To consistently see these differences and similarities between different worldviews ourselves and help point them out to our children wherever we find them is one of our tasks as homeschool parents in BC.

When we teach our kids to enter into the world of someone else, to sit with them and endeavour to understand how that person thinks and sees the world, we give them a gift of not repeating mistakes made in the past. They learn humility and actively have the opportunity to build skills that will enable them to be peace makers, representatives of the Prince of Peace, who Himself entered our world as Immanuel, God with us. Understanding one another enables us to better communicate the Good news of great Joy, that is for ALL people, of every nation, tribe and tongue.