Teachers unfamiliar with Aboriginal approaches to learning are seeking ways to respectfully weave Aboriginal content into their lessons. This book introduces an indigenist approach to education. It recounts how pre-service teachers immersed in a crosscultural course in British Columbia began to practise Indigenous ways of knowing. Working alongside Indigenous wisdom keepers, they transformed earth fibres into a mural and, in the process, their own ideas about learning and teaching. By revealing how these students worked to integrate Indigenous ways of knowing into their practice, this book opens a path for teachers to nurture indigenist crosscultural understanding in their classrooms.
Michele T. D. Tanaka is assistant professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Victoria.