Incorporating First Nations Perspectives (Part 2 of 2)

In part 2 of this blog series I will share a few of the tips and insights Professor Etherington gave us on HOW to implement this new way of teaching. For further information, and to see Professor Etheringtons notes, we have uploaded them under LHEA events here on our website. Scroll back to the fall to find the post.

Just as my mother viewed teaching her children to respect and honour First Nations people to be a delight in our homeschool, so I can build on what she taught me and go even further with the knowledge we have now. Not only can we teach our children about indigenous cultural traditions, ways of life, and history, we can also help our kids understand how aboriginal people think and believe, how they see life and the world, and in the process we can all be greatly enriched.

Professor Etherington helped us understand indigenous worldviews and perspectives in the three areas of: Knowledge - what and how we know what we know, Values - what is most important and Reality - Who am I, and what is real?

We looked at how these areas differ, at times greatly from traditional western thought. Lacking awareness of these differences can and has caused great miscommunication between peoples.

A simple example was in the realm of reality and language. Indigenous languages are primarily verb based, while English is comprised of only 30% verbs. In western thought, we refer to nouns as “things”, not alive. Many of our common nouns would be considered living active verbs in First Nation thought: bugs and water ways like bays were examples used. “to be a bay” rather than bay as a noun, an “it”.

Simply understanding this difference and pointing it out to our children, being aware that others think about the world differently than we might and this is not necessarily wrong is a way to incorporate indigenous perspectives in our homeschools.

We also saw many similarities between indigenous thought and both Christian and typical Homeschool values! So many First Nations principles of learning are closely compatible with the goals many of us have for our homeschools. A core principle of learning for indigenous peoples was that children were to be taught by and through stable relationships with adults they trusted for their security and physical needs. Indigenous communities were very family centric.

Something that particularly stuck out to me as our family has been studying Ancient history this year, with a focus on Ancient Israel and the Old Testament was how closely aligned First Nations principles of learning are to ancient Jewish thought and values as seen in the bible. In some ways Indigenous thought aligns more closely with our roots as Christians than traditional western thought does. This is fascinating.

It is a very simple thing to incorporate indigenous perspective throughout our homeschooling day. Any content we are teaching through can be looked at via the three core areas: Knowledge, Values and Reality and examine whose knowledge and reality perspective we are learning from. We can compare and contrast easily throughout our day and thus develop a greater understanding for other people.

Simply pointing out the differences and discussing them with our children is all that is needed! This was such a weight off my mind to realize and truly brings joy to introducing indigenous perspectives and worldview into our homeschool.

Now that I understand WHY, and the HOW has been shown to be so simple, I feel empowered to carry it out. I have taken ownership and am motivated to take action.

I want my children to understand that people of diverse cultures will naturally look at a wide range of topics from a different vantage point than our family might. That this worldview lens we each see through affects the way we see life and even how we will read and understand the bible. Every one of us has a lens through which we look at the world, it is made up of our family and community culture, heritage, and education.

I want to celebrate that as we are all created in the image of God, every tribe and tongue under heaven reflects His glory and will tell back part of who He is to the rest of the world in a unique way. Every worldview, all over the earth contains portions that reflect the brokenness of sin, to be discerned and rejected, and also aspects that display the creativity and glory of God. This image is to be celebrated and learned from wherever it may be found.