Keywords

Introduction

In 2015, Canada launched a multi-generation national project of reconciliation between the original inhabitants and the settlers who have been arriving over the last three hundred years. Senator Murray Sinclair, the Chair of the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) continuously states: “education got us into this mess. Education will get us out” (Truth and Reconciliation Commission, 2015). His statement affirms education’s ability to transform individuals, institutions and societies. The promise of education is that it can transform the relationship between Indigenous peoples and Canada and foster a Canada that treats the original inhabitants with dignity and respect. The Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) argues that for this to happen, “there has to be awareness of the past, acknowledgement of the harm that has been inflicted, atonement for the causes, and action to change behaviour” (2015).

This paper reflects on the efforts of a group of Indigenous and non-Indigenous university instructors to create a transformative education experience for students in a first-year Indigenous Studies course at Trent University in Peterborough, Canada. Our efforts are founded in Indigenous Knowledge (IK), the foundation of the Trent University Chanie Wenjack School for Indigenous Studies. The first-year Indigenous Studies course entitled Foundations for Reconciliation has an enrolment of 2000 students comprising about 55% of students entering first year. As of September 2018, all Trent students must take a one-semester course on Indigenous issues as a requirement for graduation. We had a captive audience, so to speak, and an excellent opportunity to see if we might create transformative experience for those who did not want to take the course. Consistent with the IK foundation of the Chanie Wenjack School, we based our teaching on Indigenous pedagogies of narrative story-telling and reflective exercises. As 95% of our students were non-Indigenous, we wondered if Indigenous pedagogies could foster a transformation of the attitudes, values and beliefs held by our students about Indigenous peoples and help them to find their place in the huge Canadian Reconciliation project. What we learned is the subject of this paper.

Background

Over the decades, transformative teaching and learning has become a key concept in education, generating much discussion, theory and applications. Mezirow (1997) articulated a theory of transformation and defined it as “the process of effecting change in a frame of reference” (1997, p. 5). Through his work with adult education, Mezirow indicated that adults experience and understand the world based on their frames of reference. Adults become attached to these ideas and dismiss those ideas that do not fit our preconceived narratives. Transformative teaching and learning seek to upend understanding by guiding learners through a process to question their own assumptions. Through creating disorienting circumstances, students are asked to critically reflect on the new knowledge with the resulting impact often leading towards a shift in their worldview.

Transformative teaching and learning can encompass a variety of understandings (Hoggan, 2015). There is no one approach to transformative teaching and learning, as there are a number of overlapping concepts, including theorists who have tried to distill transformative learning into concepts and approaches. Stevens-Long et al. (2011) describe transformative learning as four intersecting theoretical perspectives based on: a cognitive-rational approach, a depth psychology approach, a structural-developmental approach, and a social emancipatory approach. Transformative learning is expanding one’s awareness of socio-cultural reality through action, reflection and discourse; and the transformative education develops the realization of hegemonic social tendencies, socio-cultural freedom, and understanding ways to take constructive action (Stevens-Long et al., 2011; Walker, 2018, p. 26).

The lead instructor, David Newhouse, Onondaga,Footnote 1 grounds the course in Haudenosaunee educational philosophy:

The purpose of teaching is to foster good minds so that we may engage the world mindfully, with rationality and with full awareness of self as an interconnected being whose actions affect and are affected by others. We live as part of a web of life and education helps us to foster peace among all living things. We are educated when we understand ourselves, the nature of the world that we live within, what we might offer to it and can act to advance peace.

The teaching and learning approaches in Indigenous Studies are consistent with the social emancipatory approach to transformative learning. Williams and Brant (2019) suggest that transformative education resonates with Indigenous education pedagogies which aim to help the learner come to understand not just themselves but the broader context in which they live and how social forces influence and shape their individual and collective selves. The Trent Centre for Teaching and Learning defines Indigenous pedagogical approaches as “holistic in nature, focusing on the four interrelated dimensions of human development. A learner’s academic or cognitive knowledge, self-awareness, emotional and spiritual growth are all equally valued, challenging dominant ideologies that specifically neglect the latter domain” (Hugeunin, 2020). Adopting an Indigenous pedagogical approach meant that as instructors we should pay attention to all four dimensions. We also adopted Indigenous pedagogical strategies: narrative, experiential and relational (Archibald, 2008).

