“The land is a healer”: Perspectives on land-based healing from Indigenous practitioners in northern Canada

This research paper articulates a largely undefined cultural concept within mental health promotion and intervention, described as ‘land-based’ healing, which has been understood and taught for millennia by Indigenous knowledge holders. This knowledge is currently being revitalized by northern practitioners where ‘land’ is understood as a relational component of healing and wellbeing. Land-based activities such as harvesting, education, ceremony, recreation, and cultural-based counselling are all components of this integrative practice. Land-based practices are centered in Indigenous pedagogy and recognize that cultural identity is interwoven with and connected to ‘land.’ Directly cultivating this fundamental relationship, as assessed through a culturally relevant lens, increases positive mental health and wellness outcomes in Indigenous populations. In this study, qualitative narrative methods were used to document the experiences of eleven land-based program practitioners from the three northern territories in Canada. As experts in this field, practitioners’ narratives emphasized the need for a greater understanding and recognition of the value of land-based practices and programs within mainstream health. The development of working definitions, terminology, and framing of land-based practice as a common field are delineated from relevant literature and practitioner narratives in order to enable cross-cultural communication and understanding in psychology. Land-based healing is presented as a critical and culturally appropriate solution for mental health intervention and community resilience in northern Canada.

Subalternização e resistência indígena: Cenários a partir do contexto do estado de Rondônia

The central idea of this article is to problematize and present some scenarios of subalternization and indigenous resistance, specifically, in the State of Rondônia. We started from research developed in the context of Rondônia (Alves, 2017, 2018; Alves Santos, 2017; Scaramuzza, 2015, Santos, 2020, among others) to expose the strategies used by the indigenous peoples of Rondônia as a struggle and resistance of the indigenous communities, becoming protagonists in spaces of formation and school performance. Linked to protagonism, the indigenous school as an intercultural space, promotes pedagogical practices based on the curriculum that is not only effective due to the disciplinary contents, but also as a cosmological process that occurs through Indigenous Pedagogy produced not only by its teachers, but throughout organic structure of the community. Thus, we understand that the indigenous school as a space of resistance and indigenous struggle is constituted and presented as intercultural and produces ways of being specific to indigenous peoples.

Broadening the Engineering Canon

Within engineering, Western, White, colonial knowledge has historically been privileged over other ways of knowing. Few engineering educators recognize the impact of ethnocentricity and masculinity of the engineering curriculum on our students. In this paper we argue for a new approach, one which seeks to create an engineering curriculum that recognizes the great diversity of cultural practices that exist in the world. We begin by reviewing key ideas from three pedagogies not typically incorporated in engineering education: Culturally Relevant/Responsive Pedagogy, Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy, and Indigenous Pedagogy. We then present our attempts to develop an engineering curricula informed by these practices. We describe interventions we have tried at two levels: modules within traditional engineering sciences and entirely new courses. We aim to convince readers that these pedagogies may be a key tool in changing the dominant discourse of engineering education, improving the experience for those students already here, and making it more welcoming to those who are not.

Reaching Across the Divide (RAD): Aboriginal Elders and Academics working together to improve student and staff cultural capability outcomes

This article, written by Aboriginal Nyoongar Elders, Louise and Percy Hansen and Joanna Corbett in collaboration with two Wadjella (white) academics, details the design and delivery of The Reaching Across the Divide: Aboriginal Elders and Academics working together project (RAD) which aimed to develop student cultural capabilities. It is encouraging that many Australian universities aim at embedding Indigenous ways of knowing, being and doing yet there remains little information on how to do this. RAD, guided by a Nyoongar framework for engagement, the Minditj Kaart-Moorditj Kaart Framework, provides one example. RAD developed student and staff capabilities, through building trusting, committed relationships, and promoting systems change. The results highlight how co-creating to embed Indigenous pedagogy through yarning and oral storying (Hansen & Corbett, 2017; Hansen, 2017) produces transformative learning outcomes which also meet key national, local and professional directives.

