Chambers begins with stories about her Irish and Scottish-Canadian heritage, and her ancestors’ emigration from the United Kingdom to its colony in Canada. Through the lives of her grandparents and other relatives, Chambers outlines a short history of those settlers who moved to the North, their reasons for going, and the types of landscapes they encountered. The history of Canada’s use of northern resources is told at the same time: the gold rush, the northern treaties, and the interactions between Northern settlers and Indigenous peoples. It is a personal exploration of the links between curriculum studies, heritage, history, landscapes, and responsibilities.

Abstract:

I’m a commoner by birth, with no inherited rights of property or privilege other than race (color white) and language (English): Irish peasants onmy mother’s side, landless Scots on my father’s side. My mother cursed my father: “You, son of a coal miner!” The men in my father’s family went underground to mine shale, not coal, (AAPG n.d.), a distinction that my father was careful to point out, and which my mother was careful to ignore. My father’s retort was to call my mother “Irish,” with all the disdain of a curse, one that accounted for her various shortcomings: a voice too loud, a tongue too quick, and manners too coarse. One March 17th, long after my mother had died, my father phoned from Vancouver to wish me a happy St. Patrick’s Day, adding, “Well, you are Irish!” A quick reminder of what is uncommon between us. Although, both my 90-year-old father and I know that lowland Scots and northern Irish have bonked back and forth across Irish Channel since the Battle of the Boyne. Such national leapfrogging makes purity of identity based solely on nationality fictional and hard to defend, though defend, my ancestors did. While my father’s father, Thomas Chambers, was born in Scotland, his father was born in County Antrim, Ireland. However, Thomas Chambers would become enraged at the mere insinuation that he was Irish.

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Chambers, Cynthia. “‘We are all treaty people’: The contemporary countenance of Canadian Curriculum Studies.” Reconsidering Canadian Curriculum Studies: Provoking Historical, Present, and Future Perspectives, edited by Nicholas Ng-A-Fook and Jennifer Rottman, 23-38. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.

Every fiscal year, the Government of the Northwest Territories issues a record of measures taken to implement the Official Languages Act. Each report details developments in both French and Aboriginal language programming. Many programs focus on connecting youth with elders, training teachers, developing curriculum, and providing government services in as many languages as possible.

Access this Resource:

The Government of the Northwest Territories makes reports from the last decade available here: https://www.ece.gov.nt.ca/en/services/francophone-affairs-secretariat/official-languages-annual-reports

Government of the Northwest Territories. Annual Report on Official Languages. Yellowknife: 2011.

From Abstract:

In the Northwest Territories (NWT), land claims created tripartite co-management boards, a power-sharing mechanism between Aboriginal organizations, territorial, and federal governments. Land use planning is overseen by such boards and is intended to be a community driven process but Aboriginal organizations and communities have difficulty participating at the same level as their government counterparts. The Great Bear Rainforest (GBR) agreement in British Columbia was considered as a "success" case study on Aboriginal participation in land use planning. Interviews with Aboriginal leadership and non-Aboriginal resource people were conducted in the GBR, the Dehcho and Sahtu for "lessons learned", and to identify ways to create enabling conditions for Aboriginal participation. Three spheres of influence were identified. Aboriginal leadership can create enabling conditions by influencing the technical planning process, exhibiting strong leadership and by adopting good governance practices and structures.

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Collections Canada has made this resource available for free online. 

Mak, Ida. Enhancing Aboriginal Participation in Northern Land Use Planning. Master’s Thesis, Royal Roads University, 2011.

This paper is based on an evaluation of Dechinta, Bush University’s first semester, run by Thea Luig in 2010. The evaluation consisted of semi-structured interviews with instructors and students, along with a critical reflection from the founder and manager of Dechinta (second and third authors, respectively). Dechinta aims to promote experiential, land-based learning based on “Indigenous values and ways of relating to the environment” (14).

From the variety of evidence collected from their evaluation, the authors conclude that Dechinta has enormous potential to be a model of land-based instruction. Students have personal, embodied, and experiential learning experiences that lead to “unique understanding… tangible skills, personal growth, and high knowledge retention” (21). It faces the challenge of funding, and dogmatic understandings of what higher education entails. In addition, the authors call for further research to understand learning and well-being in relational contexts.