Canadian universities responded to the TRC calls for action by developing Indigenization plans. A key feature of these plans has been the development of new programs and curricula intended to provide students with a broad understanding of Canadian colonialism and its impact upon Indigenous peoples, as well as Indigenous responses to colonialism.

The Chanie Wenjack School for Indigenous Studies at Trent University has been a Canadian leader in teaching about Indigenous people and issues for more than a half century. The school offers a range of programs from undergraduate diploma programs to PhD. In 2017, as a result of a report from the Senate Committee on Indigenous Education, Trent became the third university in Canada to implement an Indigenous Course Requirement (ICR): Every incoming undergraduate student, approximately 3600 students per year, must complete an ICR course as part of their undergraduate degree program. The Senate Committee argued that an understanding of Indigenous peoples’ histories, cultures, aspirations and knowledge are important to a 21st Canada (Trent, 2017).

Learning about its colonial history, its impact on Indigenous peoples, and one’s part in maintaining colonialism has not been a part of Canadian public-school (kindergarten-secondary) education. Most students see colonization as the actions of past generations and do not see how their actions in the present continue the actions of the past. However, as a study that examined attitudes, values and beliefs about reconciliation among Canadian youth (Environics, 2019) indicates, young people are aware of this history and are optimistic about reconciliation.

Cree-Métis Elder Michael ThrasherFootnote 2 uses the medicine circleFootnote 3 to describe the process of learning (Heart-Mind Online, 2020). He teaches us that learning is a cycle that moves from awareness to understanding to knowledge and then to wisdom. Our learning journey is guided by action, reflection, and feeling. For him, like many Indigenous Elders, transformational teaching is the process that moves us around the medicine circle from initial awareness to understanding, knowledge and awareness. Elder Thrasher tells stories and then asks you to interpret them. He encourages students to demonstrate their knowledge in practical actions. He teaches that you know something when you are able to take it inside of yourself and then express it in your words and, if appropriate, act upon it. This Elder, like many others, will not simply give you the answer. You must figure it out for yourself.

The ICR Challenge

Our challenge is to move our 2000 students around the Medicine Wheel: from awareness to understanding to knowledge and then to wisdom. The teaching group consists of 5 instructors and 16 teaching assistants, most of whom are non-Indigenous. More than 90% of our students have not taken an Indigenous Studies course before they arrive in our classrooms. Based upon our course surveys, 4 out of 5 of our students are non-Indigenous and 5% of our students are international students. At the start of the course, we asked why students enrolled and we found that most took the course to meet the ICR credit. Moreover, three out of four students told us they did not want to take the course and would not have enrolled were it not a requirement.

Students also come to the class with an expectation of an Indigenous cultural and spiritual experience, that exams and tests will be mostly content recall, and that the course will be an easy credit. Students want us to tell them information through lectures and readings which they then give back to us. They also come to the class with stereotypes about Indigenous peoples that they have encountered through the news and entertainment media.

The challenge of achieving a transformative educational experience in an ICR setting is helping students to recognize that their learning affects all four aspects of the human being: mind, body, emotions and spirit. Students are presented with learning experiences that challenge conceptions of the country they grew up in, conceptions of themselves, and of Indigenous peoples; in some cases, it even challenges their spirituality and religion as they discover the impact of Christian missionaries and Indian Residential Schools. It can be an unsettling experience for many students to discover that their country has a history of colonization and that there continues to be colonial structures that drive our society, from which some of them benefit. Similarly, it can be unsettling for them to learn that Indigenous resistance is long-standing and widespread and based upon a desire to exercise self-determination. Students are unaware of the literature written by Indigenous leaders, setting out their ideas, critiques and analysis of Canada dating from the 1800s and continuing to the current time.

