$39.95 - print
$29.99 - ebook
Published
Pages
288
Binding
Trade paperback (US)
Dimensions
6x9in
ISBN Print
9781550599336
ISBN eBook
9781550599350
Browse Inside
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Truth and Reconciliation Through Education

Stories of Decolonizing Practices

,

How educators can respond to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action

Educators have a special role in furthering truth and reconciliation in education, but many struggle to understand exactly what that means and how to accomplish it. There is no step-by-step guide to getting it right. Educators can only meaningfully accomplish truth and reconciliation in education by seeking out truth and reconciliation through education: an ongoing process of amplifying Indigenous voices and experiences, allowing oneself to be changed by them, and being guided by this learning both personally and professionally.

Springing from an Indigenous education master’s certificate program at the University of Calgary and written from an adult education perspective on transformative learning, this book invites educators, broadly defined, into a conversation about truth and reconciliation through education. Section I contains useful chapters on program design and concepts, while section II presents a collection of inspirational and thought provoking personal reflections from Indigenous and non-Indigenous educators who have taken deliberate, active roles in responding to the TRC’s Calls to Action.

This is a resource written by educators for educators wishing to embark on their own journeys of truth and reconciliation. Join the reconciliatory education community in courageously teaching, learning, and acting, just as the educators in this collected volume do.

Table of Contents

Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction
SECTION I: IMAGINING AND SEEDING POSSIBILITIES: MODELS FOR RECONCILIATORY EDUCATION
Reflective Question
1. Growing Good Medicine: A Model of Indigenous Program Design
2. Reconciliatory Education: An Extended Infinity Model
3. Decolonizing and Transformative Learning in the Call to Action Program
4. The Relational Model for Teaching and Learning
5. Coming Full Circle
SECTION II: STORIES OF DECOLONIZING PRACTICES
Reflective Questions
PART I: STORIES OF INDIGENOUS RECLAMATION, REVITALIZATION, AND RECONNECTION
6. Lost and Then Found: A Northerner Finding Home and Community in the South
7. Planting a Story of Hope, Healing, and Transformation
8. My Life Journey Through the Four Directions
9. Setting Hope Free: Cree Leadership in Reconciliation
10. Finding Strength in Community and Culture: Applying Traditional Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit Principles and Practices to Address Contemporary Challenges
PART 2: STORIES OF RECONCILIATORY EDUCATION IN K TO 12
11. Braiding Strands of Identity, Traditional Ways, and Storytelling
12. Shaken and Stirred to the Core: Listening as a Central Act of Learning
13. Decolonizing Educator Practice in Offshore Schools
14. Navigating Barriers to Reconciliation Through Education: A Non-Indigenous Educator’s Journey of Learning
15. Heart to Heart: Indigenous Truths Taking Flight Through the Agency of Calgary Middle School Students
PART 3: STORIES OF LEARNING WITH COMMUNITY
16. From Decolonizing to Indigenizing: Learning Together How to Start from Where You Are
17. Building Bridges into Good Relations: An Early Learning Experience
18. Storied Science: Elevating Indigenous Knowledges Through Placemaking in Colonial Spaces
19. Home Is Where the Land Is: Mount Athabasca and the Mountain Métis
PART 4: STORIES OF ETHICAL ALLYSHIP
20. Growing in Relation: Reconciling Our Learning Spirits Together
21. Dismantling the Colonial Lens: Emotional Commitment as a Path to Reconciliation
22. Leaning into the Discomfort of Transformative Empathy: One Settler Educator’s Journey of Unlearning
23. Exploring Motivations for Settler Engagement
Epilogue

Packed with rich conceptual insights, ethical principles, personal reflections, and lived experiences. A must read for all educators—this book will unsettle you, inspire you, and give you hope for a more just society through education.

Dr. Paulette Regan, author of Unsettling the Settler Within and Senior Researcher/Lead Writer of Reconciliation, Volume 6 of The Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission

The learnings that Poitras Pratt and Bodnaresko have so carefully woven together offer powerful medicines to heal the fractures in the souls of our families and societies, including allies, within the very system used to cause the original wounds. A beautiful and generous way to bring us all together as it was originally intended to be.

Charlene Bearhead, Vice President, Learning and Reconciliation, Royal Canadian Geographical Society and co‑author of the Siha Tooskin Knows series

This book exemplifies how Indigenous knowledge, cultivated within the university setting, can make a real difference in furthering the aims of reconciliation and decolonization. A valuable and authentic contribution to the critical work of teaching and learning about the enduring humanity of Indigenous peoples despite the long history of injustice.

Dr. Verna St. Denis, Special Advisor to the President on Anti-Racism and Anti-Oppression and Professor Emerita, University of Saskatchewan

Yvonne Poitras Pratt

Yvonne Poitras Pratt (Métis), Associate Professor at the Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary, traces her ancestral roots to Red River and more recently to Fishing Lake Métis Settlement in northern Alberta. Yvonne publishes on topics of Métis education, reconciliation, decolonizing, and arts-based education, and she has earned four teaching awards, including the 2021 Alan Blizzard Award for and an Esquao Award in 2003.

Sulyn Bodnaresko

Sulyn Bodnaresko is a Settler, born, raised, and living on traditional and contemporary territories of the Blackfoot, Tsuut’ina, Iyarhe Nakoda, and Métis peoples (Calgary, Alberta). Sulyn is an educational research PhD candidate at the University of Calgary, and she focuses on understanding the implicatedness of newer Canadians in truth and reconciliation. Her interdisciplinary academic background includes global affairs, immigration and settlement, public policy, and education.