James – balancing Indigenous and Western approaches

In the Northwest Territories, we’ve come up with a little bit of a matrix that talks about how we can balance the Western approaches to early learning along with the Indigenous approaches.

Talks about in the middle about the capable person. And then we have the Indigenous principles of learning, talking about very connected to the tipi metaphor, about talking about holism, relationality, the spiral learning as well as experiential – children learning with their hands and their kinesthetic movements. So, in the center it talks about those Indigenous approaches, and then on the outside it talks about all the Western ways of teaching and learning. For example, in relationality we have differentiated instruction, cooperative learning and integrated approach. And on the outside, it talks about all the Indigenous approaches, such as the importance of Elders and knowledge keepers and prayer, a child’s gifts and the relationships of respect as I spoke earlier and then remembering time, place and people and then relational accountability, which is very, very important when you’re working with children, because we are accountable not only to them, but also to the ancestors and to the land and spirituality. So just remembering those aspects of balance, between Indigeneity and Western concepts.

Those Western concepts also have to be balanced with Indigeneity because another aspect of research that comes in is, is paying attention to the hard skills and also the soft skills. And those are all really close cousins to the Indigenous approaches that really concentrate on teaching children to get along with each other, understanding other people’s perspectives, which in early learning is, you know, a real important concept for developing that pro-social skills and realizing what is around us and learning to process the outside world in a positive way.

And so, it’s really, really important that we take the idea of a capable child seriously in balancing the two. Across Canada we speak about this balance. In the Northwest Territories, we talk about, the South Slave people, they talk about walking in two worlds, and they have this beautiful, this beautiful image of a pair of mukluks and a pair of snow boots and they’re walking in both worlds. And so that is very much a, probably a concept that’s across Turtle Island.

But here in the Northwest Territories, you’ll also visit the Tlicho region, and they have a beautiful concept of balance, talking about “strong like two people.” So, the Elders spoke about being strong in the Western world, reading, writing, all the subject areas and all education that’s available to them. But also, being strong in the Indigenous world, making sure they remember who they are, their identity, their people, their culture, their languages and so that is a “strong like two people” in the Tlicho world. But way over on the East Coast, the Mi’kmaq people call it “two-eyed seeing.” And so, it’s very much, of course, the same concept of balance of the two approaches in education that are very, very necessary.

And so, when we balance the Western ECE approaches like language development, physical wellbeing, play and inquiry, and when we balance that with really the Indigenous ways such as understanding of the self, others, the land, and the spiritual world, remembering the land as an extension of spirituality and stories and relationships. And as well, remembering ceremony and protocols and Elder’s stories that are so, so very important.

And then remembering the ceremony that’s really important here in the Northwest Territories and across Turtle Island, that reciprocity, balancing when you take, you also give and when you give, you take. And so that balancing of the reciprocity is very much a part of many ceremonies in the Northwest Territories, such as paying the land or paying the water when you glean knowledge or medicines or aspects of the land. And so that reciprocity is very important as well as we are in the era of reconciliation. And all of us have an understanding of reconciliation in our own personal journey, as well as our service to reconciliation throughout our country of Canada.