FAQ

There is no right or wrong way to use this website!

We offer this website as a starting place to investigate what role Indigenous knowledges can play in our classrooms, across all subject areas, grade levels, and curricular competencies.

However, we recommend by beginning with the welcoming words of local Elders, in the video by Larry Grant (Territorial Welcome) and Gerry Olemann (Education and Wellbeing). Then, feel free to explore the Curriculum Bundles and Curated Resources as interconnected webs and conversations.

By drawing upon Indigenous pedagogies, this website values Indigenous knowledge as fluid and interconnected.

We serve to inspire educators of all backgrounds and subject areas. The Curriculum Bundles can be applied in any classroom, without the limitations of specific lesson plans. Lesson plans are great for delivering specific content in specific classrooms. However, all educators accessing this website can take these Curriculum Bundles and Curated Resources in any direction they wish!

This website was made possible by many hands, minds, and hearts.

The heartbeat of this website is our Curriculum Bundles, which were designed by Indigenous educators across BC - many of whom are NITEP students at the University of British Columbia. We add to our content constantly. Their names and nations are honoured at the beginning of each Curriculum Bundle.

The website content and design was a dynamic process between Dr. Shannon Leddy (Curriculum & Pedagogy) and Kiera Brant-Birioukov (Curriculum & Pedagogy). After Kiera took a position at York, Kieran Forde (Curriculum & Pedagogy) curated the site from July 2021 to December 2023.

The vision for the website was molded by the insights of Matthew Isherwood, Dr. Jan Hare, and Dr. Marianne McTavish. The website could not be made possible without the valuable expertise and time of Faeyza Mufti (Educational Technology Support).

If you are an Indigenous educator who would like to share your expertise of local Indigenous knowledges in the classroom, please contact us. We would be pleased to showcase your work in our Curriculum Bundles. Perhaps you wish to offer a new Curriculum Bundle, or maybe you have taken up one of our existing Curriculum Bundles in your classroom!

Please email Dr. Shannon Leddy (sleddy@mail.ubc.ca), requesting the template for our Curriculum Bundles, to get started!

If you are a non-Indigenous educator who has taken up the Curriculum Bundles in your own practice, please contact us! We would be pleased to showcase your successes and strategies in our Curriculum Bundles.

Please email Dr. Shannon Leddy (sleddy@mail.ubc.ca).

Of course!

Although we highlight possible connections to the BC curriculum, the Indigenous teachings offered presented in this website offer all students - regardless of location - an opportunity to learn more about Indigenous knowledges in British Columbia.

The BC curriculum connections in our Curriculum Bundles are not meant to be exhaustive, but a starting place. Each Indigenous educator who contributed teachings and artifacts suggested the natural connections they envision to be complementary to their Curriculum Bundle.

For example, in the Versatility of Salmon Curriculum Bundle, Jared envisioned a conversation around the "cultural, economic, and scientific implications" of salmon. With this, we saw direct links to Social Studies, Business, and Science education. We could have also highlighted the ways in which salmon could be taken up in the visual arts, French, health and physical education, music education, and so on - but because these possibilities are so endless, this would mean we would end up recommending every curriculum connection across every subject! Instead, we wanted to highlight what the strongest connections are first - to stimulate new ideas - but by no means does this mean that these are the only connections.

If you have been inspired by our Curriculum Bundles to take these up outside of the BC curriculum connections we suggested, please contact us at: Dr. Shannon Leddy (sleddy@mail.ubc.ca).

We want our website to be exploratory for educators of all backgrounds to consider how diverse Indigenous knowledges can be taken up across diverse subject areas. The BC Curriculum Connections are not meant to be comprehensive. If we made these "searchable" by a specific subject area or grade level, we worry that educators might be more susceptible to only view those Curriculum Bundles that meet their specific criteria.

We believe that every Curriculum Bundle could be taken up in nearly every classroom. To limit these possibilities to searchable criteria would do a disservice to the complexity and diversity inherent in the Indigenous knowledges presented on our website.

It is an exciting time for Indigenous education, because there are so many places to access Indigenous knowledges, teachings, and perspectives. There are limitless resources online; however, a rich place for beginners is through MOOCs (Massive Open Online Course).

Two free courses we recommend are through the University of British Columbia "Reconciliation through Education", and University of Alberta's "Indigenous Canada".

Check out the Foundational Resources page in our Curated Resources list to begin to exploring the complexity of terminology in Indigenous education.

For beginners, however, we highly recommend Chelsea Vowel's "A rose by any other name is a mihkokwaniy" blog post, as an introduction to appropriate terminology when discussing Indigenous peoples.

Begin by perusing our vetted list of authentic Indigenous resources in the Curated Resources section of this website.

Found a resource but unsure if it is appropriate for your classroom? Library and Archives Canada has a checklist to assist in mapping out whether the resource is authentic and appropriate.