"The Stars Are a Part of Us": Students Developing Awareness of Land Through Indigenous Worldviews

• In Event: In the Pursuit of Truth: Teachers and Students of Color Speaking Truth to Power

Abstract

The study explores how grade three settler students’ perceptions of Land/land were shaped by Indigenous worldviews. Using a practitioner inquiry stance, I document how students developed awareness of human reliance on life-sustaining forces. Students experimented with the language of kinship and relation to the natural world that is commonly found in Indigenous worldviews from our treaty area. I also mobilized a contrapuntal approach to visibilizing relations to land from western worldviews. Students became critically aware of the asymmetrical nature of non-reciprocal settler-colonial relations to land by exploring historical and contemporary resource extraction and land-theft. In conclusion, I reiterate how epistemological differences and truths came to bear in how students conceived of their kinship to the world around them.

Author

• Daniela Bascuñán, University of Toronto - OISE
  Presenting Author