Our course is also significantly different from first-year social science offerings. We use a narrative approach (Archibald, 2008) presenting our material through the lens of story. Using the Thrasher medicine wheel approach, we start with creating an awareness through telling a story. Then, we help our students to move to understanding and knowledge by asking them to recall the main elements of the story (content recall), as well as express their own understanding and meaning of the story through reflective exercises. Finally, we ask them what they will do now that they know the story, moving them from knowledge to action. Our students are pre-occupied in a search for the “right answer” and not with acting upon the knowledge they have gained.

Elder Thrasher teaches that moving through the learning cycle takes time. We do not expect everybody will internalize their teachings from the first time they hear a narrative. For most of us we will need to hear the narrative several times before it becomes understanding, and we need to act upon it before it becomes knowledge. A few years ago, a student went to the school administrator to launch a complaint about an AnishinaabeFootnote 4 Elder who was leading a course on Anishinaabeg women’s traditional knowledge. The student complained that the Elder told the same story over and over again and that she was learning nothing from the class. The administrator asked, “Can you tell the story?” And added, “When you can tell the story, then the Elder will say that you have started to learn. When you can tell what the story means to you, the Elder will say that you have learned.”

In Elder Thrasher’s view, transformative learning means that students can tell the story and figure out its meaning for themselves. They learn as much about themselves as they do about the world and Indigenous peoples. The story and its understanding become the basis for action. In the classroom environment, it turns out that Elders and transformative teachers have a lot in common. Both tell stories, both encourage students to understand the story, and both expect that students will be able to act upon their understanding of the story. In learning the story, the student has the possibility of transforming themselves and in acting upon the story, the possibility of transforming the world.

The ICR Journey

Foundations for Reconciliation is committed to transforming the consciousness of a diverse student population. Elder Thrasher teaches that reconciliation requires more than objective knowledge of the world but also an understanding of one’s own values, attitudes and beliefs and how they are translated into action. The Final Report of the TRC (TRC, 2015) conceives of reconciliation as an active process that requires changes in societal structures and processes to create places of dignity and respect for Indigenous peoples. It sets out 94 recommendations, or calls to action, to emphasize the action component. Our overt pedagogical goal is to help students to gain knowledge and skills that enable them to undertake reconciliation efforts within their own communities. Elder Thrasher would say that we are moving our students around the Medicine Circle from awareness to understanding to knowledge.

We describe our approach to the course as anti-colonial (Dei & Kempf, 2006). By this we mean that Indigenous Knowledge, thought and perspectives are fundamental to both pedagogy and content. We use traditional Indigenous teachings such as: the Anishinaabe medicine circle, a teaching tool that reflects Anishinaabe understanding of human beings and society, interconnectedness and holism; the Anishinaabe Seven Grandfather/Grandmother teachings, ethics of love, respect, bravery, truth, honesty, humility, and wisdom; the Good Mind, a Haudenosaunee theory of the human mind; and Indigenous creation stories which serve as the foundation for expected human behaviours and relationships between all life forms. These teachings serve as interpretative frames for social phenomenon and history. Narrative rests at the heart of the course: we tell stories that bring Indigenous Knowledge, perspective and voices to the table.

What Did We Learn?

We used a team-teaching approach to course delivery; five faculty members and sixteen seminar leaders. The course teaching group consisted of both Indigenous and non-Indigenous faculty and graduate students. All of the graduate students were enrolled in the Indigenous Studies PhD Program at Trent; three of the non-Indigenous faculty were graduates of the program. All had significant engagement with local Anishinaabe Elders and were familiar with Indigenous pedagogies.

As a group, we met weekly throughout the term to discuss the progress of the course, student reaction to the material and pedagogy, our own classroom experiences focusing on the questions: What are we learning about our students? About ourselves? About teaching reconciliation? We framed our discussions as moving from awareness to understanding to knowledge and action. Wisdom escaped us at this stage of our learning.

Taking an Indigenous Knowledge approach to the course means more than just including material produced by Indigenous peoples and Indigenous perspectives. Elders like Michael Thrasher emphasize the importance of building good relationships with students and creating a respectful learning climate. Newhouse (2008) argues, based upon the Chanie Wenjack School’s half-century of engagement with Elders and traditional Indigenous Knowledge, that an approach based in Indigenous Knowledges transforms both teacher and learner. As instructors, we were transformed by our experiences.

