University of Regina holds treaty education workshop
REGINA “I want to do this, but I don’t know how.”
“I’m nervous.”
“I don’t want to do it wrong.” Despite treaty education being mandated in Saskatchewan schools, Raquel Oberkirsch said these are the words often spoken by teachers when faced with the task.
“Teachers often feel like they don’t have enough support to teach treaty education,” said Oberkirsch, who is also a teacher.
“In order to help our students realize what it means to be a treaty person ... they need a role model,” she said.
“They need someone who has the knowledge, but also the passion and the belief that this is important work to do.”
That’s why on Saturday, the fourth annual treaty education camp was held at the University of Regina.
A full-day professional development opportunity open to teachers, pre-service teachers and the public, Treatyedcamp explores the legacy of residential schools, treaty education and the historical and contemporary implications of the treaties.
The camp is put on by UR S.T.A.R.S. (Students & Teachers Anti-racist/anti- Oppressive Society), and includes workshops focused on indigenizing teaching, smudging in schools, creating “nation builders” in schools, treaty education, residential schools, French Indigenous children’s literature and more.
To kick off the full day of workshops, two-spirit Nēhiyaw (Cree) writer and student Erica Violet Lee spoke to an auditorium full of teacher candidates and members of the public.
“I think being a teacher is such a hard, difficult job, but it’s also one of the most important jobs in terms of creating a society that is more just for everybody,” said Lee, who is from Saskatoon.
“There have been teachers ... at every step of my education who have been responsible for getting me to where I am. Indigenous students can’t get through the system without the support of teachers and admin and staff who are allies.”
An organizer with Idle No More and Indigenous Climate Action, Lee has an undergraduate degree in political theory from the University of Saskatchewan and is now pursuing a master’s degree in Social Justice Education at the University of Toronto.
She writes about navigating academia as a young Indigenous woman on her blog, Moontimewarrior.com.
The classrooms she has seen successfully enable Indigenous students to feel like they belong and flourish are the ones that recognize the knowledge brought by Indigenous students as legitimate, and where education is based on the pursuit of truth and knowledge, not “disciplining students into becoming ‘good Canadian citizens.’ ”
She said treaty education is particularly important because it recognizes that there were laws and structures on this continent before settlers arrived and allows people to consider the obligations they have as people who live on Treaty 4 land.
“I think it’s really important that we share that responsibility with (the students), that some of our ancestors didn’t fulfil their treaty promises ... and so now we have a responsibility to try to make things better,” said Oberkirsch.
As a teacher, Oberkirsch tries to incorporate treaty education into all of her classes and will often bring in Indigenous guests to share their stories and knowledge.
“We need to centre those Indigenous voices and hear those stories in everything because for so long they’ve been pushed out of everything,” she said.
Treatyedcamp was inspired by the observation that despite treaty education being mandated, Oberkirsch saw a lot of teachers treating it like an add-on or only teaching it if they had time.
“It wasn’t seeming authentic,” she said.
Lee said the racism still faced by Indigenous students and teachers in classrooms today must be addressed.
“It’s important for us to look at the rates of incarceration of Indigenous youth in Saskatchewan and recognize that there’s something wrong with the system when we’re more likely to end up in prison than complete high school,” she said.
“There has to be active work done on the part of teachers to counteract that history and not sweep it under the rug.”