*Part of her culminating assignment asked Maddie to create a journal detailing her experiences in Indigenous Studies, including visits to the Souharissen Natural Area. This is an excerpt from that journal that demonstrates how the course has changed her perspectives on learning and Treaty. The ethical dimensions, perspectives, historical consequences and other historical thinking concepts threaded through the course have impacted her as demonstrated by this short, yet important entry.
*This activity was created using GoogleDocs and involved the entire class reimagining the Souharissen Natural Area through the lens (perspective) of it as a living organism (reflecting Indigenous movements across the world, including New Zealand, Belize and Ecuador). Co-created elements are in green and took a number of periods to produce.
*This activity asked students to draw "their Waterdown" - the community they saw as residents. This activity was used to explain "Historical Perspective," as well as to illustrate how even the most familiar space can be seen differently.
*I use this activity in a number of different classes. Students are given a blank piece of paper and asked, from memory, to draw a world map. The activity is optional, and students do not put their names on their maps. Once completed, the maps are collected and scanned so we can look at them as a class and find commonalities. Inevitably, Europe and North American are usually larger, more detailed and centred on the map. The continents are usually all arranged the same way - mimicking the maps so often seen hanging on the wall in Geography classrooms. This activity leads to discussions on Eurocentrism, Imperialism, Historical Perspective, Cause and Consequence and other big ideas. I will often challenge students with world maps from China, South America and China.
*Students transported the tobacco used for this ceremony. Mason Grenier can be send holding a cedar chest in the third grouping of photographs - students were near the entrance to the ceremony and not photographed by the official photographer.
*This is a project that my students are working on right now. My colleagues, Austin Gourlay and Sean Kearney, are both former students who have become history teachers.