Abstract:

In June 2010 “Dechinta” - Bush University Centre for Research and Learning ran their first semester of land-based and university-accredited courses. During a three-week pilot session at a remote location in the Canadian Northwest Territories, students from Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal background learned about health promotion, the history of their people, governance, creative writing, and sustainable technologies. Resident Elders, cultural experts, university professors, and artists taught in collaboration through fireside lecturing, writing, and speaking assignments, travelling out on the land, gathering wood, harvesting, moose hide tanning, making dry fish, and more. Experiential learning that engaged students on intellectual, emotional, and physical levels created awareness of various emotional difficulties, their causes, and their effects on health among participants. The experience of interrelatedness with the land and the group, sharing these experiences in storytelling and writing, working and being on the land proved effective in addressing and emotionally integrating these issues. The Elders present contributed to this process by modeling appropriate behaviour in the face of difficulties and conflict. This paper intends to show the varied relationships between the pedagogy of northern Aboriginal people and the promotion of lifelong well-being. It will relate the experience of Dechinta with a theoretical discussion drawing on critical pedagogy, cultural anthropology, and psychology.

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This PDF is not available open access, but can be purchased from the Journal in its bookstore. 

DOI: https://doi.org/10.18848/2156-8960/CGP/v01i03/41181

Luig, Thea, Erin Freelnd Ballantyne, Kyla Kakfwi Scott. “Promoting Well-Being through Land-Based Pedagogy.” The International Journal of Health, Wellness and Society 1, no. 3 (2011):13-26.

Ouellette outlines the history and goals of Aboriginal education and curricula, in part by surveying and assessing the (over 48) Aboriginal curricula currently in use in Canada. He also provides an overview of the debates surrounding Indigenous education, including the degree to which it should be integrated with existing Canadian institutions, and which level of government should control Indigenous curricula and their implementation. Within this dissertation, Ouellette assesses Dene Kedǝ curriculum. He estimates that 30% of the supplementary material promised for teacher support was missing at the time of writing, and that teachers also lacked clear guidelines for student assessment, objectives, and evaluation materials. He comments that while strong Dene values are clear throughout the Dene Kedǝ curriculum documents, they need more additional support and materials to be practical for teachers to implement. 

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Read this thesis open access from Collections Canada. 

Read this thesis open access from Université Laval.

Ouellette, Robert-Falcon. Evaluating Aboriginal Curricula using a Cree-Métis Perspective with a regard towards Indigenous knowledge. Doctoral Thesis, Université Laval, 2011.

Every fiscal year, the Government of the Northwest Territories issues a record of measures taken to implement the Official Languages Act. Each report details developments in both French and Aboriginal language programming. Many programs focus on connecting youth with elders, training teachers, developing curriculum, and providing government services in as many languages as possible.

One important excerpt from the 2010 report: 

“In the latter part of the 1990s, the Department of Education, Culture and Employment (ECE) consulted with communities on a variety of issues while developing its long-term strategic plan. As a result, a Strategic Plan for Aboriginal Languages was developed through the document: “Revitalizing, Enhancing and Promoting Aboriginal Languages: Strategies for Supporting Aboriginal Languages”. This document outlined what the GNWT was currently doing and planning to do to support the vision of healthy Aboriginal languages. The document was intended to be a “work in progress‟ and modified as Aboriginal language communities continued to articulate their needs, define their priorities and take greater responsibility for achieving their language goals…
The contract for the Review of the Strategy for Supporting Aboriginal Languages of the NWT was awarded to the Genesis Group of Yellowknife. The final Report was submitted in November 2009. The recommendations and information from this Report forms part of the development of a GNWT Aboriginal Languages Strategy.” (4)

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The Government of the Northwest Territories makes reports from the last decade available here: https://www.ece.gov.nt.ca/en/services/francophone-affairs-secretariat/official-languages-annual-reports

Government of the Northwest Territories. Annual Report on Official Languages. Yellowknife: 2010.

The NWT Language Plan was developed collaboratively, using the results of a 2010 language symposium. Its vision statement reads: "Aboriginal languages are used extensively, on a daily basis, to communicate in NWT homes and communities, as well as within the organizations and agencies providing services to the public." (7) This report counts 1,167 people able to converse in Sahtú Dene Kedǝ, with an age distribution better balanced than some other language communities. For the Sahtú region, a few key challenges are identified: the value parents place on dominant languages, communications and technology (most media are available in English and French), Residential School legacy, different dialects (purism impacting language learning), and collaborating across so many different organizations and people.

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The Government of the Northwest Territories has made this report available on their website: http://www.assembly.gov.nt.ca/tabled-documents/northwest-territories-aboriginal-languages-plan-shared-responsibility.

