Accessing New Directions in Early Childhood Education by Thinking With Land and Engaging With Foxes

• In Event: Common Worlding Pedagogies: Unsettling Early Childhood Curriculum

Abstract

In this presentation, I invite participants to grapple with the complexities of and shifting relations between arctic foxes and young Inuit children’s entanglements in Nunavik in the context of settler colonialism. The activities of my research and this presentation take place as part of an effort to reclaim Inuit approaches to knowing and being in early childhood education. This talk touches on the kinds of co-flourishings that occur during the autumn months when foxes are particularly abundant, and become determined to co-inhabit with an Inuit community on Hudson’s Bay. The presentation includes photos –current and historical, a recent video clip, insights from conversations and reflections. The audience is invited to grapple with questions such as: How do young children learn about inequities in settler/Inuit relations? How might the way in which children and foxes are intimately related in the lands of the Arctic require new approaches to early childhood pedagogies? How might considering Inuit ways of living and dying with foxes influence curricular decisions in ECE?
I am concerned with the contemporary purposes, productions and doings of Inuit Early Childhood Education grounded as they are with Euro-western theory and structure (Rowan, In press). Anishnaabeg scholar Leanne Simpson writes about “reclaiming land as pedagogy, both as process and context for Nishnaabeg intelligence, in order to nurture a generation of Indigenous peoples that have the skills, knowledge and values to rebuild our nation according to the worldviews and values of Nishnaabeg culture” (Simpson, 2014, p. 1). Inuk scholar Jackie Price (2008) argues that, “Inuit must look back to Inuit knowledge systems in order to imagine a time where Inuit are able to rise above the colonial chaos. Inuit must remember the lessons that come from interacting with the land” (p. 129).
I see trapping, skinning and eating fox in early childhood practice as a strategy for connecting with the land and opening to conversations about the roots of inequities. I also understand that being and doing ECE with children, Elders, educators and foxes is a way of linking to Inuit knowledge in pedagogy and curriculum.
In the fall of 2014, I spent two months in an Inuit community in the Canadian Arctic. The focus of the research had been developed local Inuit over a period of several years and the methods included a case study, action research approach in which about 100 children, 50 parents, 18 educators, 3 Elders, 5 hunters, the pedagogical counselor and centre director were involved. Data sources included a daily journal, observation notes, interviews, informal conversations, meeting notes, educator made learning stories, photos, videos, and materials harvested during the process of about 20 outdoor excursions that were then transformed into objects during other indoor events.
By working with Elder’s and hunters to trap, skin, butcher, tan and eat a white fox, children and educator’s actively engaged in living Inuit ways of knowing and being in ECE and thereby unsettling Eurowestern hegemonies and propogating new directions in Inuit ECE.

Author

• Mary Caroline Rowan, University of New Brunswick