All Our Relations: Stories From the Classroom and the Land

Introduction: Situating Self

kwe kwe, ziigwankwe n’dizhnaakaaz, atik dodem. mahingan sagahigan first nation n’doonjibaa. Algonquin anicinabe ikwe n’daaw. Hello, my name is spring woman, caribou clan. I am from Wolf Lake First Nation. I am an Algonquin woman. My English name is Joey-Lynn Wabie. I am an uninvited guest living in Atikameksheng Anishnawbek territory. My passion is sharing traditional Algonquin spiritual health through our culture and traditions as a learner myself. I see the importance in community building at work and in my personal life, which often overlap. I have been teaching full time at Laurentian University as an associate professor, and sessionally since 2011. I also volunteer in the community with grassroots organizations who bring culture, language, and traditions to urban Indigenous peoples. My heart is first and foremost with my family and in the community.

My name is Taylor Watkins, and I was the graduate teaching assistant for this course. I am a non-Indigenous settler currently residing on the traditional territory of the Atikameksheng Anishinabek and neighboring reserve: Wahnapitae First Nation. As a settler, I understand I have privilege on these lands. I am working through how I can best be a contributing treaty relative, and know I have and will continue to make mistakes but promise to keep learning.

With lattes in hand, Taylor and I sat in my office thinking about how we can approach this course after receiving the go ahead to change the course delivery. How can we learn with others and balance the power structure commonly found within university graduate level courses? We used a whiteboard to sketch the framework, and added in the existing course description, objectives, and elements of the earth’s natural resources. Recognizing that the Medicine Wheel is integral to Indigenous cultures, we divided the course into four sections with the sacred elements as quadrant headings: Earth, Fire, Air, and Water. According to Manitowabi (2018), the Medicine Wheel teachings contain the values and principles for how Indigenous people are to conduct themselves in order to reach mino bimaadiziwin – the good life. There are many versions of the Medicine Wheel teachings depending where one resides, yet the foundation concepts are similar. The Medicine Wheel reminds us that everything comes in fours – the four seasons, the four stages of life, the four races of humanity, four cardinal directions, and so forth. Interestingly, there are really seven directions associated with the Medicine Wheel – the four cardinal directions (north, south, east and west) as well as the sky, the earth and the centre which we believe we were able to honour and incorporate within our course.

Underneath each quadrant, we chose readings, guest speakers, and activities. Once completed, we brainstormed on how to include comprehensive and reflective assignments and inserted them evenly throughout the 12 week course. The books we chose as required readings were Kimmerer’s (2015) book, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants, and Benton-Banai’s (2010) book, Mishomis Book: The Voice of the Ojibway. Our course began in the winter session taking place in the classroom and wiigwam with graduate students at the master’s level.