Government of the Northwest Territories. Northwest Territories Aboriginal Languages Plan: A Shared Responsibility. Yellowknife, 2010.

This document is an immensely useful resource for teachers and students of Indigenous languages in the Northwest Territories. It provides a collection of language books published in: Cree, North Slavey, South Slavey, Chipewyan, Tłįchǫ̨, and Gwich’in. Teaching and Learning Centres, other Community Language Groups, and numerous school boards and Divisional Education Councils contributed to its creation, with sponsorship from the GNWT and the Government of Canada through the Department of Canadian Heritage.

The Dene Godǝ, North Slavey portion of the annotated bibliography contains numerous resources that are not already referenced in this Dene Kedǝ to Dene Ts’ı̨lı̨ database. 

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The Yamózha Kų́ę́ Society has made this resource available open access here.

Visit the SSDEC's full list of resources, including other annotaded bibliographies: https://www.ssdec.net/aboriginal-language

Kaulback, Brent. Resources for Teaching Aboriginal Languages in the Northwest Territories: An Annotated Bibliography. Hay River and Fort Smith: Yamózha Kų́ę́ Society/South Slave Divisional Education Council, 2010.

This paper comes out of 2009 workshop at the Northern Governance Policy Research Conference called Research the Indigenous Way. It addresses the 22 participants’ sharing circle input on how “alternative” Indigenous research can support Indigenous governance. Specifically, this refers to an Indigenous research paradigm that does not subscribe to or perpetuate “colonial concepts of governance.” (102)

The authors point to the Mackenzie Valley pipeline challenge as a beginning of Indigenous research in the north. They go on to outline the somewhat exploitative and extractive relationship between Indigenous peoples in the north and southern Canadian scholars. While “Indigenous research” is filled with diversity, it shares a common emphasis on relationships “to the environment, the land, and the ancestors” (106). Additionally, participants talked about the role of traditional knowledge, stories and their lessons for environment and governance, suggesting “the stories in themselves are governance… it is not necessary to distil these into abstract policy governance” (112). A young participant acknowledges the difficulty of being an Indigenous researcher and learning from elders if they cannot speak their language (114). Some other defining characteristics of Indigenous research in this paper include reaching out to one’s heritage, working with an eye to continuity over time, and its need to be recognized as a credible foundation for Indigenous self-determination. (118) Furthermore, in an ideal context, Indigenous researchers will have support from non-Indigenous researchers as resource people, rather than vice versa.

Abstract:

This paper is based on experiences, views, and stories shared by the 22 participants who spoke at the Research the Indigenous Way workshop at the Northern Governance Policy Research Conference in November 2009. The paper does not address all the issues raised, but rather focuses specifically on how the workshop sheds new light on the nature of alternative Indigenous research that would support Indigenous governance. The sharing circle format of the workshop is considered as a model reflecting the research paradigm being talked about. This paradigm requires a critique of past northern “Indigenous” research that perpetuates colonial concepts of governance. Key messages from the groundbreaking work of the Traditional Knowledge Practitioners Group in 2008–2009 are combined with narratives from the workshop to provide a picture of current thinking about Indigenous research in the North, and practical considerations in applying this paradigm. Indigenous people have always been engaged in research processes as part of their ethical “responsibility to keep the land alive.”

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Pimatisiwin: A Journal of Aboriginal and Indigenous Community Health has made this article available online here. 

The full text is also available on ResearchGate.

McGregor, Deborah, Water Bayha, and Deborah Simmons. “‘Our Responsibility to Keep the Land Alive’: Voices of Northern Indigenous Researchers.” Pimatisiwin: A Journal of Aboriginal and Indigenous Community Health 8, no. 1 (2010): 101-123.

From Abstract:

This dissertation examines the ways in which three Aboriginal communities in the Sahtu Region of the Northwest Territories are participating in decisions and activities related to non-renewable resource extraction on Sahtu lands.

Carly Dokis' dissertation was later turned into a book, Where the Rivers Meet. Read about the book and access the Google Book preview on its own item page in this catalogue.   

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Read the dissertation on the Collections Canada website. 

Read the dissertation from the University of Alberta online repository. 

DOI: https://doi.org/10.7939/R3H12M

Dokis, Carly A. People, Land, and Pipelines: Perspectives of Resource Decision Making Processes in the Sahtu Region, Northwest Territories. Doctoral Thesis, University of Alberta, 2010.