In this episode, host Beth Cougler Blom talks with Leanne Joe and Amea Wilbur about how they designed a course on Indigenous pedagogies for adult educators at the University of the Fraser Valley. Their conversation offers insights that can inspire all of us, wherever we work, to thoughtfully incorporate Indigenous voices and ways of knowing into our learning environments, enriching the experience for both ourselves and our learners.
Beth, Leanne, and Amea also talk about:
- Starting with story and relationship to land
- Bringing language, gifts, and storytelling into course design
- Navigating colonial structures while honouring Indigenous worldviews
- Using reflection and personal narrative in learning
- Engaging Elders and Knowledge Keepers in learning experiences
- Creating spaces for learners to share forward what they’ve learned by teaching others
Engage with Leanne Joe and Amea Wilbur
Links From the Episode
- Teaching Where You Are: Weaving Indigenous and Slow Principles and Pedagogies by Shannon Leddy and Lorrie Miller
- First People’s Principles of Learning
Connect with the Facilitating on Purpose Podcast
- Follow Facilitating on Purpose on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn or YouTube
- facilitatingonpurpose.com
Connect with Beth Cougler Blom
- Give feedback or suggest upcoming show topics or guests at hello@bcblearning.com
- Visit bcblearning.com to explore Beth’s company’s services in facilitation and learning design
- Purchase a copy of Beth’s book, Design to Engage
- Follow Beth on Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn
Podcast production services by Mary Chan of Organized Sound Productions
Show Transcript
[Upbeat music playing]
Beth 00:02
[Episode intro] Hello and welcome, I’m Beth Cougler Blom and this is Facilitating on Purpose. In this episode, I’m very pleased to be able to share a conversation with you that I had with two individuals that work at the University of the Fraser Valley here in British Columbia. Leanne Joe and Amea Wilbur have created a course together on Indigenous pedagogies for their undergraduate program in adult education. This conversation really will help many of us start to answer the question, how do we indigenize our learning experiences that we’re creating? No matter whether we’re in academia or working in other contexts, how do we start to understand and investigate and embody Indigenous ways of knowing and being? And where do we start?
Beth 00:53
Even if you don’t live somewhere in the world yourself where there are Indigenous peoples and you’re not undergoing a process of reconciliation like we are here in Canada, I still hope you listen to this episode for your own benefit. Perhaps you might travel here to Canada or the U.S. one day and you would want to know what’s going on in terms of our efforts to learn more about Indigenous ways of knowing and being and how to bring those into our learning experiences, into our educational environments. I hope this is not only an interesting conversation for you to listen to but a meaningful one as well, especially if you are here in Canada and definitely if you live here in British Columbia. Thanks for being here. Thanks for choosing this episode today. Enjoy the show.
Amea 01:45
[Episode start] I’m Amea and I live on Coast Salish, Musqueam, and Tsleil-Waututh land in East Vancouver and I’ve lived here for 25 years. My family are settlers. I’m third generation in Canada, third or fourth generation in Canada.
I work on Stó:lō land and I think that’s probably being maybe the most learning that I’ve done is at the University of the Fraser Valley in terms of working with Indigenous communities and working with Indigenous scholars and learning from. So maybe I’ll pass it over to my colleague Leanne because she’s one of those people that I’ve learned a lot from.
Leanne 02:31
[Speaks in Halq’eméylem] Ey swayel, Senóqw’iye tel skwix. Telí tsel kw’e Sts’ailes, qas te q̓ic̓əy̓, qas te Máthexwi, qas te Sqwá. Ch’iyáqtel kw’els st’á. Ey tel sqwalewel kw’els kwetslole, ts’i:thome ye ey syo:ys. So thank you for all your good work and thank you for being here.
I’m happy to see you here. I am Senóqw’iye. That is my traditional name. And I am from Sts’ailes, q̓ic̓əy̓, Matsqui and Sqwá. My traditional name, it comes from my mother’s mother. And she was born and raised in q̓ic̓əy̓ with her family before she was taken to residential school. And I was raised in my mother’s father’s family where they raised their children in Sts’ailes. And my dad and his mother, and our family there is from Matsqui. My three great-grandmothers are from Sqwá and the Píl’alt au tribes. And I’m currently married into Tzeachten First Nation, where my husband and his mother and her father’s family are from. We have together, between the two of us, we have eight children and 14 grandchildren. And yes, I am the Indigenous curriculum developer at the University of the Fraser Valley. And I came to be here and work in education through my love and passion for sharing Halq’eméylem, our Indigenous language here on Stó:lō Territory.
Beth 04:30
Thank you both so much. I love hearing a little bit more about you in that way and maybe I’ll share a little bit too, which I haven’t done this yet on the podcast. I’ve done this when I have facilitated to share a little bit more about myself as a person and where I am, but not on the podcast yet. So it’s nice to have this opportunity.