What we learned about increasing the possibility of creating a transformational learning experience for our students is grouped around four themes: Self as Teacher/Learner, Responsibility to Be Kind, Responsibility to Show Humility, and Stories Matter, Feelings Matter.

Self as Teacher/Learner

One of the fundamental aspects of traditional Indigenous teaching is understanding oneself, the source and limitations of one’s knowledge, and how experience shapes our lives. Traditional Indigenous teachers like Cree Métis Michael Thrasher, or Anishinaabe Elder Shirley Williams, or Michii Sagiig Elder Doug Williams present themselves as constantly learning and offering only what they know in a spirit of humbleness. They are open about themselves, the limitations of their own knowledge and experiences. We presented ourselves in the same manner to our students, emphasizing our own learning journeys. As most of our students are non-Indigenous, it was also important for the non-Indigenous instructors and seminar leaders to share their own learning journeys, emphasizing how they came to teach the course. Doing so created a sense that transformational learning is possible.

Phil, a non-Indigenous course instructor and PhD candidate in the Indigenous Studies program states:

I am a non-Indigenous educator and have been helping to teach the first year Indigenous Studies courses at Trent University for the past decade. Through this time, I have learned the importance of being open about my own learning/unlearning journey with students to address the uncomfortable realities that are raised in this process relearning history and connecting that to the current realities. In the first-year classes many students are just starting to peel back the layers of the colonial narratives of history they have been taught.

Mara, a non-Indigenous course instructor, seminar leader and a non-Indigenous graduate of the Indigenous Studies PhD program states:

When I work with students in the ICR courses, I always remind them who I am. I am a settler and treaty person with responsibilities and relationships connected to those identities. I also talk about how each person needs to find their own relationship to the territory they call home and ask them to keep thinking about their responsibility and relationship to that territory … My openness about my learning and sharing who I am—Jewish, middle-class, urbanite, settler, White—creates a space of openness amongst the students to share their stories about where they come from and the challenges, they encounter with the course material.

Responsibility to Be Kind

Indigenous transformational teaching is only possible when it emerges from a place of kindness. The First Nations Health Authority in British Columbia invented the concept lateral kindness as a commitment based upon the teachings of Dene Elders: “Be considerate of others; treat people kindly; seek to know your Creator” (FNHA, 2017). The Health Authority argues that leaders and organizations seeking to create transformative change must embody this change. The Anishinaabe Seven Grandfather/Grandmother teachings include Zaagidiwin (Love) as one of the fundamental values governing all human behaviours.

We use these values to guide our behaviours towards our students, trying to translate them into actions that create a learning climate that respects the dignity of all members. We often turn to the teachings of an Anishinaabe Traditional Indigenous teacher, Victor McCoy, who worked with young Indigenous men who were incarcerated. Thousands of young Indigenous people’s lives were changed through their encounters with him; he taught that kindness, and often tough love, was fundamental to transformational learning.

Jason, a seminar leader and non-Indigenous PhD candidate in the Indigenous Studies PhD program states:

I approach my position as a non-Indigenous ally … who acknowledges my privilege as a Caucasian male for this course by modeling respect, care, and humility in all my interactions with students … I also make a point of thanking all of the students for attending INDG 1001H because their presence is a step in my mind on a pathway towards healing … I believe that this small act provides a sense of humanity for all the students in my workshop.

Mara also adds:

We treat everyone with respect and kindness, no matter the circumstances. We answer emails promptly. We support students talking with other members of the team when they may not feel as safe with the person directly responsible for their workshop. We ask students for their stories when they want extensions on their papers; a good story (always) gets an extension.

Responsibility to Show Humility

One of the Seven Grandfather/Grandmother teachingsFootnote 5 is Dbaadendiziwin (Humility). To have humility is to see one as part of something greater than oneself and to recognize the equality of all living beings. Traditional teachers emphasize how much they do not know rather than how much they know. They are humble about their knowledge and about their ability to transform others. They know that learning is hard work; that it is a process that takes time, and that they cannot transform someone else. As a result, they practice kindness and patience and provide guidance rather than answers.

