Flash Mob Round Dancing as Indigenous Place-Based Pedagogy

• In Event: 60.067 - Collaborative Art and Activism for Eco-Justice Education

Abstract

Purposes
Indigenous peoples’ contemporary push for autonomy in the Canadian context continues a long history of resistance to settler colonialism. In this paper, I discuss the pedagogical implications of flash mob round dances associated with the place-based activism constituted within the 2012/13 Idle No More protest movement.
Perspective
The nature of, and practices associated with Indigenous resistance have changed over time but central to the pursuance of freedom is a challenging of the assumed legitimacy of the liberal democratic state and an affirming of Indigenous understandings of place-based relations. Increasingly, we see particular forms of dance being used strategically as mechanisms of Indigenous empowerment, producing fluid spaces that bring together longstanding practices of cultural expression in the struggle for Indigenous freedom. Understanding participatory practices as spatially embedded (Kesby, 2005), and movement as a form of “social poetics” Quick (2008), this paper seeks to articulate the pedagogical importance of these culturally based activist events.
Mode of inquiry
In the stories told by Cree Elders, place is the lens through which all relationships are understood – among other things, it is where the Cree language emerges from, where stories of life and death are held, and the context from which important teachings are derived. Cree ceremonies, such as the Round Dance, offer a way of maintaining and strengthening relationships across these multiple spectrums. The Round Dance, premised upon narratives handed down for generations regarding aurora borealis, or the Northern Lights – entails stories that tell of how the people who passed on came back to dance, thereby ensuring that the presence of the Ancestors would remain in the present. The spiritual and social enactment of these ceremonial dances extend beyond the people – the ceremony itself is meant to solidify our bonds with a place-based past.
Data sources
The idea of intergenerational, social, spiritual and place-based relationships, as reflected in the Cree Round Dance, offers us something for understanding Indigenous notions of place-based pedagogy, and also activist events as these occur in protest movements such as Idle No More. This paper explores the spiritually embedded, socially poetic case of the flash mob Round Dances witnessed in the streets of Vancouver, Edmonton and other large cities in 2012/13.
Conclusions
Industrial development and colonial-capitalist accumulation since the 1940s in Alberta has meant the destruction of Indigenous peoples’ ancestral homelands. A focused resistance to the spatial dimensions of destruction, as witnessed through the Idle No More movement, is in keeping with Indigenous peoples’ longstanding ethic of place-based relationality – the notion that the right way to walk involves maintaining good relations among people, and between people and local places. The role of ancient cultural practices in ceremony as well as in the resurgence of Indigenous political consciousness (Alfred & Corntassel, 2005) would seem to hold significant potential for strengthening pedagogical approaches in Indigenous contexts.

Author

• Tracy L. Friedel, The University of British Columbia