Beth 04:53
I grew up on what I believe is the overlapping territories of the Haudenosaunee and the Anishinaabe in Ontario. And I moved here to T’Sou-ke Nation land in Sooke, BC. And I’ve been grateful to be here in this territory, just living half my life now in BC and half of it in Ontario. But always learning about the land where I am and what it means to be sixth generation Canadian or sixth generation settler on this land and how I can keep learning—especially in my role as a facilitator, a learning designer—and how I can support reconciliation in this country. And this is part of that work to invite you on to share your good work that you’ve been doing and to learn more from you today and hopefully share more with the people who are listening. So thank you so much for being with me and can’t wait to hear more about what you’ve been up to and who you are.
Beth 06:01
Amea, maybe we can start with you. Here’s what I know so far. You both, you and Leanne, have been working on a course that you’re developing for the undergraduate program in adult education at the University of the Fraser Valley. And I’d love to know just where did that idea start and come from and how did maybe you two end up working together? What’s the story of that beginning?
Amea 06:29
So three years ago, we were revising some of our courses for our undergraduate degree. I’m the associate professor at the university and the department head. And one of the courses we revised was a course on adult education in Indigenous people in Canada. And I had the privilege of working with Dr. Marlene Atleo and Dr. Laara Fitznor on that project, both Indigenous scholars. And ended up co-teaching that course with Dr. Atleo and then with another colleague, Sherry Boudreau. And that’s a third year course.
Amea 07:05
And one of the things at the end of the year was many of the students kept saying, we want more. We want to know more. We want to engage with this material more. A lot of our students are adult educators in the community, whether they work in a post-secondary institution or they’re nursing, first responders, community-based adult educators. So they felt like they’d started this discussion and didn’t really have an opportunity to continue it in the way that they wanted.
Amea 07:44
So I ended up getting a grant to develop a fourth year course and worked with Leanne’s colleague, Lorna Andrews. That was the first conversation. And Lorna Andrews is the Indigenizer [sic] specialist. I think that’s what she’s called at UFV. And so we started working together on developing a fourth year course.
Amea 08:06
And also did some work with students. We had an advisory group with students, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people who’ve gone through the program or gone through the course. And I was fortunate enough. I think Leanne started when we were starting to have those discussions about the course and starting to engage with developing the course learning outcomes, developing the course description. And that’s how I met Leanne. And I feel very fortunate to work with her because I think it’s really, I’m very excited about this course being offered in our department. It’s something we haven’t offered before. And there’s a real desire for people to, adult educators in our case, to work in reconciliation. They’re on the ground, they’re trying to do this work and they want more knowledge and skills. And that’s how I connected with Leanne.
Beth 09:08
That’s great. Thanks for sharing some of the early beginnings. Leanne, when Amea came to you, what were your first thoughts? Did you jump in wholeheartedly? Were you saying, finally, we’re going to do this in this program? Where did it start for you?
Leanne 09:25
I actually really wasn’t very sure what I was getting into. It was Lorna. So she’s a Learning Specialist, and her specialty is in Indigenization. So she was like, Hey, I’m working on this project with Amea and I think that your participation in this project would be beneficial to both of us. So she invited me to a meeting. And at first, it was really easy to schedule time with both Lorna and myself, because I was so new, and I had nothing scheduled. And I kind of could just follow Lorna wherever she went. But as my own schedule started to fill up, getting time with Lorna and myself at the same time has become more challenging.
Leanne 10:23
And it ended up that there was a meeting that we scheduled with Amea, and Lorna wasn’t able to make it. And it just ended up being Amea and I there. And we were like, Okay, well, I have these ideas. And it ended up being me with all these like, ideas. And I was like, Okay, I see this, I see that. And I was, and then I was like, Okay, I’m excited. And I reviewed the course learning outcomes that were suggested. And then, and then these potential questions to ask Elders.
Leanne 11:01
So there was, along with the learning outcomes, there was an idea to reach out to some Knowledge Keepers and some, or Elders to come in and share knowledge. A part of the challenge with this course is that it is possibly online or that also the budget for creating the course had to be spent by a certain date. And so we worked with Dr. Shirley Hardman. Her title is she’s AVP of Indigenization. And it was like, these are the protocols that UFV follows. And I suggest you go this way.
Leanne 11:55
We wanted to record videos of Elders or Knowledge Keepers so that we were creating resources. And we thought of a few people. And we got the three best ones, I think. We put them into sections. So we had each of these three. And it worked out that they were ladies. And they were also academics. So each of the three came to UFV at one point in their life. So they were all UFV alum in one way or another. They were all educators and culturally practiced.
