okinohmakē, kēntasowin: Teaching and Learning Through Indigenous Knowledge Systems

Abstract

Teaching and learning through Indigenous perspectives, pedagogies, and methodologies entices all our senses, requires reciprocal relationality that creates and contributes to renewal, restoration, re-energization, and rejuvenation, has one actively engage in “coming to know” self in the midst of creation and the cosmos, and engage in dynamic creativity as one anticipates seven generations into the future. For Indigenous peoples, learning and creativity are spirits, so they are very much alive. How do we revive, spark, and nurture these entities in our personal and professional lives? In our world today, innovation, an outcome of creativity, involves ‘weaving’ into practice the vision that Indigenous Peoples (as far back as 1613) had of good and right relations with newcomers and settler peoples. These concepts include ethical space, treaty principles, and parallel development practices. These concepts were the foundation of the University of Calgary Indigenous Strategy ii' taa'poh'to'p. In this session, Dr. Jacqueline Ottmann, will share stories of the complexities, wonder, and beauty that comes from weaving Indigenous and non-Indigenous perspectives.