Reconciliatory Pedagogies: Embodying Our Walk as Settler Teachers in Canadian High Schools

Reconciliatory Pedagogies: Embodying Our Walk as Settler Teachers in Canadian High Schools

Erin Keith, Krista LaRue Keeley
Copyright: © 2023 |Pages: 22
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-6684-3425-3.ch009
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Abstract

Two Canadian settler teachers explore the intention and iterative, enduring process of reconciliation in high school classrooms through storytelling of their own lived experiences. They respectfully ‘call-in' other settler teachers who may feel paralyzed for fear of appropriation and the heaviness of this reconciliatory work. Weaving in how the 5Rs have guided the two teachers' journeys toward incorporating Indigenous pedagogies into their praxis and suggesting how these principles could support other settler educators who are beginning their decolonization journey, an Interwoven Living Framework that illuminates their learning ‘from' is developed. The framework is grounded in actionizing the 5Rs through the critical work of listening to, learning from, working, and walking with First Peoples. Using narratives, the teachers story their “walk” inspired by the words of an Indigenous student from their class, Poppy. They share a place to begin towards truly understanding how to become an entrusted Indigenous ally-to-be and how to actionize this collective work in high school landscapes.
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Situating Ourselves: Stepping Towards Reconciliation

Erin: As an emerging scholar at St. Francis Xavier University, Nova Scotia, who recently has been transplanted from Ontario, I aim to explore and critically analyze the colonial education barriers facing Indigenous students and families in Nova Scotia. Using my 20 years of experience as a teacher, learner, and hopeful ally, I acknowledge my privilege as a white, cisgendered woman, living and flourishing as a settler guest on the ancestral and unceded lands of the territory of the Mi'kmaq People. This territory is covered by the “Treaties of Peace and Friendship” which Mi'kmaq and Wolastoqiyik (Maliseet) Peoples first signed with the British Crown in 1725. Employing epistemologies that are intersectional, empathetic, hopeful, and heartening, I pledge to learn, unlearn, unearth, and grow my understanding of how the approaches to reconciliation model (Poitras Pratt & Danyluk, 2019) and reconciliatory pedagogies of decolonization can interrupt hegemonic high school practices and re-center the gifts and strengths that Indigenous families and students bring through their cultural multiplicities and multifaceted identities.

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