Leanne 12:40
So they came and they shared with us. One of them shared with us her practice with storytelling. And then the other two, one of them was about gifts. And when we say gifts, we mean like, for her specifically was her gift of working with cedar and cedar weaving. And each of them, they both worked into it a little bit of language. And they all interchange. And then finally, the last one was the language. I think that any one of those three people could have spoke to all three: language, gifts, and storytelling.
Leanne 13:29
Because with our culture, we don’t separate them. But we needed to be able to separate them for—I’m going to say—coursework weeks to be able to put it in and assign it to a weekly reading with the semester week. So we had Crystal [Chapman] come in and talk about storytelling. But then she also talked a little bit about respecting language and land when she’s working with cedar, because you need to know the language when you’re telling a story. And you need to have something to tell a story about.
Leanne 14:14
So then you talk a little bit about your gifts as well. And then we had Gracie Kelly come in and she talked about the gifts. When she was talking about it, she was using language as well. And she was talking about stories. Because when you have gifts, you also have stories.
Leanne 14:35
You have to tell the story of how you came to get your gift and how you practice this. And then we had Christine Seymour come and she talked about the language. And when you study our language, I mean, really study our language, looking back at the history of our language and the words that exist, you learn all about the way that our ancestors used to think. It is true that so much, like so definitely true that other cultures from around the world believe this. To really learn a culture, you have to learn the language. Or when you learn a people’s language, you learn their culture. You can’t learn one without the other.
Leanne 15:25
Not entirely anyways. You can study our culture. You can try. But if you really study our language deeply, you will have to learn some Halq’eméylem. And they’re so interconnected that there are some words in our language that don’t exist in English. Or to be able to explain it in English, it’ll take a sentence or a paragraph or a full, in some cases, essay to try to explain what a word means. So I was like, yes, let’s do this. But we have to do it right. And we have to do it with respect. It always works out for me that I don’t want to say always, but mostly. I have this like, it’s like a deep desire for that matriarchy piece to come back.
Leanne 16:37
It sounds a little bit arrogant to try to say it in English or in any language, I guess. But to have the women to take their place. Like so often, it is easy to say, oh, this guy, he’s doing a great job and he does all this. And then we look at how far these women came. They did it while raising kids and they did it while doing all these things. And I’m like, no, let’s call this lady because I know she does all this and she does this and she does that.
Beth 17:18
I love that. It sounds like they’re so powerful. I don’t know. Is that a good word to use? It’s the word I want to use. Maybe it’s not the right word. But these women Elders bring so much to life, right? But the work and…can I ask you though? When you start off and there are learning outcomes that sound like they’ve already been written and then you say, well, we want to invite Elders to, we’re going to record them. And like, that’s a colonial structure, right? Isn’t it? Learning outcomes and weeks [chuckles] of an online course? And right off the, from the bat here, I want to say like, how did you reconcile that fitting what is very intertwined—I’m kind of using my hands—like you were saying it’s gifts and it’s language and it’s storytelling and it’s hard to pull it all apart, but we have to put it into weeks. Like, how did you even start with that kind of two, I mean, it’s a two truths thing that has to somehow come together on the design side. Like, how do you do that?
Amea 18:31
I think there’s a couple of pieces. We work in colonial structures, like a university is a colonial structure, but there are places we can disrupt those structures, right? Sometimes it’s just a crack though, it’s not a big open river or whatever, whatever kind of metaphor we want to use. But with these learning outcomes, like they were developed with Lorna Andrews, they were developed with the students. You know, Leanne came in and had input in those too. So it wasn’t that they were, those learning outcomes were necessarily…the idea that we have to have learning outcomes and a course description and have it by week, absolutely. But there are spaces where we can come together and co-develop and collaborate in ways that sometimes people don’t even recognize that they can do that, we have to find those cracks. So I don’t know, Leanne go ahead, if you want to say something. [chuckles]
Leanne 19:30
Okay, so when I was thinking about this, I thought about it like I was teaching a baby or how I would teach a raising child. And where do you start? What is the first thing you teach your children? What is the first thing you tell people new when you first meet them?
What is the first thing Elders ask you when you want to know them? Lorna and I, we looked at the learning outcomes. And then we came up with sort of like a recommendation for course content and structure of the learning. We had suggestions for the modules and the first module would be about your story. And it sort of lined up really well with a book that we kind of both agreed we would use if we were the ones to teach this course.
Leanne 20:33
And it’s written by Dr. Shannon Leddy and Lorrie Miller. I’m more familiar with Dr. Leddy than Lorrie Miller. I’m just going to give her a shout out right now because she is about to be, actually she’s agreed already, she’s agreed to be my supervisor for my PhD starting in September.
