Last Friday, during my Pedagogy, Curriculum and Teaching class, we discussed how the course designed to explore, investigate, and experience aspects of BC’s curriculum. The first-class discussion was about First People’s Principles of Learning. We divided into small groups to talk about each of the principles of learning. My small group was assigned to discuss the point that learning is embedded in memory, history, and story. We shared some our own experiences and backgrounds with the intention of integrating Indigenous learning into our own education and current teaching pedagogy. We all had experienced different aspects and depths of Indigenous education.
Here is the little story that I shared. I took First Nation Art in January 2020. Our Instructor, Nicholette Prince, has amazing education and experience around Canada Frist Nation Art. She was the head curator of the First Nation exhibition at the Canadian Museum of History for over 15 years. She shared with us a lot of stories about different types of and styles of First Nation, Métis and Inuit art. For that course, one of the projects is to make a dreamcatcher. At first, I was not thinking too much about how a dream catcher works: for me, the dreamcatcher is a beautiful decoration or artifact. My children and I had made dreamcatchers at our kitchen table. We often bond over art and crafts, and the children still hang the dreamcatchers we made over their beds. But in the process of preparing to make my own, I learned that the dreamcatcher is a spiritual object. When we started to weave in with the waxed hem threads, Nicholette told us a story about why First Nation People make dreamcatchers. At night, the dreamcatcher web absorbs bad thoughts, evil spirits, and nightmares, and during the day, it spreads good luck and good energy. The feathers act like ladders to allowing a good dreams on the children who is sleeping. The class started talking about different scary dreams we had when we were kids. This showed me that the dreamcatcher, and specifically the creation of a dreamcatcher, can open up a person to talk about difficult topics, such as one’s dreams and fears. I imagine using this exercise with elementary aged children to open them up to talk about what they dream about. This experienced helped me create a useful tool to open up children’s daily thoughts about school, life, and home life without having to ask direct questions which often stop children from sharing. The dreamcatcher exercise shows we are eager to share ourselves, but especially in environments where we are creating and sharing something together.
