Decolonizing Education: Introductions

• Whose Land An interactive map that allows the user to identify Indigenous Nations, territories, and communities across Canada, and learn more about land acknowledgements and treaties particular to that region. Whose Land is also available to download as a mobile app.
• Native Land Digital Interactive mapping website Native Land strips out country and state borders in order to highlight the complex patchwork of historic and present-day Indigenous territories, treaties, and languages that stretch across the United States, Canada, and beyond.
• Indigenization Guide: Acknowledging Traditional Territories BC Campus
• Interactive Map: First Nations in BC (BC Assembly of First Nations)
• First Peoples' Map of BC: Indigenous Languages, Arts and Heritage in B.C.
• Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada Map Room:
  • Maps by province and territory
  • Treaties, claims, and agreements
• The First Nation Profiles interactive map describes individual First Nation communities across Canada. The profiles include general information and details about its reserve(s), governance, federal funding, geography, registered population statistics and various Census statistics.

• Cameron, K. (2019). Resolving Conflict between Canada’s Indigenous Peoples and the Crown through Modern Treaties: Yukon Case History. New England Journal of Public Policy, 31(1), 1–11.
• Patterson, S. (2009). Eighteenth-Century Treaties: The Mi’kmaq, Maliseet, and Passamaquoddy Experience. Native Studies Review, 18(1), 25–52.
• We Are All Treaty People  An Indigenous Education module created by the University of Toronto.
• Treaty Talk: Sharing the River of Life  A video-based educational tool to better understand treaties.
• BC Treaty Interactive Map

Territory Acknowledgement/ Native Land Digital

Canadian Association of University Teachers. (2017). Guide to acknowledging First Peoples and traditional territory. Ottawa: Canadian Association of University Teachers. 

"The goal of this guide is to encourage all academic staff association representatives and members to acknowledge the First Peoples on whose traditional territories we live and work. This acknowledgement appropriately takes place at the commencement of courses, meetings or conferences, and presentations (given either at one’s home institution or elsewhere). Acknowledging territory shows recognition of and respect for Aboriginal Peoples. It is recognition of their presence both in the past and the present. Recognition and respect are essential elements of establishing healthy, reciprocal relations. These relationships are key to reconciliation, a process to which CAUT is committed.

So you began your event with an Indigenous land acknowledgment. Now what? NPR, March 15, 2023, All Things Considered/ Chloe Veltman

Vowel, C. (24 November, 2024). Revisiting "Beyond Territorial Acknowlegments"   âpihtawikosisân.com Blog: Law, Language, Culture. 

Vowel, C. (23 September, 2016). Beyond territorial acknowledgements. âpihtawikosisân.com Blog: Law, Language, Culture. 

"First, what is the purpose of these acknowledgments? Both what those making the territorial acknowledgments say they intend, as well as what Indigenous peoples think may be the purpose. Second, what can we learn about the way these acknowledgments are delivered? Are there best practices? Third, in what spaces do these acknowledgements happen and more importantly, where are they not found? Finally, what can exist beyond territorial acknowledgements?"

• University of Toronto (OISE) Aboriginal Worldviews and Education
  Created by the University of Toronto. Intended for both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal learners, this course will explore indigenous ways of knowing and how they can benefit all students. Topics include historical, social, and political issues in Aboriginal education; terminology; cultural, spiritual and philosophical themes in Aboriginal worldviews; and how Aboriginal worldviews can inform professional programs and practices, including but not limited to the field of education.

• University of Alberta Indigenous Canada MOOC 

  12 lessons explore Indigenous histories and contemporary issues in Canada. from an Indigenous perspective. Topics include the fur trade, land claims and environmental impacts, legal systems and rights, political conflicts and alliances, Indigenous political activism, and contemporary Indigenous life and art.

  • Indigenous Canada: Tools and Resources

    Online tools and resources to support the delivery of the Indigenous Canada MOOC.

• University of British Columbia Reconciliation Through Indigenous Education

  In this course, reconciliation emphasizes changing institutional structures, practices, and policies, as well as personal and professional ideologies to create environments that are committed to strengthening relationships with Indigenous peoples.

• Watch CBC's 8th fire  documentary series and download the 8th Fire Guide for Educators. "Out of the Anishinabe's Seven Fires comes the idea of the eighth: The settler community and Aboriginal peoples must come together for harmony and justice."

• Cape Breton University Learning from Knowledge Keepers of Mi'kma'ki

• Our stories: First peoples in Canada This freely downloadable book is a unique multi-media resource developed with Indigenous peoples from across Canada. Eliciting an unsettling of Western authority, it encourages recognition that moves beyond a colonial lens by engaging with Indigenous histories, culture, and knowledge in a unique format that includes videos, podcasts, and interactive tools. It includes:
  • Contemporary and historic information and media
  • Sources about injustice and resistance
  • Urban and remote Indigenous perspectives in Canada
  • Oral stories about the lived experiences of Indigenous community members

• Histories of Indigenous Peoples and Canada  The preface introduces you to some of the practices and challenges of Indigenous history, focusing on the nature and quality of sources, innovative historical methodologies, and the leading historiographical trends (that is, what historians are thinking very broadly and what they have studied in the last decade or four). It turns, then, to histories of Indigenous peoples in the Western Hemisphere before ca. 1500.
  The twelve chapters that follow are arranged under three headings: Commerce and Allies, Engaging Colonialism, and Culture Crisis Change Challenge. And there is a thirteenth chapter that brings us deep enough into the twenty-first century to allow a visit with two of the most important recent developments in Canadian civic life: Idle No More and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Both of these processes arose from the failures of colonialism and the resilience of Indigenous communities. They reveal, therefore, as much about the history of Canada as they do of the historical experiences of Indigenous peoples. -- website

• Understanding Indigenous Perspectives This set of learning modules has been created to support and inspire educators and future teachers to gain a deeper understanding of Indigenous perspectives and an appreciation of how Indigenous knowledge and worldviews can assist all learners in their educational journey. The goal of the modules is to provide an introductory grounding to key issues affecting Indigenous people in Canada as a foundation for further and deeper learning. The modules are meant to work well independent of one another (they are not sequential) but they are also complementary. ---website.

• Canadian Indigenous OERs: Open access textbooks compiled by the Canadian Association of Research Libraries.
• Indigenous Education Resource Inventory: Compiled by the Ministry of Education in collaboration with the British Columbia Teacher’s Federation, the First Nations Education Steering Committee, and Métis Nation British Columbia. 
• Community first: Open practices and Indigenous knowledge: "examines how Open Educational Resources (OER) intersects with concepts of community ownership, Indigenous intellectual property rights, and cultural protocols."
• ECHO: Ethnographic, cultural and historical overview of Yukon's First Peoples   a handbook that provides the most current research pertaining to Yukon First Nations peoples. Topics include archaeology, ethnology, and lifeways, relationships with newcomers (in the past and currently), the arts, and modern-day land claims.