Leanne 20:57
So yeah, they together wrote this book called Teaching Where You Are: Indigenous and Slow Pedagogies. So when I came here, Lorna had this book and she was like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I think I’m going to use this book for this course that I’m creating. And this was the course that she’s working on with Amea. I was like, hey, I know that lady. And I was like, you know, working on this project with Shannon. And I was like, I’m going to talk to her about this and see, you know, what she thinks about this.
Leanne 21:33
I was like, really excited that my two worlds were colliding. And I was like, really excited. So I got myself a copy of the book and I read through the book really quickly. And I was like, I have to read this book. And I went to a dinner and it was like a group dinner and Shannon signed my copy of her book that she’d written. And I was like, you know, really happy about this. And I was like, yes, this book is perfect for teaching what we need to teach for achieving these learning outcomes that Lorna is talking about.
Leanne 22:12
And then I was like, okay, we start out by needing to situate ourselves on the land. When we introduce ourselves, we’re not just telling people who we are. We’re telling the land who we are. We’re telling the spirits who we are. Whether you believe or not, if that’s your way or not, you can believe it, you can not. But it is important to show your appreciation to the land. Remember that with you as a human being, with me as a human being, we rely heavily on everything that the land gives us. Animals, they’re our food, our shelter, our medicine, they’re companions. They’re our, you know, they’re our everything like that. And then we have our plants, again, food, medicine, shelter. And then the water, we need it to survive. We are ourselves, we are like 80% water. We need water, we can’t live without the water. All of those things, though, they can live without us.
Leanne 23:28
You know, those are teachings that come back in my family, like we’ve learned this over and over again. I can name a few Elders that have said this, that I’ve heard say this, but I might forget to name all of the ones that I’ve said, or that I’ve heard say that, because it is something that is taught to us in almost every ceremony or in every gathering. So I know that one of the Elders that helped pave the way for Indigenization here at UFV is Mark Point.
Leanne 24:05
He is one of the ones who I remember very distinctly telling us that the animals and the trees and the plants and the water, they can live without us, we can’t live without them. So he’s from Skowkale in Chilliwack. And then I heard Elders in Sts’ailes. My papa used to say that and other members of the community as well. Most recently, there’s a couple of brothers, their youngest sister works here now at UFV in the Indigenous Student Centre. Her older brothers are Willie, Kelsey, Kevin, and Darren Charlie. And they would tell the stories about how we rely on the land. They also would talk about how the women in our community are the decision makers and that we should respect the women.
Leanne 25:07
So starting the whole course with that telling our story and situating ourselves on the land. Who are we? Where do we come from? And where our ancestral lineage comes from? Not just where we were born, but where our blood and our bones and all our ancestors, our bones are. So yes, I was born in Mission, but my ancestors, my ancestors are from Sts’ailes. I was born in Mission Hospital because [slightly chuckles] that’s where the hospital was. And we had to be born in hospitals by the time I was born. But my grandpa, my grandpa was born in Sq’ewlets because Sq’ewlets was, I guess, a legal birthplace on his birth certificate says like Sq’ewlets Berryfield or something like that. I was like, really? That’s where people were born back then? [chuckles]
Leanne 26:15
But when we know where our roots are, we also acknowledge the work that our grandparents did to get us here because they worked to make sure we had a better life than they did. Because we know we still do the same for our kids. I work and do everything I do to make sure my kids have a better life. And that is an understanding that I know my mom made all the decisions she did so I would have a better life than she did. And my grandparents did the same for her and they did the same for me.
Leanne 26:55
And it goes on and on, is something that we kind of teach in the class. And then the next step after that goes with the next chapter, which is who are you going to be in? What is your commitment? So you’re here, so now what? Taking that and saying, okay, what is it that you’re going to learn? What do you want to learn about while you’re here? There are different things that people want to learn with Indigenization. And some of it is about the land. Some of it is about the language. Some of it is about the water. Some of it will interweave and overlap. But most of it has room for a little bit of focus in one area. And then saying, like, we’re starting to know who we are.
Leanne 27:48
We know why we’re here. What are we going to do with it? At this point, I would have introduced the syllabus, or Lorna will have introduced the syllabus. And I keep doing this and Amea is like, please teach this course. [Amea laughs.] And I’m like, I cannot. I do not.
Beth 28:07
Oh, so do you just come to the first, it’s online, right? So are you just coming to the first, sorry, I should say, is it virtual or is it asynchronous or both?
Amea 28:18
So, adult ed in our program, it’s online. But we do have synchronous, like we meet biweekly or weekly, in the case of this course, in Zoom.
