• During fall semester several years ago, Dr. Mike Cappello received an email from an intern asking for help. Here’s part of it: “As part of my classes for my three week block I have picked up a Social Studies 30 course. This past week we have been discussing the concept of standard of living and looking at the different standards across Canada . I tried to introduce this concept from the perspective of the First Nations people of Canada and my class was very confused about the topic and in many cases made some racist remarks. I have tried to reintroduce the concept but they continue to treat it as a joke. The teachers at this school are very lax on the topic of Treaty Education as well as First Nations ways of knowing. I have asked my Coop for advice on Treaty Education and she told me that she does not see the purpose of teaching it at this school because there are no First Nations students. I was wondering if you would have any ideas of how to approach this topic with my class or if you would have any resources to recommend.”
• This is a real issue in schools. As you listen to Dwayne’s invitation/challenge, as you listen to Claire’s lecture and as you read Cynthia’s narrative – use these resources and your blog to craft a response to this student’s email, being sure to address the following questions:
  • What is the purpose of teaching Treaty Ed (specifically) or First Nations, Metis, and Inuit (FNMI) Content and Perspectives (generally) where there are few or no First Nations, Metis, Inuit peoples?
  • What does it mean for your understanding of curriculum that “We are all treaty people”?

It is no easy task to convince others that we must include FNMI content and treaty education in the classroom. Perhaps the best place to start is to show your students why it is important, and discuss it with your Coop. Once people understand why something is important, they are usually more willing to learn about it. I will share some resources to help them understand and highlight some key quotes.

“It is an elegy to what remains to be lost if we refuse to listen to each other’s stories no matter how strange they may sound, if we refuse to learn from each other’s stories, songs, and poems from each other’s knowledge about the world and how to make our way in it.” (Chambers). FNMI perspectives must be taught in Canadian classrooms because this is their homeland. That is to say, we don’t teach about other cultures as thoroughly because they still have a homeland somewhere else; if we don’t teach FNMI perspectives, and we don’t teach about treaties, that culture and that knowledge is at risk of being completely lost. As Claire Krueger describes in her classroom, ignoring treaty education or FNMI perspectives in a classroom full of white students subtly tells those students that FNMI people are not important. Ignoring those perspectives separates white from FNMI peoples, and places them as an ‘other’ in society that white settlers need not concern themselves with learning or thinking about. We need to teach all students about all Canadian citizens, and that includes FNMI citizens. 

The exploits of settlers were only made possible through the trickery of the treaties. We are all treaty people because without the treaties, colonizers wouldn’t have been able to swoop in and take the land under the false veil of lawfulness. In terms of curriculum, the treaties need to be remembered and talked about in terms of this trickery. Furthermore, without those treaties, we wouldn’t be here today, on this land. Both sides of the story need to be told, not just the Euro-centric side. More focus is needed on what we all have in common now, because of the treaties – this includes “human and other-than-human”, (Chambers), which is the ecological crisis that both sides can come together to solve. We, the settlers, cannot simply ‘give back the land’ now that we have taken it and destroyed it, especially when the initial meaning of the treaties was that the land would be shared. It belongs to everyone and everything. How is that translated into curriculum? Is it through teaching students about global citizenship? Is it through bringing indigenous perspectives into every subject? As the Ulukhaktokmiut elders think, perhaps it is through teaching our children that our need to live and make a livelihood will depend long-term on our ability to to do so without causing us harm – not just people, but animals and nature too, (Chambers). A curriculum that works for a common good, that does not place one person over the other, one group over the other, one species over the other, is what our education must strive to be if we are all treaty people.