Keywords:
reconciliation, pow-wows, Indigenous curriculum, racism, intervention, assumptions, mixed-race, Punjabi
reconciliation, pow-wows, Indigenous curriculum, racism, intervention, assumptions, mixed-race, Punjabi
Transcript
Nicole: How could teachers – what work would teachers need to do to be able to provide a curriculum, um, that is appropriate in this moment of reconciliation?
Nicole: Having, um, First Nations come in and do educations, going to pow-wows, going to Native events. The teachers should be doing that just to kind of know what they’re talking about, instead of Thara –how old was Thara? She sent me that video that I was just horrified at. They were doing some sort of a dance –like a circle dance, the round dance, and it was awful how it turned out because the teachers were just letting the kids do whatever, and they were being pretty, like, racist. Like kids were [unclear] and doing the war dance thing and when Thara showed it to me I told her I said, “You know that’s not correct, you don’t, like, those dances you don’t go and kill the animals and do like – it was very bizarre.
Mita: It was really truly bizarre.
Nicole: It was the strangest thing I’ve ever seen [unclear].
Tara: You know when you let kids use, you know, whatever imagination that they have to dance they rely on all the racist stereotypical things they’ve seen in the media.
Mita: And this is where you hope that the teacher would have stepped in and said, “Well actually this is how people do what they do and it’s not appropriate for everybody to do what they do and sometimes it’s really inappropriate when somebody who’s not from that culture does that.” Can we teach that? And they have a tough time with our kids because they assume that they’re white. Um…
Nicole: They’re mixed race.
Mita: They’re mixed race, and they both ended up fair skinned and they –they took on their dad’s last name and his last name is Irish, so they assume that they’re white. And then they find out that they’re actually not culturally white at all.
Nicole: They thought Nikka was part Native, but she said “no, I’m Indian”. They were like, “What nation are you from?”
Mita: Punjabi.
Nicole: How could teachers – what work would teachers need to do to be able to provide a curriculum, um, that is appropriate in this moment of reconciliation?
Nicole: Having, um, First Nations come in and do educations, going to pow-wows, going to Native events. The teachers should be doing that just to kind of know what they’re talking about, instead of Thara –how old was Thara? She sent me that video that I was just horrified at. They were doing some sort of a dance –like a circle dance, the round dance, and it was awful how it turned out because the teachers were just letting the kids do whatever, and they were being pretty, like, racist. Like kids were [unclear] and doing the war dance thing and when Thara showed it to me I told her I said, “You know that’s not correct, you don’t, like, those dances you don’t go and kill the animals and do like – it was very bizarre.
Mita: It was really truly bizarre.
Nicole: It was the strangest thing I’ve ever seen [unclear].
Tara: You know when you let kids use, you know, whatever imagination that they have to dance they rely on all the racist stereotypical things they’ve seen in the media.
Mita: And this is where you hope that the teacher would have stepped in and said, “Well actually this is how people do what they do and it’s not appropriate for everybody to do what they do and sometimes it’s really inappropriate when somebody who’s not from that culture does that.” Can we teach that? And they have a tough time with our kids because they assume that they’re white. Um…
Nicole: They’re mixed race.
Mita: They’re mixed race, and they both ended up fair skinned and they –they took on their dad’s last name and his last name is Irish, so they assume that they’re white. And then they find out that they’re actually not culturally white at all.
Nicole: They thought Nikka was part Native, but she said “no, I’m Indian”. They were like, “What nation are you from?”
Mita: Punjabi.