The reason for that is because a lot of our students aren’t even in the Lower Mainland. We have students from across Western Canada. So, Leanne has developed the syllabus for the course. We’re still trying to sort out who will end up teaching it at this point. You know, Leanne’s busy. [Beth laughs.] And this is the thing with, I think, with Indigenous colleagues is they get asked to do a lot of work and there’s only usually one or two of them.
Beth 28:58
Yeah, this is what I’ve heard before. It’s very common and we appreciate the time, right? Because we need the time, but then you can’t do it all. Those of us who aren’t Indigenous have to step up too, right? [Amea: Yeah.] And keep our learning going. Yeah.
Amea 29:12
Yeah, I was just gonna say that it’s important that we that we step up.
Beth 29:17
Yeah. Amea, people won’t be watching the video because I don’t release the video. [laughs] So they’re listening to you and they don’t know. Can I say what you look like to me? Yeah.
Amea 29:28
Yeah. I mean, I’m my family, I can just give you a bit of a background if that’s more helpful. But I’m my family’s from England and France. And my one of my grandfather’s was American. But I’m white.
Beth 29:41
I’m wondering, you know, because I’m white too, I’ve said it before in the podcast, I think people know this. I think about myself working with Leanne and what I would learn from her throughout this process.
So let me ask you, how did you grow as a person in your knowledge around Indigenous pedagogies? What was a little bit of your journey, your knowledge journey, as you worked on this with Leanne?
Amea 30:05
I’m actually going to go back to before I worked with Leanne if that’s okay. [Beth: Sure.] And it goes to the question that you had about working within colonial systems. So I worked in the community for 25 years before I ended up at the university but one of the things that I noticed when I started with the other project, which has been helpful when I go into working with everybody, is that the project that I worked on with the course outlines—another Indigenous course —is that I wanted to go right into the like outcomes.
Amea 30:42
You know I’m like , “We’re going to develop the course outline like right now”, and the two women that were you know my I would say my mentors, especially Dr. Atleo was like, “Hold on. We’re going to have a discussion about how we’re going to work together before we work together. And we ended up in a long conversation over you know a number of times about principles and how we’re going to work together before we got to the work. And that’s when I sort of recognized my colonial kind of like okay but okay you know I need to get this done because this is something I…you know.
Amea 31:26
And it was such an important learning experience for me, that sort of really rethinking the importance of relationship, that that’s part of the process and that’s part of the work right? So I mean I’ve learned a ton from Leanne. Like the conversations we had with Crystal and Christine and Gracie like there’s so many layers. You know learning about the community that I work in, learning about stories, learning about gifts, learning about protocols and the importance of all of those things.
Beth 32:06
The students that are going to take this course are going to take so much from it and in lots of different ways, but you’ve talked about storytelling, you’ve talked about gifts, you’ve talked about language. You know, what do you think those major shifts are that you’re trying to work towards, work those learners towards? Is there, I don’t want to say one big thing, but you know, if they don’t learn anything else, they’re only in this course for a short period of time. What do you have to shift for them that’s most important?
Leanne 32:38
So one of the things that is the main hope or main aim is that their big assignment is to learn one thing and be able to teach it, create a lesson plan around it. Because this is an adult ed class. They are learning how to teach these things.
So the hope is that they’re going to do some land practice. There is an assignment that is a land practice. They have to go out and find an artifact that represents their perspective or their learning or there’s a couple of options in the syllabus. And the assignment details that says, okay, go and get this artifact and be ready to come back to class next day and share about this artifact and in a way that is meaningful to you. But create a lesson plan with a 10-minute mini lesson so that you’re teaching us about your artifact. So if your artifact is a rock, you need to teach about it, right? So there is teaching and there are mini lessons. There are colonial aspects to this course.
Beth 34:06
Sorry, to break in. That’s exactly what I was thinking. I was like, oh, no, 10 minutes! [laughs] That’s so hard in this course, particularly, right?
Because I teach the ISW, the Instructional Skills Workshop too, and that 10 minute mini lesson gets push back all the time. But your course is about Indigenous pedagogy. So it’s such a challenge to fit into that.
Leanne 34:27
Right. And it is a challenge for me too, because I can talk and talk and talk about things. But these are micro things like, if your lesson is about something specific, it’s about staying on topic and staying on point. And when it comes to Indigenization, for people who are not Indigenous, it is so easy to get overwhelmed. So saying you only have to talk about this or teach about it for 10 minutes is not as overwhelming. I hope anyways, that’s what I hope.
Leanne 35:03
Because if you tell me that I have to teach a three hour lecture on the counting system in Halq’eméylem, I’m going to freak out. But if you tell me I have 10 minutes to teach about counting in Halq’eméylem, oh, I can do that. No problem. You know, it’s a different thing. So it is also about being able to create lessons that incorporate Indigenous perspective. And recognizing that your perspective is what it is. And how different is your perspective than the Indigenous First People’s Principles of Learning or the perspective of the community closest to you.
