New Webinar Alert! Welcome to our partnership with The Robertson Program

UPDATE: This Webinar has been postponed! Check this space for more details to come!

Since the Summer Dr. Restoule and I have put a pause on Kikinoo’amaadawin Webinar series - but we are back next week with a new offering focused on STEM.

For this four part series, we have partnered with The Robertson Program for Inquiry-based Teaching in Math and Science - OISE to bring you a series of four FREE webinars on STEM and Indigenous Education!

Our first webinar is January 20th at 7pm EST, featuring Marlo Beaucage and Nancy O'Donnell both members of Red Rock Indian Band. They will be speaking about Learning from Land.

The webinar will focus on how Indigenous land-based teachings, when carried out in collaboration with community Elders or Knowledge Keepers, can provide rich learning experiences for Indigenous and non-Indigenous students. Educators in this session will be provided with ideas and connections in mathematics and science using Indigenous land-based experiences, all the while connecting to the current curriculum.

Check out the eventbrite page here to learn more and sign up for your free ticket!

Analyzing an Orange Shirt Day Tweet from the RCMP

Orange Shirt Day was yesterday, and it was amazing to see educators recognizing the day, raising awareness about the horrible conditions that children faced in Residential Schools, and taking action for Indigenous children today.

Here is one example I saw:

NLSteinhauer.png

Nancy Steinhauer, principal of the Mabin School in Toronto, shared this lesson about how to use Orange Shirt Day to move towards advocacy and action.

I appreciate how the SK teacher here connected Orange Shirt Day with the present injustices against Indigenous children, specifically the Federal Government's inequitable funding practices and the horrible conditions many Indigenous children are still asked to attend school in. 

I noticed yesterday that Orange Shirt Day is now so well known that many institutions, governments, and organizations make statements in support of the day.

This tweet below issued by the RCMP provides a perfect opportunity to engage in critical analysis about such statements with your students. 

RCMPtweet.png

Perhaps you might notice as I and many others have that the words "sent away" are doing a lot of work here. 

Here are some questions I have about this Tweet: 
1. How did Indigenous children come to arrive at Residential Schools? 
2. What compelled them to attend? 
3. What was the role of the RCMP in this process?
4. What conversation needs to be started? Where else are those conversations already being held? 
5. How is the use of the passive voice in this Tweet operating? 

Also:
What is preformative or optical allyship and how do we know when we, someone else, or an organization is engaging in it?

As a final comment, I will leave you with an image from Prince Edward Island newspaper The Guardian in July 2018 of Cree artist Kent Monkman standing in front of his painting, "The Scream".

KMonkman.png

Being Italian on Turtle Island

Everyone is welcome to join me on Tuesday October 6th at 7 to 8:30pm for "Being Italian on Turtle Island", an online workshop hosted by Italian Canadians for Black Lives. 

Here are the central questions that I will be diving into

  • How do we understand our Italian-Canadian identities in relationship to the colonization of Turtle Island?

  • How do historical Italian figures like John Cabot and Christopher Columbus factor into this story?

  • How might we transform our relationships with Indigenous peoples and uphold our end of the Nation-to-Nation relationship?

Registration is free and if you can't make it, sign up anyway to receive the recording after! Click here to save your spot!

Taking Your Students Outside: Learning on Indigenous Land

I know many of you might be thinking about how to facilitate learning outside, where the risk of Covid-19 transmission is lower.

I'm asking myself:

  • How do we move forward in a way where all learners can build healthier relationships with the land and each other?

  • Can we learn from Indigenous ways of knowing on the land without engaging in appropriation?

 
Many of us are thinking "how can I teach outside?" But what if we collectively dug deeper. The land holds wisdom, language, medicines, and so much more. What if we were to approach this work with respect, humility, and by centering Indigenous Nations and their sovereignty on the land.


In this spirit, Dr. Jean-Paul Restoule and I have a number of free webinars available to for you to view. Below are direct links to the recordings on Youtube. You can also find and their related resources all posted on my website.

1) In March 2020, we met with the team from Natural Curiosity, who specialize in inquiry with the natural world. The second edition of the teacher guide includes incorporating Indigenous lenses of this work, which was a main focus of the webinar we recorded. 

2) In November 2019, we met with author and illustrator Joanne Robertson and teacher Peter Cameron to learn about Nokomis Josephine Mandamin and her journey walking for water. They shared about the ongoing work of the Junior Water Walkers A ReconcilACTION project which encourages you and your students to build a relationship with a nearby body of water and to engage in advocacy for the health of that water. 

3) In April 2020, Dkhale Hayle Gallup joined us to speak about her work bringing Indigenous Ways of Knowing and Place-based learning into the STEM classroom. She provided many free resources to aid in your learning, all of which I posted at www.angelanardozi.com/webinars.