Week 8: Curriculum as Place

The article suggests that a “critical pedagogy of place” aims to: (a) identify, recover, and create material spaces and places that teach us how to live well in our total environments (reinhabitation); and

(b) identify and change ways of thinking that injure and exploit other people and places (decolonization) (p.74) 1. List some of the ways that you see reinhabitation and decolonization happening throughout the narrative. 2. How might you adapt these ideas to considering place in your own subject areas and teaching?

I found reinhabitation and decolonization many times in this reading, most notably reinhabitation in the Kistachowin river because it was symbolic of their culture and decolonization in the Elders teaching youth about their lost cultures.

I think that having an Elder to our classroom is a good way to pass Indigenous culture on to our students as well as show the students how the Elders pass information down, orally. We could go on a field trip to Wakamow Valley in Moose Jaw (where I live) and discuss the significance of many names in Moose Jaw, (Moose Jaw, Wakamow, etc.). It’s so easy to find important Indigenous lessons around us!