Leanne 35:46
So if I were the one teaching this, and I will encourage Lorna to include this, I would talk about the Stó:lō perspective or her Nlaka’pamux perspective. And saying that this is how we would do it in my community, or this is what my community thinks about this, how is it in the land where, in the community that you are.
Leanne 36:08
So like, if somebody wanted to reach out to a Stó:lō Elder, these are the steps they would have to go through. Or if somebody wanted to visit this kind of ceremony in this territory, this is what they would have to do. So there are going to be those kinds of teachings along the way. So one, you have to know that you are from away. Even if you are born here, you’re from away.
Leanne 36:33
If you are not from away, like so say there’s another Indigenous student in the class, and they are born and raised, Sts’ailes, or, you know, Stó:lō, like I am from here, then they would explain that, like explain how they are connected to this territory that they’re learning, living and learning on. So I’m not from Tzeachten, I recognize that I’m away, from away, in my husband’s territory in his community.
Leanne 37:13
So language and gifts are interchangeable. Storytelling is the foundation of how we learn. Right now, our language is, it is vital that we work on reviving and revitalizing and vitalizing our language. Because for Stó:lō people, our language is, it is being relearned through books. I was taught a lot of language by Elders who spoke it as a first language. But right now there is only, there are two people who can speak from first language. One of them is recognized out there in the world, everybody knows who she is, and everybody knows she exists. And then there’s another who, her family knows who she is, but not everybody recognizes that she’s a fluent speaker. Other than that, there are about, actually, I counted, there are 75 people on a list who have gone all the way through the 300 levels and continue to work and learn in language. That’s not a lot. When you think about like 75, of those 75, 14 are certified teachers, and only of those 14, two are still actively teaching Halq’eméylem in schools.
Beth 38:48
Because I’m just thinking about your learners coming from different nations, lands, how do you deal with language in this course, then, knowing folks are coming from all over the place? Like, are you talking about principles generally related to language and bringing it into education? Or are you using language to teach in some ways because the Elders are speaking it? Or I don’t know.
So, help me understand how language, how you teach principles around language in this course, knowing that you have learners from all sorts of different land.
Leanne 39:25
In Stó:lō territory, Halq’eméylem is, like upriver Halq’eméylem where we are, is the language of the land. These are the steps that are being taken and then ask what’s happening on the land that you’re on? What does the language look like there? Can you share with me these details? And you know have opened that dialogue. Because on your territory I’m not an expert in language there.
Leanne 39:55
And then I would say like because in BC the language is in a tough situation whereas in Manitoba or Saskatchewan they might have a better situation. So teaching where you are is relevant to this course because I work at UFV. I live at UFV like on UFV.
Amea 40:19
[Laughs] Hopefully you’re not living there!
Leanne 40:22
Practically sometimes it feels like it. Like I live on the land where UFV is and that’s where I was born and raised and my family has been here. And for me to say that I know enough about any other territory would be a lie.
Beth 40:41
There’s so much. I mean, how many nations do we have across Canada? 640-something I want to say. It’s a lot.
Leanne 40:50
And the languages, I don’t know enough about their languages to try to teach those languages or I just don’t know enough about them at all.
Beth 40:58
Well, no, but you’re teaching educators and they’re going to be working in all sorts of different contexts, aren’t they? So you’re, gosh, it’s so hard to put into words, isn’t it? Like all that you’re trying to do, I’m really kind of struggling with it to be honest as well.
But, well I’m looking at some of my notes, this worldview piece, like if we come away as your learners with Indigenous worldviews, then we can continue to do the work ourselves a little bit, can we? Our eyes are opened a little bit.
Leanne 41:34
Yes. [Beth: OK.] So the hope is that at the beginning of the course, the instructor would say you have this one big assignment and it is to, at the end of the course, be able to teach about one of the chapters. Teach to one of the chapters from this course. So read ahead, read behind, read through the syllabus and pick one topic and create a lesson plan for this topic because in our last class, everybody is going to teach a mini lesson on their selected topic.
Leanne 42:14
And then some people will write a paper, some people will create PowerPoint slides or a video or whatever. They have to represent their reflection, how…there’s a lot of reflection in this course as well. Reflecting on “at first I thought now I think” and “now what”? Also “what I know” or “what I think I know” and “what I want to learn” and now and “what I actually learned”and “what it means to me”, kind of those like KWL chart kind of like organizational charts to help them with their reflections. So there are those. So it is all about personal growth, reflection and choosing the topic that you think is going to help you learn the most.
