Conference encourages attendees to be “space-making change-makers”
- NC Raine | March 16, 2018
Thinkers, educators, students, and the progressive-minded of all backgrounds gathered for the 2018 Think Indigenous Education Conference in Saskatoon. The conference aims to inspire all those attending to be a space-making change-maker for Indigenous knowledge and education. In its fourth year, the Think Indigenous conference features over 75 presenters and 20 keynote speakers over the course of three days.
Chris Scribe, Think Indigenous Conference Chair, says that just as schools were once detrimental in Indigenous history, they may now be used for educational and cultural benefit.
“Reiterated to us whenever we hear our elders speak is the importance of connecting to our identity through our language, culture, and traditions. For a lot of us, that was disrupted during our history,” Scribe says. “So if the school system was the tool in order to disrupt that, the school system can be the tool to bring that back.”
Scribe says that he hopes the conference inspires the sort of change that educators and students can implement in their community.
“Conferences don't change the world, as much as we'd like that to happen. What they do is light a spark to have a different thought process so we can go back to our communities and make relevant changes,” he says. “That's the hope – that this is truly a spark and everyone takes something away from this.”
As young generations are one of the focal points of the conference, Think Indigenous kicked off with a Youth Day, where students from Saskatoon Public Schools and neighbouring First Nations were invited to learn about Indigenous knowledge and traditions. Nearly 600 students attended workshops around Indigenous science, math, storytellings, identity, decolonization, and land based education.
“Sometimes when we sit in classrooms and learn these histories, they are hard, dark histories. Students, and people in general, can become apathetic because of how hard it is,” said Tatum Albert, Community Coordinator at Nutana Collegiate and Think Conference Presenter. “With resilience stories, it changes people and gives them hope. I want kids to see that we're here and we're a strong people.”
Of the conference's many keynote speakers, perhaps none is more distinguished in his field than Leroy Little Bear, a renowned educator who became the founding director of the Native American program at Harvard. Little Bear's keynote focused on the importance of land in identity.
“Native identity loss comes about when the land does not recognize you and you don't recognize the land,” said Little Bear during his keynote.
“What does this mean for us as teachers? It means you have to bring up our children in a cultural atmosphere that best resembles the land where they come from. The land is their identity. You, as a teacher, should know the songs, stories, and ceremonies.”
Think Indigenous also brought experts from all over the world, including experts sharing unique perspectives from the United States, Greenland, Finland, and Australia.
“We've been talking about Indigenous past and colonization, but I want to talk about both present time and future,” said Pirjo Kristiina Virtanen from University of Helsinki, Finland. “I want to emphasize that there's also Indigenous futurity, which comes from ways of knowing. It's very holistic and related to being here and now.”
The Think Indigenous Educational Conference took place from March 14-16 in Saskatoon. To learn more visit thinkindigenous.usask.ca