Each of the people who work in the ICR classroom understand that their efforts may not result in change or transformation now or ever but that there is always the possibility of transformation. Being open to the possibility requires humility.

Stories Matter, Feelings Matter

Thomas King, a Cherokee writer states in Green Grass, Running Water (1993): “There are no truths, Coyote. Only Stories” (p. 326). We live our stories and when we exchange our stories, transformational learning can happen. Traditional Indigenous teachers emphasize the importance of learning in ways that engage both thinking and feeling. The Haudenosaunee ideal of the Good Mind balances reason and emotion (Newhouse, 2008). Fostering a Good Mind requires that we cultivate our ability to see, hear, think, and feel. A powerful story engages all of these senses and can be transformative (Corson-Knowles, 2020).

Mara illustrates:

When I work with students both in small groups and for those that come to spend time with me in office hours, I share stories I think will help them. Sometimes they are stories I have heard and sometimes they are my personal stories reflecting on how I dealt with something similar.

Story is an essential element for supporting a transformation to begin, for students and for the ongoing decolonization of Canada. We created the “Homelands Paper” to help students begin to think differently about their homes and the Indigenous peoples who live there. We ask all students to tell the story of their home nation or community, focusing on identifying the Indigenous presence through treaties and other agreements, Indigenous nations and organization and issues facing them. This research assignment provides students an opportunity to see aspects of their communities they have not seen before, to understand the ongoing impact of colonization on the community and their own lives and to see Indigenous peoples as actively striving to create good lives for themselves. The assignment is an opportunity for students to express their own story in their own words about their home nation or community in the context of colonization.

We encourage students to write the Homelands and other assignments from the first person and incorporate their own experiences and thoughts into their papers. Students begin to express their own emotional reactions to the narratives of history they are learning. We have found that through this process students come to a deeper understanding of the issues. Often, they express surprise at what they find, become upset at the ways in which Indigenous peoples have been treated by their communities, and are sometimes heartened by the optimism and actions of local Indigenous leaders. Elder Michael Thrasher teaches that moving from awareness to knowledge to understanding is not just an intellectual exercise but one that engages the emotions and spirit. This movement is facilitated through the use of story.

Students, like all of us, struggle with the material and its meaning in their lives. We ask them through statements of learning to tell us periodically what they are learning, and we ask them what they will do with the knowledge they have gained. We ask the students to tell us the story of their learning. We also ask students to tell us how they have helped others to learn, emphasizing that learning is meant to be shared and foster improved individual and collective lives. Students in their end of course comments tell us of their transformations:

Learning About My Ancestors and Trauma of My People is Hard Emotionally.

I entered this course with a somewhat negative mindset … this course has changed my perspective …

We didn’t get told the history, we got told stories, and those stores taught us so much.

I took this course just because it was a requirement, but slowly as I moved towards the end of this term, I realized the importance of this course which actually helps me appreciate and respect the values and culture of Indigenous people. I also did a lot of new things, I had never done a PowerPoint presentation, a book review or made a video before, because of the course I got to do new things and develop new skills.

The Indigenous Knowledge Classroom

Indigenous Knowledge, Elders and Traditional Teaching are essential features of the Indigenous Knowledge classroom. The faculty of the Chanie Wenjack School at Trent includes several local Anishinaabe Elders who provide us with the lessons and inspiration that help us to foster transformation among our students. We define Indigenous Knowledge as that knowledge that is gained from a long-term inhabitation of a particular place. Indigenous studies programs in Canada have tended to ensure that they are informed first by the knowledge of local Indigenous Elders and then by Elders across the globe. In our case, the Elders who are part of our faculty are Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee who have lived in the area for thousands of years.