Leanne 43:15
So like they get the syllabus at the beginning, they know chapter one is about situating yourself on the land and your story, your own story. Chapter two is a little bit more about like decolonization and like your perspective and your frame of mind. Chapter three and so on and so on and there’s one chapter about the land and the way we see the land and then another one about language and another one about like gathering and hunting and fishing and the gifts, that’s where that fits in. And then there’s another one about putting this stuff to work now and what do we do with it all? And it kind of circles back to how do we assess the learning of all these things? So there’s a little bit of that in there too.
Leanne 44:11
And in our way of assessing something like when we learn something as Indigenous people we don’t get a test. Our examination is actually like if we tell our teacher, whether it’s our auntie or our grandma or uncle or our grandpa or whoever, we think we know how to do it ourselves. Like, oh, you don’t have to you don’t have to watch me anymore. I know how to do this. They say, OK, well, go teach your little brother how to do it then or go teach your little sister how to do it or go teach go teach your niece how to do it. That’s when you know is not when you can show me you did it, when you can show me that you can teach somebody else how to do it.
Beth 44:57
I love that so much because I mean the colonial words for that are authentic assessment, right? Where you’re getting people to do that final assignment, teaching others in what you would do at home, what you would do with your family. And yeah, that’s really nice.
Leanne 45:14
Right. So, there’s a lot of, I want to say, experiential learning, but also a lot of reading. When I was first starting to create the content or create the syllabus, I had to message Amea and be like, what is the appropriate amount of reading for a 400 level course? Like, am I assigning too much reading here? It’s been a little bit.
Leanne 45:40
And I’ve had courses where there was like one reading, and then I’ve had courses where it felt like there was 12 readings for a week, and I was like, this is too much. And, you know, trying to survive that or sustain it. And then I was like, I think the most productive learning for even my grade 10 students or grade 8 students is when they can pick what they want to learn and focus. And I think as adults, if they each get to pick one chapter or one section and teach to that, because they also have to come out of this adult ed class knowing how to make a lesson plan about this stuff. So they need to be able to teach to it.
Beth 46:34
Can I ask you about the Elders? Did you, so it’s an online course, did you record them? And then the videos are in the course, or are they coming to your virtual sessions or both?
Amea 46:44
It’s actually interesting because the reason we did the recordings was because when I used to teach I would have Elders join the class in Zoom. But it was quite complicated and it was at night. And it was so this was a way of bringing Knowledge Keepers and Knowledge Holders into the class but in a different way so we did record them. So we’ll probably show part of a recording, right Leanne? Or so it’s a way of bringing them in but not necessarily having them have to come in to a Zoom class at night.
Beth 47:24
Yeah. And is it a way to not burden those few people as well? I mean, you teach the course every year or multiple times a year and it’s a lot [Amea: Yeah] like just what we were talking about before. Yeah. So is that an acceptable way to bring Knowledge Keepers into a learning experience? [Amea: Hmm mm.] Yeah.
Amea 47:42
I mean I think it’s important to think about how you compensate people too with this because the way that we did it was we provided compensation for doing the videos but we also are providing compensation with the idea that they’re coming to 10 classes. So it’s not just that they made the video for us but they’re also a visitor in you know a number of classes and that was part of how the money was allocated.
Beth 48:13
That’s nice. Yeah. Thanks for sharing that. It’s a, it’s a, not an insignificant detail, isn’t it? It’s to pay people what their time is worth. And I mean, you, you can’t always afford what they’re worth really, but you, because you have a budget, you said it before, but yeah, to, to work the numbers that way.
Amea 48:33
And it’s also like, I think, and I’m sure Leanne can speak to this too, because it was another conversation I had with Lorna and Leanne was just making sure that those videos are for this class. Because, you know, often historically, you know, things got used in ways that people maybe didn’t feel that they were actually, they were, they were not empowered and they weren’t, it wasn’t where they wanted their voice to be. So we’re really clear that these resources are for this class and they’re only shared in this space.
Beth 49:08
That’s good to know for those of us who might be engaging folks ourselves and just to be really, really clear with folks what they’re signing up for. And this, I think.
Amea 49:18
And this I learned from Lorna and Leanne, you know, it was really helpful. Because, you know, I might show a video for in a class that I’m doing with the TED Talk or something. And then somebody else might use it in a different class. And, you know, we have to be really conscious about how we go about doing that because it’s someone’s knowledge that they’re sharing, right? And they may not want it shared in a particular space.
Beth 49:43
I feel like we can continue to talk about what you’ve done here for so long. I know we have to end [chuckles] somewhere, but as we work our way to closing our time together, is there anything that either one of you would like to say about just this experience and what you hope? Because you haven’t launched the course yet. What’s your big hope for what the impact of this is?
