November is Native American Heritage Month. Started in 1990 after decades of advocacy by Indigenous activists, NAHM is a time for us to celebrate and honor the rich history and culture of America’s first people. In honor of NAHM, Rio Salado College’s DEIB Council held an in-person event called Revitalizing Education: Indigenous Pedagogy and Knowledge Systems. The event featured a presentation by Mona Tolley, an Indigenous Education Advisor at the University of Ottawa who hails from Canada’s Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg First Nation.
Tolley began her presentation by sharing her name in the Anishinabeg language and explaining how the symbolism on her ribbon skirt represents a story handed down from woman to woman in her tribe about how the strawberry came to be for her people. She spoke about the importance of this kind of one-to-one cultural transmission, of teachings handed down through ritual and folklore that gets reinforced through music, dance, and clothing.
"If I didn't tell you about it, you might just say 'oh, that's pretty'," Tolley said. "However, like many strategies and practices involved with Indigenous pedagogy, the knowledge is embedded inside the practices."
Tolley shared her background with the audience, talking about her work with not just the University of Ottawa but as part of the Cree school board. Tolley helps design curriculums with Indigenous frameworks in mind that account for the unique cultural perspectives and challenges that Indigenous students experience.
"Many Indigenous people like myself have gone through the Western educational school system and we've had to do double the learning,” Tolley said.
Tolley’s audience was particularly interested in her tangent on the Jay Treaty and how that compact granted Native Americans and First Nation Canadians the right to freely cross the northern border. Tolley explained that freedom of movement is very important to Indigenous people as tribes have a long history of intermingling and trading with each other. It is not uncommon for tribes across the country to visit each other, so having a system in place that protected this cultural heritage of tribal cultural cross-pollination was very important.
When talking about Native culture, Tolley emphasized that it's more than just food and fashion. "We had our own education system, we had our own economics, laws, social structures. A lot of the work we do today is how are we going to bridge that into the current system? Is there a place to do it?"
She talked about how her tribe are moose people and that though many of them (like herself) no longer need to live off the land and hunt to survive, they continue to keep the practice of moose hunting alive because it's a transfer of knowledge they want to preserve. "It's the teachings that are important to us, and keeping a connection to the land," Tolley said. For Tolley’s people, hunting is a form of communal bonding; in order to honor the animal by using every part of them, they have to bring in tanners and other members of the community to make sure nothing goes to waste.
Tolley talked about the importance of ceremony and crafting in education, that for many Indigenous tribes the transfer of knowledge comes through these avenues. The learning is process-based. "The goal of education for us isn't just a good life, it's the process of making a good life."
She also talked about the importance of storytelling in education, and how the relationship between teller and listener reflects the ideal closeness between teacher and student. "You can recognize where they are in their learning," Tolley said, emphasizing the importance of crafting educational experiences that meet people where they are.
And just as how a storyteller might clarify or adjust their narrative to make it more comprehensible or exciting to their listener, the good teacher changes their methods as needed to meet the student where they are now and help build up their competency and confidence to get them to where they want to go.
Tolley talked about the practice of residential schools in Canada and the U.S. and how there was a concerted effort in North America before the mid-20th century to force Indigenous assimilation by discouraging/punishing Native students for speaking in their own language and refusing to teach them their history and culture. Tolley explained that this repression ultimately triggered a resurgence in Indigenous education and culture, as activists succeeded in pushing for legislation to close down these schools and grant their people the autonomy to educate themselves (a process that hasn’t been easy due to the lack of educational infrastructure for many tribes).
Tolley talked about developing a land-based approach to learning called experiential learning. She talked about encouraging schools to organize their calendars around seasons, and to give students extended time off so they can be with their families to go on hunting trips or engage in other communal activities that bring them closer to the land.
For Tolley, “indigenizing” education isn’t just beneficial to students: it has a holistic impact on the world at large. “We can model the well-being for all, not just for all people, but for the land and the animals as well.”
Article by Austin Brietta