As a child raised in what most people would call a “regular” Canadian upbringing standard in the past twenty years, I can testify that I had very little, if any, knowledge of the existence of First Nations peoples and their cultures until my later primary school years. Even as we started learning history and bits of trivia the Indigenous people of North America were always shrouded in mystery, in an established “separateness” from the colonial Canadians. Attempts made to diversify our education curriculum and add decolonized content were limited to the occasional field trip and drumming sessions with very little explanation or background provided. To kids, to me, these were fun activities that provided occasion to leave the classroom. They were special events, not to be a part of our fundamental education but what I see now as “fillers” required by the system which nobody in the faculty really knew how to handle. They were just one-off experiences, and students weren’t really provided with the means or opportunity to learn more. The result? A very generalized idea among those of my generation of what “Indigenous culture” is and what it comprises. Drumming, dances, bannock and people of the past.
I think my experience as a primary school student part of the “indigenous kids program” is what drove me to choose a subject related to education. I refined my scope to look into topics not covered by standardized province-wide “Indigenous education” and found out about a man called Wilfred Buck. Known as Manitoba’s “star guy”, Buck works with First Nations schools to bring an Indigenous perspective to teaching science. He is from the Opaskwayak Cree Nation and travels around communities with his mobile dome-shaped planetarium to teach students about Cree constellations. I came across a quote from him which I felt explained the problem I was trying to aid in solving perfectly:
“All these ceremonies and all these so-called mythologies … there’s a depth of knowledge involved. They’re not just quaint little stories. Every Indigenous culture in the world has that depth of knowledge, that intellectual capacity. It’s just that through the colonial process it’s been minimized and it’s been marginalized.”
Buck’s insight helped me to establish my goal: To educate Canadians of Indigenous and non-Indigenous descent on the pre-colonial relationship the First Peoples had with the sky. To share scientific knowledge, philosophy, tales and meaning behind constellations and the Northern lights from a decolonized perspective.
Resources:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/indigenous-astronomy-1.5077070
https://www.sciencefriday.com/articles/indigenous-peoples-astronomy/
https://pressbooks.bccampus.ca/astronomy1105/chapter/2-3-astronomy-of-the-first-nations-of-canada/