Community-engaged Learning (CEL): Integrating Anthropological Discourse with Indigenous Knowledge

The Indigenous Action Group (IAG) is an alliance of solidarity between Indigenous and settler faculty at the University of Toronto Mississauga with the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation (MCFN), whose Treaty lands the campus is located on. This partnership of responsibility supports the MCFN goals of truth (through public knowledge and recognition of their history), and reconciliation (through the support and equitable sustenance of Indigenous pedagogy, knowledge systems, and research methodologies in educational institutions). The IAG has developed a Community-Engaged Learning (CEL) course to bring ontological pluralism to the Academy to legitimize Indigenous knowledges, epistemologies, and involve the placemaking of local Indigenous communities (Tuhiwah Smith, 2012). This second year undergraduate course entitled “Anthropology and Indigenous Peoples of Turtle Island (in Canada)” was developed and implemented by the Indigenous Action Group to prioritize first person voices from the local Indigenous community. We are hoping this diverse educational model will change the discourse in anthropology courses to begin a collective understanding of ongoing power imbalances and oppression in education from colonial mechanisms.

Stats and Stories

In honor of generations of Native American teachers and learners that have gone before us and in support of future generations, this chapter speaks to the present generation—those responsible for teaching and learning and caring for our communities today. Critically analyzing forces that both stifle and support Native scholars and health care professionals, this chapter opens dialogue around indigenous pedagogy, indigenous research methods, and pipeline programs from personal accounts of being a graduate student in a medical school and a new faculty member endeavoring to find purpose, meaning, and balance in the world. Stories shared offer survival accounts and lessons learned to help others navigate both personal and professional journeys in Western academia.

Mathematics in the Bulletins de l’enseignement de l’AOF (French West Africa Education Bulletins) (1913-1958)

The journal Bulletin de l'enseignement de l’Afrique occidentale française was created in 1913 by Georges Hardy, then director of colonial school for a year, to promote the cohesion of the teaching staff through a system of collaboration. The aim of this paper is to study mathematics teaching in the French West African school system between 1913 and 1958, as seen through this journal. First, this paper will examine the place of mathematics in the African school system, both in importance and level, to compare it with the one of Metropolitan France. In particular, the examination test statements will be studied, and their level will be compared to the Metropolitan French ones. More qualitatively, we will look at impressions expressed by some authors on the level of students and teachers in West Africa. Then, we will focus on the official recommendations of the institutions concerning the content taught, the pedagogical methods and the resources. Among that, it is necessary to analyse the role of the European educational trends of the time (method of “the centers of interest”, Freinet or Montessori’s methods and “active pedagogy”) in the colonies. Finally, practices on the ground will be watched: the observation of the environment and the local population, the possible adaptation of teaching to the specificity of the territory and its inhabitants, and the various experimentations reported in the periodical. We will be careful to Hardy's ambition to see the birth of an “indigenous pedagogy”. This study is a way for us to travel through periods, personalities, and texts, just through reading magazines and staying on French soil. It is also an opportunity to see an example of how mathematics education has been impacted by a very particular historical and sociological context. Keywords: mathematics education, French West Africa, indigenous pedagogy, official instructions, curricula, classroom experiences, level

Indigenizing and Mentoring Technology Usage in Undergraduate Teacher Education

As a partnership between a teacher education program and a public school, an introductory course in education was modernized to reflect the current technological and cultural contexts of the teaching profession. This was done to ensure the course would still be a transfer credit at other universities in the region and to ensure undergraduate students would receive a current perspective of teaching in Canada. The result of this initiative was the development of an undergraduate course infused with modeling technology used in classrooms today designed upon an indigenous pedagogical model. In theory, this allowed the students to explore the interaction of technology-enabled learning and indigenous pedagogy. In practice, this allowed the students to learn in a low-risk environment designed to reflect current realities and advances in educational practices.