Leanne 50:11
I think for people to sort of leave the course, feeling like they are comfortable sharing forward or teaching forward, because that’s the question on so many people’s mind is, where do I start? How do I teach? How do I learn enough to teach? And I think the activities in this course sort of push people to do the things that I would say to people wanting to start. So whoever takes this course and completes it successfully will sort of be walking out the door, having completed the steps that I might say to somebody on no matter what territory they’re on to go and do.
Leanne 51:08
So that they can learn what they need to on the territory they’re on, whether it is about the language or the land or both, or these resources that Lorna and I put together or that we created. I feel like it’s put together in a way that it can be taught by, I want to say almost anybody with a little bit of support from either me or Lorna or both of us. But there is sort of that room for this course to be something that gets shared forward in a way. Like teachers are being told you have to Indigenize, professors, you have to Indigenize and everybody is in this place of where do you start? How do I start? What should I do? Am I doing this right? And these are all good questions. And I’m hoping that this course helps to answer and alleviate some of that stress.
Beth 52:18
Yeah, that sounds wonderful. It’s such a good grounding for that sharing forward as you say. Yeah, I want to take it. [They laugh.] Offer it through Continuing Studies so the rest of us can take it too. Amea, any final words from you? What are your hopes for this impact?
Amea 52:39
I think Leanne covered a lot of it. You know, this journey towards reconciliation is long.
It’s important that people engage in it and the students that would be coming into this class want to be a part of this. My hope is that they find some space in the class, as Leanne said, to really engage with it and to want to continue the work.
Beth 53:04
Absolutely. Thank you both so much for spending this time and telling me so much and especially Leanne, you know, sharing so much about your world and your family and, you know, the genesis of this idea of both of you and Lorna as well. It’s been really wonderful to hear about this little bit of the journey. There’s so much more that we couldn’t talk about, but I appreciate what you’ve shared with me today.
Amea 53:32
Thanks, Beth.
Leanne 53:33
All right. Ts’íthome. [in Halq’eméylem]
Beth 53:33
[Episode outro] It was a real pleasure to be in conversation with Leanne and Amea about this topic. It’s one that I’ve actually wanted to bring to the podcast for some time, and I’m very pleased that I was able to do this finally with Amea and Leanne’s help. There are so many things that are still resonating with me that I heard in the conversation with the two of them. One of them is just the way they’ve started the course that they were talking about. Your story as a learner, if you were taking the course, who are you? Where do you come from? What is your relationship to the land? And then going into what is your commitment? What do you want to learn about Indigenization?
Beth 54:21
I think even for all of us listening to this episode, these are questions that we can ask ourselves that would help us if we wanted to integrate Indigenous ways of knowing and being into our classrooms, into our educational experiences. We can do this work on ourselves, and then we bring it forward to our learners or to our students. So those were very interesting places to begin, with relationship building with ourselves and with others, and making that commitment to actually go to a learning space, go to an action space of what we want to do when we choose to learn about Indigenous knowledges.
Beth 55:03
Another point I want to reinforce, I think it was something that Leanne said when we were talking about the 10 minute mini lesson, that yes, this topic can get overwhelming to any of us. We don’t know where to start with our learning around Indigenous peoples, around reconciliation practices at a larger scale. But if we think about just small steps to begin with, the equivalent of choosing a topic for a 10 minute mini lesson and facilitating a group through that, that’s a place to start. It’s not a three-hour class, it’s a 10-minute class.
Beth 55:38
So we can take that micro learning kind of concept and apply it to the learning that we need to do to learn more about Indigenous peoples. She gave us some resources, both of them did. And I’ll have those in the show notes for you. There are many places that we can all go to learn more. And keep watching, watch for this course to come up at University of the Fraser Valley. And I know that there are other similar courses at other educational institutions, and there might be one near you as well. So keep looking, keep looking for open educational resources that may be out there, where you can keep expanding your knowledge. And I wish Amea and Leanne and all the other folks at UFB who are involved, including the knowledge keepers that they were mentioning, of course, them particularly, wishing everyone the best of success with this course. And I thank them both for coming and telling me about it on the show.
Beth 56:34
On the next episode of the podcast, it’s a solo one with me. And I’m going to be talking about learning that lasts. I’m going to try to answer some questions for you, the big ones that a lot of us have when we’re designing learning. How do we design for learning that lands and lasts beyond the session? And how do we make learning experiences more memorable? Catch this solo episode next time with me on the show. We’ll see you then.
Beth 57:02
[Show outro] Thank you for listening to Facilitating on Purpose. If you were inspired by something in this episode, please share it with a friend or a colleague to help them expand their facilitation practice too. To find the show notes, give me feedback or submit ideas for future episodes, visit facilitatingonpurpose.com. Special thanks to Mary Chan at Organized Sound Productions for producing this episode. Happy Facilitating.
