Gathering Ourselves: Harvesting Traditional Knowledge in the Twenty-First Century

The aim of this idea is to encourage Aboriginal youth to stay in high school by inspiring them to take their history into their own hands by creating historical narratives about people, places, and events that are community specific. By expanding the History and English curriculum to include stories produced by and for Aboriginal peoples, this would start a revising of history that has largely been focused on settler Euro-Canadian narratives of progress and oppression of indigenous knowledge systems. This idea also encourages engagement in every step of the learning process enabling a more balanced relationship between teachers and students.
Drawing on the importance of gathering both in an intellectual and physical sense for the understanding of traditional practices, students would be encouraged to get out into their communities and create site-specific narratives for people and places that they deemed relevant in their lives. Young adults need to be engaged in history and using hands-on approaches is one method of encouraging their interaction. Talking with elders, community leaders and others in their community, they could create stories, songs and other creative responses like photo essays to create new narratives that aim to address the mono-vision of traditional Canadian English and History courses. Untold histories, such as histories between First Nations bands could also be explored through these new methods. These site-specific histories would also be interactive and digital encouraging the sharing of information (when appropriate) on blogs, facebook and other social networking sites. Podcasts could also be created from stories done with elders and shared within the community and abroad through digital means.