Founding our teaching and learning on local Indigenous knowledge which includes Indigenous epistemologies, pedagogies and ways of knowing creates what we call an anti-colonial classroom. Taking an Indigenous knowledge approach means that we act from local Indigenous cultural premises. Formal openings and closings by Elders are standard practices for meetings within the Indigenous community. Accordingly, we start each class with an opening, often a traditional Indigenous song or short talk by an Indigenous Elder, often by video. We often use YouTube or Vimeo videos to bring students into a different world and tell them a story, not about culture, but about the ideas, theories and concepts that underlay culture. We tell a story of what happened not as a series of dates spread out over time, but as the expression of cultural ideas. The opening creates a liminal world where there is a possibility. And at the end, we have a formal closing, where we return students to the world they came from.

Robin, a non-Indigenous course instructor and graduate of the Indigenous Studies PhD program adds:

My most important teacher has been a Mohawk Elder from Tyendinaga. Al Brant tells me that he ‘works with one person at a time, from the inside out.’ In describing his approach to responsibility, he positions himself, ‘I hold a mirror up and wait for the person to find the courage to see …’ In my work I aspire to be the kind of teacher that Al Brant is: to have the patience and the humility to hold up the mirror and wait.

The Indigenous knowledge classroom is created through its framing by the opening and closing. Our anthropology colleagues will describe it as a liminal space. It is an invitation to surrender and open ourselves to the possibility of transformation (Seale, 2016). The opening is not a prayer in the Christian sense. It is a thanksgiving to all aspects of creation and an acknowledgement of the humanity and interconnectedness of student and teacher. The Indigenous knowledge classroom is not a space of protest; it is a sacred space that invites learning and creates the possibility of transformation, one person at a time.

Conclusions: What We Have Learned

Heather, a non-Indigenous course instructor and graduate of the Indigenous Studies PhD program speaks of her experience with Indigenous knowledge:

In the teachings I have received from Elders and Traditional Knowledge holders, I have learned the importance of grounding my Indigenous studies classes in Indigenous Knowledges. They have helped me understand my responsibilities as a bridge builder and the importance of self-awareness. Once students are exposed to Indigenous knowledges, I have found they cannot help but be changed by it.

The TRC and their 94 Calls to Action (2015) have attempted to initiate a transformation in Canada, and this has been taken seriously by many post-secondary institutions. Part of this discussion is a conversation about the utility and effectiveness of Indigenous Course Requirements (ICRs). Our teaching group has also grappled with these questions.

Gaudry and Lorenz (2018) grappled with ICRs as transformation and the Indigenous scholars they interviewed saw potential in these courses to create meaningful change, not only in individual students, but within the larger landscape of Canada. Gaudry and Lorenz (2018) have stated that the most successful ICR “transforms student attitudes and encourages future learning” (2019, p. 163). They see the potential in these courses, while also admitting that student transformation is not guaranteed by the end of the course or at any time in the future. There are always students who merely set out to satisfy the base requirements, as well as those who are resistant and resentful of having to take the course. Our end-of-course surveys provide us with evidence that many students have a shift in awareness and positionality with respect to reconciliation in Canada.

Foundations of Reconciliation is a commitment to transforming the consciousness of a diverse student population of 2000 students. The goal is to provide students with the knowledge and skills that enable them to participate effectively in reconciliation efforts within their own communities.

Some of our students express frustration about the pedagogy of the course. While the course syllabus looks like other courses, its pedagogy is grounded in traditional Indigenous approaches to learning. They struggle with the content and the challenge to their self-conception. Gabriel, a Mohawk citizen, Indigenous Studies PhD candidate, and one of the seminar leaders speaks of the need for patience in the face of student frustration:

A good deal of the Elders I have had the pleasure of working with have been involved in the criminal justice system in one way or another. Elders who work with Indigenous youth going through the Indigenous restorative justice system, Elders who have worked as parole officers, Elders who have led Indigenous men’s groups to stop domestic violence. My own father worked as a prison Elder for a number of years. He taught me that even the most angry, hateful people can be reached through kindness and patience. In fact, all of the Elders I have worked with have instilled in me that the fundamental in teaching is patience.

Transformative Teaching and Learning, from an Indigenous perspective, involves moving around the medicine wheel from awareness to understanding to knowledge and wisdom. The task of a teacher is to facilitate that movement through the creation of a transformational educational climate that supports the student’s movement.